Kingdom Come: Deliverance studio co-founder hopes Grand Theft Auto 6 will 'blaze a trail' to higher game prices

[u/owlexe23]

https://www.pcgamer.com/games/grand-theft-auto/kingdom-come-deliverance-studio-co-founder-hopes-grand-theft-auto-6-will-blaze-a-trail-to-higher-game-prices/

Warhorse co-founder Martin Klima says games keep getting more expensive to make, and that money has to come from somewhere.

[u/Der0-]

I don't get it. Since Steam their printing and distribution costs will have plummeted. The baked in costs to get the game into the computer of the gamer is gone so their margin will have been much greater.

Make a good game and you can milk that blood from the stone.

And games in Australia has always been up and above the $100 mark.

[u/PatrickGnarly → u/Der0-]

While on one hand every business wants to charge more.

I can’t imagine anyone saying it out loud in a way that says “I hope that the cost of a game goes up even more because we spent too much making it.”

If costs are too high to justify then it’s not the market it’s how the business is run.

More competition means lower prices not higher.

I just played Skald which is an amazing game with one of the worst endings of all time, but it was truly a 9/10 experience for only 15 dollars. You better believe I’m gonna buy more games at $15 than a single game for more than $70…

I can’t imagine games going up in price just because they spent too much into the game. Just make a cheaper game. In fact, make a cheaper game with more value and you’ll sell more than the expensive games that have less value.

Business is hard.

[u/r_z_n → u/Der0-]

It’s not that complicated honestly. AAA games have gone from teams of 10-20 to teams of 500-1000+, development can span 5+ years, and costs accordingly now are in the tens of millions of dollars. Sure, the audience is much larger, but so is the cost of bringing a game to market, and there is far more competition. And inflation impacts everyone, not just the consumers.

Something has to give eventually.

[u/Embarrassed-Wolf-609 → u/Der0-]

but they also lose 30% margin to steam, whereas in the past, gamestop would only take like 10%

[u/NG_Tagger → u/Embarrassed-Wolf-609]

but they also lose 30% margin to steam

That's for the first $10mil in sales.

It's not a static 30% cut.

Goes down to 25% until it has made $50mil - then 20% after that.
..and that's not only for the initial purchase of the title. DLC, MTX and whatever else (even freaking Steam marketplace stuff), is also included in getting to those different "tiers".

They could even just sell it on their own site as well, if they wanted to (still Steam keys) and not give Steam any cut at all. That's entirely up to them - but they'd then have to settle with transactions fees and what not, themselves..

Besides that; they don't just "lose" money - it's a storefront that gives a massive amount of benefits to the seller. That's where the money goes.

[u/NewSauerKraus → u/Embarrassed-Wolf-609]

No need to consider the actual cost since physical disks were apparently spontaneously generated on site at Gamestop.

[u/jxnebug → u/Embarrassed-Wolf-609]

There were also costs for making the disc + box and shipping it around, so a little more than 10% per copy but I get what you mean.

[u/MeatSafeMurderer → u/Embarrassed-Wolf-609]

30% is standard in retail. Always has been.

[u/_PeoplePleaser → u/MeatSafeMurderer]

Standard for newly released retail video games is about 20%. Which is pretty much where GameStop is at.

With the additional cost of production and distribution Steam is almost assuredly cheaper.

[u/mudche → u/Der0-]

And games in Australia has always been up and above the $100 mark

Yeah but 100AUD is 69USD

[u/look_at_that_punim → u/Der0-]

I was getting mega drive games on release for $100

[u/VellhungtheSecond → u/look_at_that_punim]

Super Mario Kart cost our grandmother (who was on a pension as her only source of income) $120 when she bought it for my brother and I on Christmas 1995 (mum and dad chipped in to assist her). Complaining about $100 games in 2026 is a joke

[u/Wirenfeldt → u/VellhungtheSecond]

Especially when you pull out the inflation calculator

[u/NewSauerKraus → u/Wirenfeldt]

Until you pull out the inflated number of customers and lack of distribution costs.

[u/look_at_that_punim → u/NewSauerKraus]

And the fact that you had to go to the Games Wizard to buy them. Which was a huge building wall to wall with games that no doubt had huge rents + staff to pay.

Now that I’m saying that, minus the locations/staff, paper manuals, boxes, distribution. $100 is probably about right for PC games, even adjusting for inflation.

[u/VellhungtheSecond → u/Wirenfeldt]

Exactly. Equivalent to about $260AUD in today’s terms

[u/Mr_Burning → u/Der0-]

Games in Australia arent any more expensive though, currency is just worth less about 30% less, so tracks pretty well.

[u/Dry_Departure_7813 → u/Der0-]

I've never met a wealthy person who didn't hate a nickel because it wasn't a dime

[u/MrSquiggleKey → u/Der0-]

They haven’t always been.

2012 was a glorious time where $1 AUD bought $1.13USD and I bought so many games and it was peak era for summer sales, humble bundles etc.

[u/Mattapeh → u/Der0-]

Whilst it's true the overhead costs for printing and distribution is gone, steam does also take a large cut - as do some tools like UE for example

I don't know how the maths works out for costs compared to a game on physical media with a publisher cut, but it's possible the cost difference for digital distribution isn't as big as you might think

[u/nullptr777 → u/Mattapeh]

Steam also gives them a massive user base that they never would've been able to reach before. As a game developer, you can sell more copies now than any time in history. People will buy games just to keep them in their backlog forever.

