What made Civ VII so expensive?

[strategic_panda]

For Civilization VI, including all the DLCs, I spent around $200–300 in total because I bought each of them at launch.

Now, the base version of Civ VII with two minor DLCs costs more than half of that.

I'm wondering why it's so expensive. Has the development cost increased that much?
If so, what exactly justifies it?


After playing Humankind, Millennia, and Ara: History Untold, I feel there's nothing new in Civ 7.

As a big fan of the Civilization series, I would still buy the game, but this time, not at launch. I'll wait for a sale price.

[Deatheye]

Originally posted by strategic_panda:

I'm wondering why it's so expensive. Has the development cost increased that much?
If so, what exactly justifies it?

The answer is simple.

Companys greed and people who pay any price the company tells them to pay.

AAA gaming is hopefully going to explode soon, same with AAA movies. Everything gets more expensive, but the quality and the content gets less and worse.
Something wrong going on.

It's not necessary to let hundreds of people work on a dang video game, the best games ever made had way less people working on them, this should raise some questions to people.

[Explorer]

wanting profit, premium pricing

[katzenkrimis]

Originally posted by strategic_panda:

For Civilization VI, including all the DLCs, I spent around $200–300 in total.

I feel there's nothing new in Civ 7.

Saying that there's nothing new in Civilization VII is crazy-talk.

The entire game is new. Every last flawed mechanic in Civ VI has been changed for the better. If you played this game you'd immediately notice that nothing is the same as what you've been fed for the past nine years.

And the cost is about the same.

I think I spent $160 on the Founders Edition. Two expansions will cost $40 each.

Throw in a couple more Civilization, Wonder, and Leader packs by the time all is said and done.

160 + 40 + 40 + 20 = 260

Plus tax = 300.

[Evilgenius]

greed

[plaguepenguin]

Yes, 2K is not a non-profit. They charge actual cash money for the products that they sell.

The absolute minimum price they could possibly charge is indeed the factor that you cite, development costs. They have to at least recoup those costs in sales just to keep the doors open. There has indeed been inflation in those costs since Civ 6. They charged $60 for that game in October 2016, a sum now worth almost $80 in 2025 dollars. That's using the CPI, which might not apply very directly to costs of producing a game, so the actual factor may not be the +33% you get from using the CPI. The appropriate basis of price comparison may be less, or it may be more than +33%, but, it's hard to see how costs of production somehow experienced any sort of deflation, or even stayed the same as in October 2016.

Even if they were selling a necessity of life, they would have to make up the costs of production in what they charge. But they aren't selling food, clothing, shelter or medical care; they are selling about as pure a luxury as you will ever find, a game. It's an adult's game as well, because I guess you could argue that for children, maybe play and games are sort of necessities. But, we're all adults here -- right? We are free to make our own decisions on what we spend our disposable income on, when it comes to pure luxuries.

There is no conceivable ethical or practical objection to selling pure luxuries to customers who are completely free to buy or not, for any price but what the market will bear. Even if another game were in any way a necessity, you have a market in operation to help get you the cheapest price, because the market will not bear any price higher than what buyers can get from the competition.

You mention three of these competitor games. I imagine all of them are cheaper right now than Civ 7. In fact, you already own them, so right now they are totally free for you. You have an absolute no-brainer decision on your hands. Don't buy 7. Never buy 7 in fact.

Well, a no-brainer unless you think that 7 is going to have some value that the competitor games don't have. However, you seem to think that you know the gaming value of 7 just based on what we know now, without having played the game, but based solely on an abstract description of its features. You are convinced it has nothing new to offer.

I absolutely agree on this logic. Anyone who is convinced that 7 will be no better than games they already own, or games they could buy cheaper than 7's asking price of $70, should not buy 7.

I don't agree on the probabilities of what 7 will offer compared to at least the one game of the three you listed that I have actually played. It has a feature, civ-switching, that it shares with 7, and this has caused a lot of consternation, as if 7 has to be as bad a game as Humankind because it shares, in the abstract anyway, a feature with 7. Well, I couldn't even get to the first civ-switch in Humankind because, the nicer graphics and interesting (in the abstract, anyway) new features like civ-switching were never meshed together into the good 4X turn-based strategy game that every Civ version has always turned out to be.

[ZEROspawn]

Greed, with the help of FOMO.

[Flavalicious]

2k Publishing.

[Oaks]

I don't think we really have insight to the costs of the game and how everything is computed.

