The only way that modern AAA games should be bought.
this post was submitted on 24 Nov 2025
1051 points (98.9% liked)
Gaming
6303 readers
48 users here now
!gaming is a community for gaming noobs through gaming aficionados. Unlike !games, we don’t take ourselves quite as serious. Shitposts and memes are welcome.
Our Rules:
1. Keep it civil.
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only.
2. No sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia or any other flavor of bigotry.
I should not need to explain this one.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Try not to repost anything posted within the past month.
Beyond that, go for it. Not everyone is on every site all the time.
Logo uses joystick by liftarn
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Unless they require linking an EA, Ubisoft, Rockstar, or other bullshit account requirements, in which case they get added to the ignore list.
or Battle Pass, Micro, >10 DLC.
Note that Steam lets you ignore entire publishers. Go to the publisher page, click ignore. Done!
I kept waiting for Starfield to drop in price. Impatiently, I sailed the seas to see if it had improved since launch. Sadly, it's still a HUGE turd and now it's off my watch list. The first big Bethesda title I don't own.
I beat it on game pass and had fun. The base building is kinda impressive but there's little reason to spend a bunch of time on it because nobody will ever see it. It's not amazing but I definitely don't think it deserves turd rating. That said everyone should just play expedition 33 instead.
As a huge sci-fi fan, and fan of most of Bethesda's games in the past, I disagree. Turd rating is accurate. It just all felt like a waste of time. Like you said, the base building seems like it could be good, but it is never relevant. It's like this for almost every piece of content. They're just all on islands that don't interact.
My biggest issue though is the writing. It's so boring. It's like they watched a bunch of sci-fi and put tropes from them in the game, but then they never explore the consequences of them. They just exist for a quest and are gone. Why sci-fi is good is because it uses these stories to explore humanity, which would be made even better with an RPG where the player has agency. They just don't though. You get a few boring options that don't actually effect anything and everything goes on as normal. It's just a bland game that doesn't respect your time.
There's a Star Trek Voyager game out at the moment which is basically what Starfield should have been, but set in the Star Trek universe.
I think the big problem Starfield has is that it tries to be really big, but they don't really have that much content so it's just all spread out. While at the same time you don't actually get to feel that bigness because moving between locations is just a loading screen. You don't get the long quiet sections like you do in something like Elite Dangerous. So they made a really big, really spread out world, with fast travel, it's the most pointless game ever made.
load more comments
(3 replies)
load more comments
(2 replies)
load more comments
(5 replies)
I used to buy Steam games without a care in the world. Now to spend even 5 bucks I make myself go through a quality control checklist so vast it would impress a space shuttle commander. There's just been too many abandoned games, terrible sequels, fake reviews, unnecessary game launchers and disappointing Steam sales. That's not to say there isn't still an excellent bunch of games on there, but they're all hidden deep in the forest and I have to go sniff em out like a basset hound.
If I spend a fiver on a game and it entertains me for two nights I still consider that fine value to entertainment ratio. If I went out somewhere in real life with the boys I'd be spending a minimum of $50 and that's for a single night out. So I buy a lot of indie games in the $5-10 range without much guilt over it. Weird single-dev projects with pixel art and a 5 year span in early access are my favorite kind of art.
Now if you're asking me more than about $20 for your game then yeah the quality control checklist comes out. But my standards are much lower for the $10-tier and I've found some really good games in that tier. Not ones that I'm still playing, maybe, but ones that I had a good time with for a few days to a few weeks and that I remember fondly.
Firewatch checked that box for me. Two of my kids did a playthrough too.
load more comments
(1 replies)
How dare you not sharing your list with us uneducated
Be our messiah
Well ok but I did say it was long. Tbh, my checklist is almost a minigame itself now 🤣
So once I've found a game that looks interesting, I do the following:
Google video search for the game's title and filter to past week, then month, then year and that shows me how many people are actually talking about this game right now and who's doing the talking.
I look at the Steam reviews and initially filter to only show negative ones. I find it's a lot easier to see if the game's been review bombed that way. Also, a lot of negative reviews complain about features I find positive so that's helpful too "This game was way too easy! I finished it in 30 hours and I still had all my hair at the end, harumph!". I also check phrases like "Abandoned by the devs" or "Yet another asset flip" or "Beware! The EULA is a privacy nightmare".
I then switch to positive reviews and read the short ones. The dissertations are just way too much detail at this stage (or any stage really for me).
At some point early on I check the Steam update history. If the last update was years ago I factor that in. I also try to keep on top of relevant news like that time the entire staff of Annapurna Interactive quit, making a sequel to Stray unlikely.
Also, if it hasn't had that many recent updates I'll join the Discord and see how active that is. That's usually so revealing. Often in a positive way like with the G-Rebels devs.
Then I go through my top YT game reviewers like Raptor, Scarlett Seeker, Splattercat Gaming, Orbital Potato and Nookrium and see if they've talked about the game.
I look for the title on Allkeyshop to see if there's a cheaper EU unlockable Steam game key available.
I check for trainers in case I need an escape hatch if it turns out to be too grindy or tedious but still worth playing.
If all the searches have been positive so far I'll wishlist it around this point. If there's a demo I'll play it. If it looks amazing from the start I'll install the demo after looking at a couple of gameplay videos.
