Prices are insane

[Leyrann]

In real life there are a lot of people who spend like 80% of their income on food.

...then what about rent? My rent (small apartment consisting of living room+kitchen attached, one bedroom, bathroom) is roughly four times what I spend on food. Is this entire balance just different in less wealthy countries?

As for savings, on one hand I get that, on the other hand, people here in the Netherlands also manage to have debts, and I'm flabbergasted at that too, because all those (Dutch) people have to be earning at least as much as me, as I'm literally on the minimum income anyone in this country can be. As a result, no offense, I'm always a bit skeptical of people saying they can't lower their expenses, because that's what I hear here too.

 

[chaosprophet]

Going to keep it to this thread rather than derail other threads with it, but how is it that the game is too expensive for die-hard fans with thousands of posts on these forums to afford?

Like, I'm sorry, but it's roughly five months still to release. Was six when the price was announced. You have to save just ~12 dollars/euros per month to afford that. At my (almost-minimum) wage, that's one hour of work in a few months. Even if you live in a country with a converted 2 dollars/euros per month minimum wage, you overshoot at just 1.5 hours of extra work per week.

And, in more general terms: do people not have any savings at all? For reference, I save about a quarter of my monthly income simply because I don't have anything useful to spend it on. Obviously, not everyone will have such a relatively favorable balance between income and expenses, but I am literally incapable of working more than ~24 hours per week (I tried). Going with the earlier assumption of 2 dollars/euros per hour minimum wage, and 24 hour work weeks just as an extra income penalty, and a quarter of the relative-to-income left-over money that I have (so 1/16) of the total, that would still still save 3 euros/dollars equivalent per week... translating to over 75 euros/dollars equivalent in half a year. Enough to buy the game if you start saving when it's announced. And frankly I feel like I'm being very pessimistic in my estimates.

(edited because I accidentally calculated half the savings you actually get with the scenario I outlined in the last paragraph)

Many people may be struggling with the money they have, whether because their income already barely cover their expenses or because they are currently struggling to an unplanned expense like a car unexpected breakdown or medical problem (that can be even more problematic on countries with no or bad/expensive heathcare insurance). And even people who can afford it, may still think it is too expensive, whether compared with other games and what those games give.

Even if you're a big civ fan, doesn't means there aren't other games on your radar you're more interested on (especially for those that already aren't too hot on the new game), and also that the person don't have other hobbies other than games that their surplus money is divided into where the price of a game may make it not seem as a good investment for them in comparison.

And then you're not even considering how it can be proportionally much more expensive for people in other countries. If you look at my earlier post here the price for the base game in Brazil is about 25% of the monthly minimum wage, which would be similar for an American if the price was $319.

 

[stealth_nsk]

...then what about rent? My rent (small apartment consisting of living room+kitchen attached, one bedroom, bathroom) is roughly four times what I spend on food. Is this entire balance just different in less wealthy countries?

As for savings, on one hand I get that, on the other hand, people here in the Netherlands also manage to have debts, and I'm flabbergasted at that too, because all those (Dutch) people have to be earning at least as much as me, as I'm literally on the minimum income anyone in this country can be. As a result, no offense, I'm always a bit skeptical of people saying they can't lower their expenses, because that's what I hear here too.

The balance is different in different countries. The answer is often what the majority of people don't rent. They have large families living in small inherited apartments. Here in Serbia a lot of people live like this. And a lot of people every day go from their village houses to cities, since they can't afford renting an apartment at place they work.

I actually seen a lot of people in different situations. I was in quite difficult situations (like renting a tiny room+kitchen apartment with my disabled wife and little daughter) myself. So if people say they can't afford something, I usually take it seriously until I have more information about their life.

 

[Leyrann]

Many people may be struggling with the money they have, whether because their income already barely cover their expenses or because they are currently struggling to an unplanned expense like a car unexpected breakdown or medical problem (that can be even more problematic on countries with no or bad/expensive heathcare insurance). And even people who can afford it, may still think it is too expensive, whether compared with other games and what those games give.