What we can say is the Civ 7 base game at 70 Euro is the current industry standard for AAA games. Civilization is a long running and very well known franchise, so you can bet the publisher will charge the industry standard. At the end of the day this is still a business.

If it feels too expensive at launch, the logical thing to do is to wait for a sale in a year and grab it then.

Read about the speculation of the pricing of the new GTA game. People in the game industry are hoping it will break the "acceptable" barrier of 70 bucks and go for a 80 or 90 dollar price tag, this making a new industry standard.

[bshock]

$80-90 Standard editions are coming this year. Civ 7 will seem like a bargain.

[Agner]

In the past, softhouse owners only needed to make a profit for themselves, without having to answer to shareholders.
Now, the purpose of these companies is make profit, at all times, everytime. They'll never stop until they get your last penny. Because if they shares down, they lose theyr jobs.

[T-Bone]

I think this is the new market for our entertainment dollars. This is the #1 Selling Game on Steam right now so the demand is obviously there.

[T-Bone]

Originally posted by Agner:

In the past, softhouse owners only needed to make a profit for themselves, without having to answer to shareholders.
Now, the purpose of these companies is make profit, at all times, everytime. They'll never stop until they get your last penny. Because if they shares down, they lose theyr jobs.

Yes, the primary purpose of a publicly traded company will to always generate a return on equity. I don't know many investors throwing money towards non-profits.

[Aluminum Elite Master]

Originally posted by strategic_panda:

For Civilization VI, including all the DLCs, I spent around $200–300 in total because I bought each of them at launch.

Now, the base version of Civ VII with two minor DLCs costs more than half of that.

I'm wondering why it's so expensive. Has the development cost increased that much?
If so, what exactly justifies it?


After playing Humankind, Millennia, and Ara: History Untold, I feel there's nothing new in Civ 7.

As a big fan of the Civilization series, I would still buy the game, but this time, not at launch. I'll wait for a sale price.

For one, saying that because one played HK, Millenia, and Ara there's now nothing new in Civ 7 would be like saying because one ate at George Webb, Denny's, and Waffle House that there's now nothing new at a five-star Michelin restaurant. And that is coming from someone that is not liking what Civ 7 is shaping up to be.

For two, I mean, is the DLC cost really that far apart from Civ 6? Civ 6 had a-la-carte DLC for individual civilizations with a single leader per. And that was indeed a bad DLC policy IMO. But that Civ 6 DLC schema doesn't look to have changed immensely here... this might be a touch worse, I guess, for Civ VII, but only just.

Lastly, my own objection isn't even cost, really. The standard edition price would be do-able for me if it weren't for some ominous changes in the gameplay: no workers, no barbs, changing civs mid play-through. Game ends in 1960's without a future era. All of that is a bigger problem.

[Martin]

It's an interesting thing licences for software and prices, I remember when Win98 came out and WinXP they were priced around the £900 mark. Then Win8 came out and it was about £200, then eventually Win10 and it was £78 now those are core operating systems, but if you look at the prices for standalone firewalls and anti virus are now anything from £20 upto £80. But if you want online protection from the likes of DDos you could be paying upto 1k a month.

Game prices by comparison were from the start around £20 upto £50 and they stayed that price for decades, even now people sell games for £30, others are free but with paywalls and pay to win (or cosmetic shops) also known as whaling games where people can literally be conned into spending thousands to stay on top either to win or just to look good.

Steam Prices are much like console prices they tend to be fixed towards the high end, ie £49.99 but can also be anything from £19.99 upto £59.99 range. Civ 7 is priced from £59.99 upto £119.99 But there are other vendors selling it alot cheaper. It is arguable how much of those alternative prices actually reach the merchant or the developer.

My perspective is basically, that the game have given me on avg 3000-5000 hours of gameplay each over the decades they've been sold. £120 via steam is a small price to pay for a software I'll play 5000 hours in. Considering the price of an o/s or firewall or av or online ddos protections..

Or any other household bill.. I spend £60 a month on fuel, having bought a hybrid car, I spend £800 every month on rent, with another £125 on council tax every month. £1000 on food..

£120 for 5000 hours of gameplay for the next 5-10 years. That's 2 pence per hour roughly.

So is it really that expensive?

[The Stricken One]

Originally posted by T-Bone:

I think this is the new market for our entertainment dollars. This is the #1 Selling Game on Steam right now so the demand is obviously there.

it's #5, and it's been among the top 100 for the past 6 weeks
https://store.steampowered.com/charts/topselling/US