When I first joined up here, over the course of my first few days, several forum members sent me links for sarcasm detectors. Should I dust these links off and start passing them around? :D

The issue isn't really whether you or I think it's too expensive. What I'm saying is that I think Mr. and Mrs. Middle Class will think it's too expensive, which is what counts.

I don't think it's too expensive.

-Mr. Middle Class

I will! In all seriousness though, I have tried an alternative (OpenOffice) and found it to be terrible. Network effects obviously come to play as well. But I don't think it's too much money for the man on the underground. And at the end of the day, there are viable alternatives on the market for free.

World Of Tanks already have premium ammo to be bought for real money... :) luckily there is also regular ammoa vailable, less effective but equally fun :D

I don't care cause I'm not buying any of it. If devs want my money, they have to adhere to a few simple rules:

1. unobtrusive DRM, preferably none at all
2. no obligatory clients
3. NO OBLIGATORY CLIENTS!
4. no mini-DLC sized full-price games (I'm looking at you, CoD!)
5. no activation limits
6. seriously NO FUCKING OBLIGATORY CLIENTS!

I subscripe to that.

IMO Square Enix went too far when they re-released FF7 with limited activations. I love that game but why the hell did they do that?

At least you could expect more than a sodding colour change to differentiate the endings that way.

Some games have such sucky endings that this might be the best way we can get developers to invest some time, effort and imagination into the endings.

DLC poetry, you only get the crude version of the characters narrative unless you pay the price. Zeratul would say "You speak of experience, I'm smarter", rather than "You speak of experience? I have journeyed through the darkness between the most distant stars. I have beheld the births of negative-suns and borne witness to the entropy of entire realities... Unto my experience, Aldaris, all that you've built here on Aiur is but a fleeting dream."

There's a lot we could sacrifice.

Lol. They could start charging for cinematics as well. I remember infamous Bobby Kotick said that Starcraft 2 in-game cinematics were so good he would like to release them improved with extra material added for a price. Oh God.

Well said, your last comment speaks so true - "oh god". We say in jest, but here we're talking nightmares, and there's one right there for you.

Always online, renting only with advertisment in between. Or you have to sell your soul to the devil. Something like this.

This is actually one of the main reasons I have been buying less and less games at anywhere near full price, even if they are some sort of "super mega alpha GOTY bundle of awesomeness"...You just never know how much DLC they are going to pump in the game - and whether it has something relevant in it or not.

Somehow I have this feeling of getting cheated, if I buy a game that comes out with DLC right away and then more of the DLC comes out all the time.

...and now these season passes - doh.

Gimme back proper full length games and good old huge game expansions and ill willingly pay real money for them.