That's fair enough, although even there, there might be ways to save - for example, that car with the unexpected breakdown. Obviously I live in a country with ridiculously good bicycle infrastructure and most people can't just forego a car entirely in favor of a bicycle (which easily saves 100-200 euros per month here in the Netherlands, excluding the car's initial purchase cost), but a motorcycle can do most things a car can, at a lower cost. So perhaps you shouldn't have the car in the first place, but instead a motorcycle. And if you do live close to work, then a bicycle is again cheaper, although potentially more dangerous (depending on traffic).

I am fully willing to believe that this is different in other countries, but here in the Netherlands cars and smoking are the two biggest culprits of people saying they can't live any cheaper when they very clearly can. My leftover money per month is roughly equal to the expenses from a car and smoking together.

And then you're not even considering how it can be proportionally much more expensive for people in other countries. If you look at my earlier post here the price for the base game in Brazil is about 25% of the monthly minimum wage, which would be similar for an American if the price was $319.

I did consider that, I assumed 1/6 the minimum wage, which in your calculation (which goes the other way around) would be similar for an American if the price was $420.

The balance is different in different countries. The answer is often what the majority of people don't rent. They have large families living in small inherited apartments. Here in Serbia a lot of people live like this. And a lot of people every day go from their village houses to cities, since they can't afford renting an apartment at place they work.

There'll be expenses associated to traveling to the city every day, too, though, which is a potential avenue for saving. For example, perhaps public transport is cheaper than driving, or the other way around. As mentioned above, perhaps a motorcycle or, if feasible, a bicycle is cheaper than a car. Perhaps the rent can be paid for with the money you save by not having a car. Or - and this is the most likely one to be useful, I'd say - perhaps you could save money by traveling as a group. Instead of four or five people from the same village each taking their own car to the same city, have a different person drive the entire group to the city every day, and you're saving on 70+% of the driving expenses.

Over here employers are also expected (perhaps even required by law?) to compensate their employees for expenses made to travel to, from or for the sake of work, but I imagine that's a wealthy country thing.

I actually seen a lot of people in different situations. I was in quite difficult situations (like renting a tiny room+kitchen apartment with my disabled wife and little daughter) myself. So if people say they can't afford something, I usually take it seriously until I have more information about their life.

Yeah, just to be clear - that I'm skeptical doesn't mean I don't take them seriously.

 

[stealth_nsk]

There'll be expenses associated to traveling to the city every day, too, though, which is a potential avenue for saving. For example, perhaps public transport is cheaper than driving, or the other way around.

Yeah, most of them already use public transport.

Yeah, just to be clear - that I'm skeptical doesn't mean I don't take them seriously.

Yeah, I understand. If take statistics, not average people, usually Civ is an affordable kind of entertainment.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

Games are a luxury, and unfortunately one that many have a hard justifying the price of. I don't like the price raise, just like that I don't like that the prices didn't go DOWN when physical items were taken out of the equation. However, compared to the costs of other forms of entertainment (a movie, as sporting event, etc) games still are a great deal.

 

[bladex1200]

Games are a luxury, and unfortunately one that many have a hard justifying the price of. I don't like the price raise, just like that I don't like that the prices didn't go DOWN when physical items were taken out of the equation. However, compared to the costs of other forms of entertainment (a movie, as sporting event, etc) games still are a great deal.

Basically this, the main issue is that prices need to be better adjusted for the regions they are being sold in, not the concept of games getting more expensive over time. If you want to reduce inflation you're getting into monetary and fiscal policy and making currency more difficult to access, raising interest rates, etc, all stuff outside the scope of what a video game company can do.

Are companies obviously out to make money and padding prices? Sure. But they've been doing that since time immemorial, the fact video games are $70 now doesn't mean companies are gouging any more than when Nintendo carts used to be $40 - $50 new (which in today's USD is $130 - $150).

