Gnostic: Meanie, $5 is my sweet spot, now it is your fault that I buy it. lol XD
skeletonbow: My sweet spot used to be $10 or less years ago in the bargain bin boxed game days.
Snip
So... it's not so much that I'm "cheap" per se, but more a matter of practicality ending up dominating emotional purchases for me. Sometimes I do kick myself for that though! There's one other title on GOG right now that I desperately want and meant to buy when it first came out but have not done so yet because I never finished the other titles in the series, and I'm actually feeling bad about that and may eventually crack and go for it. :)
Hear Hear. Pre-digital distribution era my sweet spot used to be $30, and $60 for new games, but I buy a lot less games, only knowing games from the newspaper / magazine and word of mouth / physical retailer poster.
Digital distribution is a blessing and a curse, as the publisher / developers abuse them to bring unfinished, buggy games for a money grab and patch them / add content afterwards. Then the practice got more popular and more dev / publisher does not even bother patched up their bugs. Then come first day DLC, cut content DLC, minimal content DLC instead of a proper sequel with content to justify their price!
This make my sweet spot drop to $30 for new games, preferring longer and longer for the bugs to be fix and DLC to be bundled up as complete / epic / gold / diamond / director cut / asdfghj edition. I still pay full price to dev I trust like the old blizzard, stardock and such but not anymore for a game dev I don't know / extensively research on.
Then comes steam sales and humble and I think since I have to wait a year for the complete edition and reviews to justify games purchase, the game get heavily discounted by then and my sweet spot drop further to $15, $10. The dev I trust like blizzard remain largely unaffected with my purchasing habits.
Then there is this always online requirement that many publish adopt. HoMM series, C&C series, Dispite I am paying full price for games like diablo 3 and starcraft 2, It force me out of my single player game when my online connection hiccup. Then there is this Magic The Gathering Tactics supported by Sony & Wizardry of the cost pull out the game by closing down the server, the $100 I invested in it goes poof.
I raged and will not buy any online game anymore, and my sweet spot drip to the abyss.
Then steam has this DRM that force you to be online after a period of time or lock out your games makes me tick dev like stardock that goes steam only off my list. The final straw comes when I could not download any of steam games due to steam not liking my internet provider security protocol while other platform like impulse (gamestop) have no problem with that. Despite the many e-mail to steam support I only receive stereotype answer. That drove me to alternative like GOG, Humble, GamersGate and after trying them out I am a happy camper on GOG and bought GOG own games like Witcher series without waiting for discount.
I turn my support to kickstarters and responsible dev who get me buying their games without waiting for discount.