This.
But at the same time, I've been more that satisfied with what GOG has released, as I'll never be able to play them all due to backlog anyway, so the question from the OP for me is entirely academic.

I think the prices are often the same or similar, if you take the numerous junk bundles for the monopolist out of consideration. But that's not what I meant, I meant the "general view".

GOG even has the sad advantage that GOG has fewer AA/AAA titles on offer in comparison. And please forgive me for this somewhat cynical comparison, it doesn't change the fact that I buy ~90% of my stuff here at GOG and am also willing to pay a few bucks more for DRM-Free. :-)

It seems like it's more of a complaint about price inflation in the games market in general then, rather than GOG specifically?

I have to admit though, that I don't really understand when I see people complaining about the price of video games. New games back in the 90s were around $60, which is roughly that same as they are now. So, considering inflation, game prices actually seem to be far lower today, than they were 25 years ago. The huge amount of competition has kept game prices suppressed - to me, i seems that gaming has never been as cheap as it is today.

Maybe the complaint is more about the price of older games or low-effort remasters? Or maybe it is a regional thing?

It's not a complaint, but a statement. And it's not about games in general, but about the development of AA/AAA games. I wrote that clearly. This year in particular, there are good examples where prices have been raised sharply in order to test the market. E.g. the new Star War game from Ubisoft and the new Indy game and a few others. Or Alone in the Dark von THQ, they decreased the price last week (it was really to high).

The market has changed completely since then. Both distribution and production costs, the scope of the games (then and now) and also the model with which they want to make money (free2play, just as an example). Of course, you can compare that with the conditions back then, but I think that's very difficult.

Today, games are not released cheaper over time or as low-budget re-releases, but prices usually remain stable for many years and only in sales (which are frequent enough) can you get games at a discount according to their age. That's just one example of the significant changes. The size of the market is much more interesting. Of course, a "King's Quest III" had to cost 50 or 60 bucks back then, because there was only a much smaller market available. Today, half the world plays games and you can make a lot more money with much lower prices, provided you deliver good quality and produce them for the interest of the market (and many other factors).

But the way I buy games (always on sale) I agree with you, games are cheaper than ever before. The countless giveaways alone are unbelievable. However, I wouldn't buy the latest blockbuster productions when they are released; it would simply be far too expensive for me.

I often see this point raised and it really baffles me. I grew up in the UK and distinctly remember PS2-era games costing £40 on release. Modern console releases are easily £70 these days. I've just checked the price of Stalker 2 on GoG - it's $80. The new Indiana Jones game on Steam is $90. I wouldn't say these prices are "roughly the same".

I'm from the UK as well and I remember paying £50-60 for new N64 games around 1996. I agree there have been signs of AAA studios trying to raise the price bar in recent years, but there's no way game prices have kept pace with inflation since the mid 90s (almost 30 years now). Especially when we consider the frequent, very deep discounts that we often see on most games that are 2+ years old.

N64 games were so expensive because they were cartridges and are a bit of an outlier. I was paying £40 for brand-new PS2 releases in 2004/5, which equates to £70 today. So the prices have remained steady or, in the case of "special editions" *shudders* are vastly more expensive.

I guess for my part, I don't ultimately know, so I am not specifically blaming GOG.
In the case of games sold exclusively by GOG, then that is likely a different matter, but as things aren't transparent we can never be really sure.

Steam and Epic and maybe some others, certainly have the funds and customer base to undercut GOG's prices, so I guess the cut a store gets also plays a part. ... 30% I seem to recall is the standard.

Yeah those carts were really expensive to manufacture and still only held 32MB. PC games were around £30 and console CD games were about £40 at that time.

And that is a major difference between now and then. Then, you had the actual production costs of the physical product, medium, box, manual, any other bits added in, then shipping, storage space for each copy in stores, salaries for each person involved in every step of the process, taxes on each of those elements... Now, with digital distribution, you have a bunch of bits transferred to the store and then to each buyer, with negligible costs per copy, just the bandwidth, no more shipping or intermediate storage, only a little server space for the one master copy held by the store, and only the salaries and taxes that apply to the store. This is what allows for those huge discounts during sales, but it's not reflected in the base prices as well, which remain as high as ever, if not higher, and this is what makes those discounts appear so huge, though in fact the discounted prices are closer to reflecting the actual price of the product, as in just the profit margin, when you remove those costs that no longer exist.

On the other hand, nowadays with digital sales, there is no finite shelf-space that you would need to clear for new games, meaning that it is actually a small miracle that it hasn't already become a norm to have the base price of old games periodically adjusted for inflation.

I think it's more the psychological effect of going back from the era of "75-90% off sales 1-2 years after release" to "forever 40-60%" as the default. Sales were definitely more attractive 10 years ago. Now there are sales all the time, but the discounts stay more or less the same for much longer times and don't go lower than a certain threshold for many games anymore. In retail, stores try to lure customers in by 10-30% discounts, but with digital stores for PC gaming things had become so crazy that many customers wouldn't even think about buying anything anymore until it got discounted by 75-90% in a Summer or Christmas sale. There were many complaints by devs that this can't last forever and has to stop and they wanted to return to more reasonable pricing, from their perspective. And now the time of super awesome discounts is over, but it's still fresh on people's mind, contrary to the 90s or early 2000s. That's why It feels like the situation for customers was better before.

Yea, but, heeh

Like who owned the pc's in those days man! Not to mention the information netwerk. How the frack do you find out about anything other than Tetris if your birthplace is in a 'mixed culture' neighborhood.

Well - Dragons Dogma 2 will not be released on GOG for a very simple reason...

It deeply infected by that mind-wreaking stupid Denuvo kill-switch garbage horror. DRM in it's purest form. This infection is guaranteed to make your game unplayable in the near future, and thus is completely against the game preservation GOG stands for.

So - Unless they remove that abomination there is no chance in hell that this game will ever come to GOG.

What game CAN be released on GOG then?. Well - Since we already have the complete Elder Scrolls and Fallout series here on GOG, it would not be a surprise for me to see Starfield also released here. And to go on with controversial games. We have Dragon Age Origins, and not the other two the came next, because of on-line dependency. But there is no reason Dragon Age - The Veilguard would not be on GOG. It has no DRM, and no on-line dependency, so it would be a good candidate. Yeah - I know these are not the games people are longing for (although I have played both, and actually had, and still have, a lot of fun with them). I will probably buy them here on GOG, so I can get a set of off-line installers. I do not think these games will be on GOG on the short therm though, but sometimes later this or next year? I think it's possible.

To be honest - This year there where a lot of games released on GOG that I have bought. But the highlights where two Falcom games, namely Ys X - Nordics, and Trails Through Daybreak.

Personally I would love to see games from the GUST developer here on GOG. I am talking about the full series of Atelier games, and even maybe the two Blue Reflection games. Those games have no DRM at all, so they would be perfect candidates. The oldest games like Atelier Rorona and onward are perfect candidates for game preservation.

Well - You can always dream, right?

Yes. As someone who mainly plays strategy games and tactical games, they have gotten plenty of interesting titles. My "problem" is that I can't afford to buy all those that I want, as these bigger and more complex Indie games have gotten more expensive in recent times.