 

[Leyrann]

Games are a luxury, and unfortunately one that many have a hard justifying the price of.

I agree, however it's one of the most affordable ones out there. Like, that $420 number above? That's about half of what I spend when I go to a festival, and frankly even if it was the same price I'd be hard-pressed to justify prioritizing the festival over the game if I thought about the actual hours of enjoyment. The fact that it's actually some fifteen times cheaper than a festival just puts into perspective just how cost-efficient games are in providing entertainment/warm fuzzy feelings of joy.

I don't like the price raise

There was no price raise. There was a partial price correction for inflation. Compensated for inflation, Civ VII is cheaper than it's predecessor, except in some places where people are getting screwed over by changed policies or changed currency conversions - but the exception is not the rule and not a fair standard when making a general statement.

In fact, I'd go so far as to say that there has been a price reduction. I couldn't buy Civ VI for 55 euros in 2016, which is effectively what Civ VII costs - I had to pay 60 euros instead.

 

[Disgustipated]

And, in more general terms: do people not have any savings at all?

edit: I'll fix this post later

 

[Gorbles]

Going to keep it to this thread rather than derail other threads with it, but how is it that the game is too expensive for die-hard fans with thousands of posts on these forums to afford?

I hate to state the obvious (and I do this good-naturedly!) but uh forum posts have no monetary value. If they did, I'd have retired at the age of 30

I'm only 35, for the record. But still.

And, in more general terms: do people not have any savings at all?

It's kinda a personal question you're asking that invites the kind of advice you're trying to give, asking what people are spending on, etc. I don't doubt for a second it's in good faith but I genuinely think you don't understanding living costs - particularly those in countries other than your own.

For reference, I save about a quarter of my monthly income simply because I don't have anything useful to spend it on.

This alone should clue you into the personal nature of what you're asking.

Over a third of my monthly wage pays for rent. My wife and I have two kids these days, and I work from home. That's renting a three bedroom house. Said wife needed to go back to work so our daughter could go to nursery.

Now, my wage nowadays isn't bad at all. More than I ever thought I'd make. But it's a relatively recent thing and historically (until three or four years ago) my wife and I lived very close to the "skipping meals to make rent" line. So savings aren't a huge thing, particularly as the cost of living continues to increase and <insert political off-topic grumbling here>.

Instead of assuming that because you can put money away, others can, you need to understand that a full-priced video game has always been a luxury, and in more than a few countries it's now more of a luxury than ever.

I can't remember the last time I went to a festival. I haven't seen a band live in years. I recently spent half a grand fixing the cooling system in my car. C'est la vie.

 

[Leyrann]

It's kinda a personal question you're asking that invites the kind of advice you're trying to give, asking what people are spending on, etc. I don't doubt for a second it's in good faith but I genuinely think you don't understanding living costs - particularly those in countries other than your own.

I mean, I definitely understand my own living costs. I have no support from anyone, nor any saved costs in the vein of other people doing groceries for me or the like.

As for the rest... I don't know. Part of me wants to just compare finances but that isn't easily done, plus obviously there's a lot of personal information involved in that. But like, my total expenses are about 1300 euros per month, and I'm living on my own - if you live with others, costs per individual should lower, because you only have to pay for things like heating and rent once (and renting twice the space rarely comes with twice the price tag). That comes out to, in the Netherlands, 23 hours per week work at minimum wage. And if you actually work that amount, you're in a sufficiently low income bracket to be entitled to about 500 euros per month in government benefits, which is where my own margin comes from (because, as I mentioned before, I don't have the capacity to work more - obviously, if you're working something like 33 hours per week, you've got that same margin without government benefits, still at minimum wage).

Honestly, to return to what I said earlier - based on my own financial situation and that of other people in my country (with the same laws governing their income, taxes, etc), a lot of people seem to have a ton of spending that isn't nearly as necessary as they believe it is. I would actually find it weird if that isn't the case in other countries as well.

