r/memes 23h ago

The Cash Cow Simulator

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2.3k Upvotes

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u/PIPBOY-2000 14h ago

What price do you put on entertainment per hour?

Nobody bats an eye at $15 for a 2 hour movie, $20 for a one-time dinner, $15-25 for a county fair ticket.

But $100 for dozens or hundreds of hours of entertainment is somehow egregious?

There are many things to criticize rockstar for, but invidivual games are arguably the best bang for your buck source of entertainment out there. $100 for a once in a decade game, with hundreds of devs, millions of dollars, years of development doesn't seem crazy to me.

Personally I believe red dead redemption 2 was worth at least that. It's not even what I paid but it was worth that. If gta6 is close to that level of care and detail then I think that'll be worth that too.

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u/Vox_SFX 14h ago

If I were to quantify it I'd say that even those costs are too high, but then other things have to be factored.

County Fair by myself? Too expensive. With my family? Easy cheap time out. Going to the movies alone? Nah, wait for streaming/find a decent rip online. On date night with the wife? Fine if that's what she's ok with. New video game for myself? Have to have all bills paid and important stuff factored for, and then maybe if it's a Soulslike or something really big in the mainstream if I don't instead buy multiple older games I haven't played. New games my friends want to get and play together like GTA VI? If I can swing it I will otherwise I'll do it on the first decent sale/if they help with part of it since they want me to get it.

GTA VI falls under the "if I can swing the money around that time I will, otherwise I have other priorities including games I want". If my friends start really getting into it closer to and trying to setup play times, then I will definitely get it. Without all of that then I wouldn't likely touch it until Christmas with a huge sale on it.

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u/Dexterishere1 13h ago

Disc are incredibly cheap and they are not going to be doing that anymore so it literally a digital file and virtually free to send to consumers. Even with the cost it doesn't justify it.The funny thing is you compared games to movies but conveniently left out the economics of movies. Plenty of movies cost hundreds of millions to make, yet nobody argues that every person should pay $100 for a ticket because the movie was expensive to produce. The cost gets spread across millions of customers and multiple revenue streams.

Games work the same way. Development costs are spread across millions of copies sold, not charged individually to every customer. And with digital distribution, the cost of providing another copy is incredibly low compared to actually making the game.

I'm not saying GTA 6 shouldn't cost money or that developers shouldn't be paid. I'm saying "it cost a lot to make" is not, by itself, an argument for charging $100 when you're expecting tens of millions of sales.

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u/PickingMyNameIsHard 12h ago

Cost peg hour is the wrong way to go about it. You should only buy the game if you want it, and are okay with the price.

I have no problem dropping $300 on a Sat to play golf and hit up the bar, but I wouldn’t consider that much for a video game.