I also have a 21:9 monitor so I hop into the Steam discussion group for the game and look for confirmation that it's compatible.
If it's too expensive I'll check SteamDB and look at it's price history. My personal limit is <7 bucks for an old game and <18 for a relatively new one (unless something exceptional suddenly appears like Eriksholm).
I'll check if there any Steam sales coming and if the theme is likely to match the game I'm looking at.
I really do actually do all this by the way. It's the only way I've been able to get more sensible about the games I buy.
load more comments
(5 replies)
load more comments
(5 replies)
load more comments
(6 replies)
I don’t even play the majority of games I buy. I give game devs free money.
My man
Retirement planning
Me, 83 years old on my first day of retirement booting up a game I bought in 60 years ago because it was only $6: "wow, this sucks"
load more comments
(1 replies)
Paying full price for non indie games doesn't support the devs. It supports the companies who hire and underpay their workers, treat them like shit and would contine to do so if you paid 200% retail.
load more comments
(3 replies)
Another option is to just price it respectfully. I picked up Silksong on release. I have one day of play time because I'm not into the genre at the moment.
There are plenty of games I would purchase if they were priced low enough from genres I would not normally play just out of popularity and curiosity. I have a lot of them on the Steam backlog that I haven't even touched just because they were on discount. Some devs do it for mansions, other devs do it for love. Both end up shorting themselves, and the ones probably winning out in terms of profit are the ones selling on a time discount curve somewhere along the middle.
Supergiant Games are worth a dozen run-of-the-mill "AAA" games but they're always cheaper. They used to make relatively short games but Hades I & II are playable for hundreds of hours with new things still coming your way and they're still cheaper and better.
That's what they are doing with the pricing: They start up way to high, to catch those who will pay that price. Once they reach the point where sales are stalling at that price point, they lower it, so that more price-sensitive players will buy. That cycle continues until they get a deal from Epic or Amazon to give the game away for free, because that way the publisher still gets more money than from pirates.
I feel like they cheat by keeping their regular price high.
Back in the day, a game was $60 new and $20 without sale after a few years.
IMO that’s still better than keeping your prices high and doing crazy sales. This way it gets lots of people to buy it out of impulse hence the popularity of the unplayed library meme.
I remember those days.
Release at $60, lower to $20 after a few years, $5 on sale with "only" 75% off.
Though I've noticed that every major steam sale has 10 selected deep discount games that are at least 90% off. The prices for these select 10 feel like steam sales we used to have 15 years ago.
Its almost like gambling and the gamification of a sale brings out the gamers who feel savvy by buying a cheap game instead of quality releases, not saying thats every game on sale
load more comments
(1 replies)
load more comments
(1 replies)
It’s rare, but there’s a few indie games where I did not wait for a sale, even knowing I wouldn’t play it for a while, because I wanted to be supportive to devs that made something I wanted.
That was me with Dispatch. Got the Deluxe too
Support your Indies. They are the future of gaming once the AAA industry collapses in on itself.
load more comments
(7 replies)
-95% and an All-Time Low mark on isthereanydeal.com is like my personal catnip.
Same! A Humble Bundle with 3+ games that mildly interest me was another, but they've been getting lamer and lamer.
load more comments
(2 replies)
I bought a 2 hour long indie "experience" at 67% off.
No regerts. I am barely making ends meet and feeding a child and wife.
RiveR- Solo 🏴☠
I could hear this. I feel very fit now.
🏴☠
Patient gamers ftw!
so we're all clear. What is the difference between selling 100 copy's at $5 vs selling 5 copies at $100?
Dev's lock in prices at $100 and only discount down to 5%-10% because industry standards and publishers or some bullshit. They don't care if I eat, I don't care if the eat. Doesn't matter how good the game is. This is how it's always been in capitalism and to participate means neither of us care about the other one. If we maintained what these sales were like during the hayday, I'd go to bat for any of these devs. But I've seen the sales in the past few years. Minimal at best then posts like these saying "support them". Eat shit.
You're not a starving artist any more then we are. You want to create a world of maximized profits then don't ask for sympathy and support when it takes away from my labor too. I will play the game like you and demand cheaper while you demand more money. Go figure games now are not great and maybe profits are up because prices don't drop anymore, but there's likely more starving artist types developing games now then there were during the great days because guess what got everyone into gaming then? Cheap sales and game prices we all could afford and play on our jank systems. Now they fuck us and say "support our full price game or you're a piece of shit"
It still supports the devs. Sales are a chance to pick up the market segments that will only buy at that price.
History of my preorders or full purchases:
Full price purchase:
L4D+L4D2
Diablo 3 - Probably the only culprit here. But cmon, Blizzard was good at that time.
It Takes Two
Binding of Isaac Rebirth
PUBG
Psychonauts 2
Preorders:
Portal 2
The rest is just acquiring good games for low price. Especially humble bundle (that specific one was extremely juicy IYKYK)
load more comments
(2 replies)
The only game I preorder is GW2's yearly expansions. Everything else is c/patientgamers material, waiting a few years and paying just a small fraction of the release price to get all DLC, fixed bugs, and tons of fan resources that were created meanwhile 👌
view more: next ›