But like, I'm also trying to understand, because right now, I just simply don't understand.

 

[Gorbles]

I mean, I definitely understand my own living costs. I have no support from anyone, nor any saved costs in the vein of other people doing groceries for me or the like.

As for the rest... I don't know. Part of me wants to just compare finances but that isn't easily done, plus obviously there's a lot of personal information involved in that. But like, my total expenses are about 1300 euros per month, and I'm living on my own - if you live with others, costs per individual should lower, because you only have to pay for things like heating and rent once (and renting twice the space rarely comes with twice the price tag). That comes out to, in the Netherlands, 23 hours per week work at minimum wage. And if you actually work that amount, you're in a sufficiently low income bracket to be entitled to about 500 euros per month in government benefits, which is where my own margin comes from (because, as I mentioned before, I don't have the capacity to work more - obviously, if you're working something like 33 hours per week, you've got that same margin without government benefits, still at minimum wage).

Honestly, to return to what I said earlier - based on my own financial situation and that of other people in my country (with the same laws governing their income, taxes, etc), a lot of people seem to have a ton of spending that isn't nearly as necessary as they believe it is. I would actually find it weird if that isn't the case in other countries as well.

But like, I'm also trying to understand, because right now, I just simply don't understand.

My rent alone is ~1200 EUR. Food inflation year on year here in the UK has been absurd (spiking higher than 10% at times, well beyond any reasonable wage increases, nevermind minimum wage). Government has been reducing education funding, leading to schools asking for more money out of pocket for events, etc. Everything adds up.

Even if we assumed everyone who was ever struggling to pay for a full cost video game was in the Netherlands, and that rent / energy costs are static and available across the whole country (unlikely, even for a small country), you still wouldn't be able to accurately predict what people spend their money on. When it comes to other countries, you simply have no way of understanding. It's not a question that can be answered.

Just accept that folks might know their finances better than you could. Which makes sense; it's their finances. It's up to them to decide what a video game is more or less important than. Nobody can be "wrong" there. Everyone's choice when it comes to something like luxury entertainment is valid, even if they're a "CivFanatic" and we're discussing the next Civ game.

 

[UWHabs]

Basically this, the main issue is that prices need to be better adjusted for the regions they are being sold in, not the concept of games getting more expensive over time. If you want to reduce inflation you're getting into monetary and fiscal policy and making currency more difficult to access, raising interest rates, etc, all stuff outside the scope of what a video game company can do.

Are companies obviously out to make money and padding prices? Sure. But they've been doing that since time immemorial, the fact video games are $70 now doesn't mean companies are gouging any more than when Nintendo carts used to be $40 - $50 new (which in today's USD is $130 - $150).

The problem is that while it's not as easy as it was a few years ago, and places like Steam are getting better at forcing people into paying in their legit currencies, industrious people can find a way around those issues. So devs can adjust some currencies to better reflect local situations, there's always going to be a limit of risk that you can truly absorb. There's always going to be some countries where the store simply can't balance.

Civ is definitely on the high end for a lot of countries. According to SteamDB, a few countries like China, India, Vietnam, etc... get somewhat of a currency discount vs the US. But still only 25% or 30% for most of them, which is way less than cost of living differences. LatAm, Brazil, etc... definitely don't get the discount "needed" to balance cost of living. And Euro, GBP, etc... tend to come in with worse rates than USD mostly because those countries often require games to be priced with VAT included.

 

[Linklite]

I remember when I was poor in terms of cash flow.

Locked into a £500/month flat.
I was bringing in £120/week without overtime...and overtime was far from guaranteed, and not numerous when I did get it. My wife was having to work for free.

Do the maths. That's without food, utilities, or anything else. That was also about as cheap as rent got - getting a better deal meant you got more rooms or you got to live closer to the centre of town, not lower rent.

