In recent years, between a pandemic, chip crises and a fair number of wars, the global economy has changed dramatically. With this in mind, the prices of the games have also increased significantly and the players have repeatedly complained about this. However, it seems that the developers, particularly within Rocksteady, have a totally different perception of the situation.
I don't know if you knew this. But $60 in 2000 is $93 now, due to inflation.
We're under-charging you for games and have been for two decades.
Pay us what we're worth.
— Lee Devonald (@LeeDevonald) October 15, 2022
As just emerged from a tweet posted by Lee Devonald, Rocksteady's Character Technical Artist, the development studios would even be containing prices compared to the actual value of the product offered. According to the calculations of the artist, known for his work in the Batman Arkham series (which you can find on Amazon), the $60 we've been used to paying for games since the early 2000s should be related to current inflation.
In fact, due to all the situations described above, the correct value of a game in this historical period should be around 93 dollars. The post has a decidedly polemical tone and Devonald, to the figures indicated, adds that players should "pay us what we are worth". If we consider that, by definition, the value of a good/service is also influenced by the amount someone is willing to spend to buy it, the statement is rather questionable. Even in terms of the value of the products, the Rocksteady artist has been harshly criticized under his own tweet. In fact, many have pointed out to the author of the post how the amount of bugs present on day one of many titles makes the attribution of a value higher than the 70 dollars at which the products are currently sold rather subjective.
The tones used by Devonald, in fact, are quite revisable and pass off the concept as a sort of favor for which we should be grateful to the developers. “We've been making you pay for games less than they're worth for two decades” is surely an unsuccessful statement by the Rocksteady collaborator. The question is decidedly more complex than this simple statement of "absolute value" and should be decidedly investigated better than as done by Devonald.
