Poll Question 359 – Are PC games good value for money?

24th October 2016

I have made a video for this poll question.

If I decide to use this format, I will make sure the video is a little longer has has more details, examples and talking points in future.

Vote

Are PC games good value for money?

  • Sometimes - please comment. (19%, 10 Votes)
  • No, in general. (6%, 3 Votes)
  • Yes, in general. (75%, 40 Votes)

Total Voters: 53

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8 Comments

  1. Sometimes. It’s a very open ended question and there are A LOT of factors.

    I would easily drop £40+ on the next Half-Life title (assuming such a thing one day exists) simply because once the campaign is over, there will be thousands of hours of custom levels down the line. I’d still pay £40 for Half-Life 1, if I needed to.

    Bethesda RPGs as well. The base game can absorb hundreds of hours to fully explore and come with a full SDK for modders. Well worth it on PC, and on console now too. (console versions got a bad deal with previous Bethesda games in terms of mod compatibility)

    Then you get companies like EA that release a sequel to a series for £40 (Let’s use Sims 4 as the example here), stripping out tons of features from previous titles in the same series, then charging £5 – £20 for DLC that adds these features over the next few months.

    1. congaman59

      I typically don’t buy the newest games as soon as they come out. I’ll wait until they go on sale on Steam. Like with most things patients pays off.
      Now it looks like some consoles are going away the pc. market may be in for a bit of a revival.

  2. Within the context of the video, in many ways, video games are still cheap entertainment. If the average game runs 8-10 hours and you pay $60 for it… or wait a couple months until it’s $40, if you enjoy it, it’s a better value than a theme park or a movie.

    Keep in mind that games are cheaper today than they were in the 1990s if you adjust for inflation. Super Nintendo cartridges used to regularly hit $75. Not only is that more than the base price now, but in 1990s dollars, I think it’s closer to something like $90-$100 today.

    I agree with Urby that some games are worth more than others. For all their foibles, I have much respect for how Bethesda has prioritized keeping the mod scene alive and well in their games. They seem like one of the few triple-A publishers that understands the value of mods. The scene is, after all, much different than it was in 2008. Most developers and publishers clamp down on the editing tools and discourage modding altogether, mainly in the interest of selling DLC that the fans could have freely generated in the past. So, you finish them and you’re done.

  3. JamaicanDave

    Sometimes – for pretty much the same reasons Urby has given.

    While I still feel slightly cheated paying £40 for a game (back in my day blah blah..) I easily get my moneys worth from games like Fallout 4 or Witcher 3. The same can be said for much shorter games like Alien Isolation. Although I completed it in about 20 hours (compared to the 100s of hours sunk into Fallout 4), and have been too terrified to venture back a second time, the experience was worth it.

    On the flip side, there are the mass produced franchises. You can rattle through them in say 10-15 hours, feeling like you’ve seen it all before, and never play it again. They can still be entertaining at the time, but are also very forgettable and not really worth the price tag.

  4. Retibsi

    The trouble I have with so many of the modern games is that they’re little more than a slight advance of what went before. Yes, the graphics are generally much better but the gameplay? Hmmm. Not so sure. They generally fall into a small set of categories such as FPS or RPG and there’s only so much that can be done within that category. Half Life and Half Life 2 are exceptional in that once the core game is completed there are so many mods, experimenting and pushing at the boundaries, but so many more don’t really do much for me. The Tomb Raider franchise is a case in point. I have them all but the ones I return to are the old ones, I seem to have lost that sense of adventure / excitement from the newer ones. Don’t get me wrong, they’re good but I don’t “fixate” on them (awful description I know) as I once did. So yes, it depends very much on the level of enjoyment I get from a new game whether I feel it was a worthwhile purchase, the cost itself is largely irrelevant. At the risk of sounding touchy-feely you can often tell if the maker(s) put a certain level of love into making the game and actually thinking about improving and refining the gameplay

  5. Hec

    Gosh 180 Euros! for some roller coaster rides!! That’s a lot of money in my Country, like $3,600 Pesos! Costs like a F1 ticket for the Mexico GP.

    Of Course all it comes worthy once you enjoy the event or the product, I’d pay that for a F1 Ticket or if I were rich, a lot of money in order to drive a F1 car.

    Now, when it comes to PC Games I think its just a big surprise, i mean, I’d pay a high price for a copy of HL3 when it comes out, but what if it’s terrible (something like an open world MP) I’d totally feel devastated and ripped off!! Fortunately we have Steam special sales, so you can save lots of money in there and spend it in some great games!

  6. Regarding retail PC Games the answer is a clear NO.

    They don’t even bother to sell you some game, but force you to download dozens of GBs instead, worst offenders in the recent past being MGS 5 and Fallout 4. Plus countless GBs of day one, week one and month one patches.

    Definitely GOTY only for me in the future – no more DLCs, no more patches, and if you’re lucky all this on a few DVDs, like the GOTY of Witcher 3.

  7. generally pc games offer better value than console games … i recently started using ” cdkeys.com” which sell pc games at a significantly reduced price compared to steam
    for example i got DOOM(2016) for £18 and even better FAR CRY 4 for £3-99 ….. no problems .. purchased the game and the key was sent straight away to the registered email address(mine )
    i dont know how they manage this but they do a roaring trade and theres loads of great deals every week …. they also support origin and uplay games
    digital downloads is now here to stay .. i have around 800 pc games in boxes and they take up loads of room … many are simply games that come with the steam code so they are essentially useless once installed
    in regards to buying games on disc its not worth it …. i read a review on amazon were the guy purchased doom and then realised he needed to download around 40gb of additional data …. again the actual disc is just a bundled code ….why sell the disc ….
    in summary with digital pc downloads you need to look around … with g2a and cdkeys.com you can save hundreds this way and they are all legit …

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