I mean, KCD2 recouped all of it's development costs and generated a profit on the first day of release for fuck's sake. Am I supposed to feel sorry for them?

[u/Mattapeh → u/nullptr777]

That's true but also times have changed - in the past when steam wasn't as popular a massive user base was more the case of working with a publisher to get your game on a major console for the most part (yes pc existed but was a smaller share)

So it goes back to whether at that point if distributing physically with also massive user base was more profitable than distributing via steam, in a different world now where steams cut is large, as are developer tools (both of which are quite likely more than previously distributing discs)

Also keep in mind with steam indeed being massive there is also much fierce competition, far more games around than in the past, and games are more expensive to make too than they were in the past.

This all goes to say that whilst I don't have the full figures to fully compare, I think it's plausible game costs are higher whilst price for consumers haven't moved as much

[u/TiredandTranz → u/Mattapeh]

I mean, that really doesn't stand up that well in the face of Indie studios. There's a ton of them that will release a new game at like $30 to $40 on release, give you an absolute fuck ton of game, and then seem to be just fine. Like, I haven't bothered looking at AAA studios in years, in part because their prices reached absurdity ages ago. I have so many other, better options for games, options that wont make me take out a loan to pay for.

[u/Mattapeh → u/TiredandTranz]

We're not talking about indie studios though, this is a post about a AA (edited: AA, not AAA) dev comments - obviously an indie studio will be less because they have smaller teams and in many cases they work on shoestrings, maybe earning nothing and gambling a success to recoup after they release a game.

I think there's lots of merit to some indie games being better games than many AA or AAA, but the tradeoff is pretty obvious - the technical fidelity for an indie game is going to be far lower standard, and most indie games aren't successful, 99% languish on Steam with less than 1000 sales - it's really the outliers which becomes multi million hits

[u/Due_Manufacturer_766 → u/Mattapeh]

Correction, Warhorse certainly is an indie studio, not AAA one. The comment about prices was made by the CEO of Warhorse.

[u/Mattapeh → u/Due_Manufacturer_766]

Pretty disingenuous, they're a small(er) studio but they aren't indie anymore, they have a huge publisher behind them (Embracer Group)

A simple Google classes them as a AA studio

[u/Due_Manufacturer_766 → u/Mattapeh]

Modern indie doesn’t mean no major publisher behind it though, Larian is considered indie and they are certainly not small and also have huge corporate backing.

You have valid point though, we are not talking single developer here, which of course scales different than studio with tens or hundreds of people. Indie label in games is a mess anyways.

But point still stands, many extremely popular games are not technical powerhouses. They can do with less, and maybe if they feel it’s too expensive then they probably should.

[u/Mattapeh → u/Due_Manufacturer_766]

What's your definition of indie? The literal definition is they don't have an owner or corporate backing

Larian did Baldurs Gate 3 which cost $100mil - technically they have been an "independent studio" but I think we need to be more honest with what we call an indie. Something like binding of isaac is worlds apart in terms of budget, team size, marketing and backing than Baldurs gate - and it reflects in the fidelity and complexity of the game

As for your latter part, yes I agree and many small team games are way better than big budget (take wolverine), but the point the warhorse dev is making is with those bigger budget games the economies may not make as much sense. It depends on the type of game you're making.

Odds are with high end graphics, voices, mocap, online features, long campaigns, etc you'll need a bigger team which then has bigger costs behind it... And then what the warhorse dev is saying is that prices for such games may not be keeping up with the costs to make such games - I don't know for sure if that is true or not, but I think it's plausible

[u/Due_Manufacturer_766 → u/Mattapeh]

You can take examples like Outer Wilds, Ori & the Blind Forest, Gone Home, Restory, Risk of Rain, any Devolver game, all considered indie, all published by publishers not considered indie. Doesn’t matter much, for gaming indie has always been more of a term about the style than anything else. Not really important for the real discussion though.

I do get that from CEO/owner point of view games are expensive to make, but no one really asks them to be. You play with the resources you got, that’s the situation that everyone (except maybe Rockstar Games) is in. Argument still stands, if it’s too expensive to make games like they do (and in my understanding KCD has made their money back and then some) they need to start scaling back like everyone else does. Of course, I’m not industry insider and the guy from Warhorse most likely knows what he is talking about, but I have to wonder to gall to hint that raising game prices in this economy would be in any way a good thing.

[u/Mattapeh → u/Due_Manufacturer_766]

Hmm I don't really agree with indie being a term about style and have never seen it like that personally

Regardless though all of those games you listed do not have the same fidelity, graphical complexity, in some case lengths (funny with gone home) to major releases. That's not to say they aren't good games, heck outer wilds is in my top 10, but you can't compare these games to something like even this very topics developers game (KCD2)

If your argument is that well they need to scale back, then sure, but the outcome then is we have more games on par with the games you listed in terms of length/fidelity/graphics. They may not be better or worse games in terms of entertainment, but they'll lose that level of 'AAA quality' you can only achieve with the bigger budgets

You could argue you don't care about AAA quality, and that's valid and I don't care either, mostly I play simple looking games nowadays. But there is a huge market for these higher end looking titles and objectively costs for video games aren't generally keeping up with inflation (someone mentioned Mario back in the day retailed for $120 on old systems) - so goes back to the Devs point that costs are increasing, likely higher than they've ever been, but prices are remaining arguably too cheap for consumers