We lived off of savings for a long while. I ring fenced £5/week for entertainment. If I wanted to get this game, it would mean saving £3/week. That would have been my half of the budget from now to release day. And that's for the least cost cost efficient way of getting the content.

I can easily afford it now, thankfully. But I can easily see how those on the bottom of the ladder would struggle to justify spending that amount on a game.

Personally, what is a bit of a slap in the face is that they're releasing day one DLC. This isn't additional stuff that they wanted to add to the game afterwards but need extra money to justify getting the team back together. It's literally what they've made as part of the game, then decided to carve off and charge DLC prices for it...because they decided that they could get us to pay it.

Even though I could easily afford it...I'm struggling to justify paying that kind of money. My funds are being pulled a lot of different ways, and so it's getting prioritised.

 

[Dedrytus]

I would like to add one thing. We don't buy games anymore we just pay hard cash for renting game from Steam. It's not yours. You can't sell it, you can't give it to someone. And Steam can remove it from your account and even delete your account.

 

[bladex1200]

I would like to add one thing. We don't buy games anymore we just pay hard cash for renting game from Steam. It's not yours. You can't sell it, you can't give it to someone. And Steam can remove it from your account and even delete your account.

That's true, although GOG offers an actual buyable version of games that you can keep without DRM and the files can be moved without DRM. Not sure if Civ VII will ever make it on GOG (V and VI still isn't on there, but IV is!), but there is an option in the digital age. Steam forsure is just renting, but so far they've been reliable so most people turn the other cheek on it, as I do. It's Gabe Newell's world, we just live in it.

 

[Disgustipated]

I should add one more thing about the price. Some of us like me, will have to upgrade some hardware to run this game decently. Yes you can argue, a video card upgrade helps you with all games, not just Civ 7, but that doesn't change the fact that I will have to buy a new video card specifically for this game. I will most likely need a new hard drive too. I'm running out of room. I get to the point I don't want to remove games because I play them from time to time. And new games are getting larger and larger. While I don't intend to buy games like Dragon Age: Veilguard at launch, it doesn't seem to be aimed at RPG players like myself, that game alone is over 100 GB. I'm sure Civ 7 will be large as well, though Civ games don't tend to be as large as RPG's for file sizes. I'll probably just buy a magnetic drive, not a SSD. Video card I'm fairly certain I'll need. I think my RAM and processor are fine.

 

[Kwami]

Since the game can run on the Switch and other previous-generation consoles, the minimum requirements for PC probably aren't very high.

 

[pokiehl]

I should add one more thing about the price. Some of us like me, will have to upgrade some hardware to run this game decently. Yes you can argue, a video card upgrade helps you with all games, not just Civ 7, but that doesn't change the fact that I will have to buy a new video card specifically for this game. I will most likely need a new hard drive too. I'm running out of room. I get to the point I don't want to remove games because I play them from time to time. And new games are getting larger and larger. While I don't intend to buy games like Dragon Age: Veilguard at launch, it doesn't seem to be aimed at RPG players like myself, that game alone is over 100 GB. I'm sure Civ 7 will be large as well, though Civ games don't tend to be as large as RPG's for file sizes. I'll probably just buy a magnetic drive, not a SSD. Video card I'm fairly certain I'll need. I think my RAM and processor are fine.

Wait to see what the minimum required specs are, but regardless I would never buy a hard disk drive. They really, really make performance worse. SSDs aren’t that much more expensive.

 

[Disgustipated]

Since the game can run on the Switch and other previous-generation consoles, the minimum requirements for PC probably aren't very high.

It depends on if you don't want to take the hit in graphics. The streamers said the game looks amazing on a 4k monitor on their setup in Firaxis HQ. From what I seen with all the detail on these maps, I'm certain this game is a resource hog. There's a reason why the are limiting map size and number of players for multiplayer. We'll be lucky even if single player has huge maps as large as Civ 6. I hope it does, but I'm skeptical.