As the world’s biggest Alan Wake 2 Fan (a title I awarded to myself), I was excited to learn that a physical collector’s edition would be made available months after launch. My enthusiasm died off, however, when I looked at the package. For $200 at Limited Run Games, you can get a physical copy of the game — the only place where you can do so — along with a copy of Alan Wake Remastered, an angel lamp replica, an art book, a keychain, and some digital cosmetics. It’s alright as far as collector’s editions go, but the kicker was that I had already bought the deluxe edition at launch, which included around half of what comes in the box. And there was no way to upgrade. I’d have to spend $200 on top of the $80 I already paid. Even beyond the fun collectibles, that’s basically $300 just for a physical copy, to own the game outright.
Looking around, I can see similar frustration bubbling across a lot of the video game industry, and it’s reaching a boiling point. As games become more expensive to produce and are therefore becoming more costly to buy, players are lashing out at studios who want to get them to spend more for increasingly diminishing returns, whether through microtransactions or premium editions that offer “free” extras. While many might be worth it, some, like Alan Wake 2’s collectors edition, don’t offer enough for the exorbitant cost.
Everything is very expensive right now. I’m not spending hundreds of dollars on stuff I already own or digital products that aren’t important or useful. And I know I’m not alone in this, either. Something has to change in the video games industry, and looking at special editions becoming increasingly sketchy is an area I think is being overlooked.
While games are more expensive than ever, with $70 being standard for many AAA games these days, the situation could be way worse. Analysts generally agree that based on inflation and rising development costs, games should cost even more than they do now. Former Sony Interactive CEO Shawn Layden told Bloomberg in 2021 that many PlayStation 4 games were topping $100 million, and he expected that number to only get higher. At the time, he said $200 million, but according to a presentation in the recent Insomniac Games leak, the budget for the PS5’s Spider-Man 2 was around $300 million. And while the game sold very well, Sony said in its February financials that it was bolstered by its sales of third-party games, not hardware or in-house development.
A lot of these costs have been offset over the years by purchases made outside of just buying the base game: microtransactions, gacha mechanics, paid DLC, games-as-a-service (GaaS), and premium collector’s editions. As scummy as many of these tactics can be, they do what they’re supposed to do. Live-service games like Call of Duty and Fortnite do well because players continue to invest in them over time. Regardless of whether you need a Fortnite skin that makes you look like a member of Metallica or not, these companies have become experts at getting you to buy things, which in turn has contributed to keeping full game prices low.
A premium edition has microtransactions built in — “for free,” in a way. Usually, you’ll see a cosmetic pack or a season pass for post-launch DLC in an $80 deluxe edition. Sometimes the studio will put up a limited-time collector’s edition for a couple hundred bucks for the big spenders who want a unique piece of merch or an artbook. The Alan Wake 2 deluxe edition, for instance, came with two costumes, a weapon skin, an extra charm for protagonist Saga, and the story DLC expansion pass for an extra $20. While the majority of people will simply buy the standard edition, many will still pay extra for one of these special versions. The deluxe edition here was worth it to me just for the expansion pass. As IGN’s Rebekah Valentine put it, “many games are already much more expensive than $70, and people happily pay for them.”
Unfortunately for studios, as games get more expensive and other factors contribute to higher costs everywhere else, people are becoming wary of premium editions and extra purchases. When the standard edition of a AAA game can cost $70, a higher price tag has to be worth it. They can’t be too expensive, and if they are, the stuff included needs to ensure you that your wallet won’t start crying. You also can’t lock critical features behind paywalls. The same standards for microtransactions apply here as well; if you offer, say, a weapon that gives players a huge advantage, you’re saying you only care about money, not about the players themselves.
While most developers and publishers these days are better about not offering pay-to-win items (or at least are better at hiding it), that hasn’t stopped them from breaking cardinal rules. Recently Escape from Tarkov developer Battlestate Games announced its The Unheard Edition. For $250, players got access to a highly sought-after offline PvE mode and features that gave them a huge advantage at the beginning of seasons. This was especially frustrating for players who purchased other premium editions with a season pass that promised to provide access to all future DLC. Battlestate initially refused to offer an upgrade discount or any other avenue for players to get PvE, although it eventually relented after immense community backlash.
Big studios have been trying out other ideas, with features that are appealing but fleeting. A recent trend has been including early access periods in special edition pre-orders. Although, even that might not be enough anymore when a game like Concord is offering a brief beta period for pre-order owners before launching an open beta the next week.
Ubisoft hasn’t done anything as openly egregious, but it’s made a habit of giving special edition owners exclusive missions. Its upcoming open-world RPG Star Wars Outlaws is now up for pre-order, and people who buy the Gold or Ultimate editions get access to a season pass that features an exclusive Jabba the Hutt mission. The publisher has gotten around more widespread criticism with this strategy by offering missions up later through Ubisoft Connect with easy-to-obtain in-game currency, and in the case of Star Wars, players will still get to interact with the big slug boy in the main game.
However, just because games companies offer up decent extras doesn’t mean players will react accordingly. When Dragon’s Dogma 2 released on Steam, people noticed that the store page featured some extra purchases, which you could buy either in the “A Boon For New Adventurers – New Journey Pack,” as a part of the deluxe edition, or piecemeal. While people went to leave negative reviews on the page to complain about it, all of the items — rare as some of them were — could be found or earned in game. So on paper, Capcom was acting fairly. Oli Welsh wrote for Polygon that a lot of the backlash was due to the restrictive nature of Dragon’s Dogma 2’s game design (you could buy a Portcrystal to initiative fast travel, which is highly discouraged in-game, for instance).
Still, people were so quick to jump on Capcom for alleged exploitation in this case, and it’s mostly unfounded. You don’t have to get any of the items and you can earn all of them by just playing the game. But you can just tell from how quickly people reacted to this and other recent editions: They’re tired of being taken advantage of.
But to keep making profit (among other things like having to appeal to investors who want consistent growth every year and going into debt through constant, ridiculous acquisitions), studios will keep using the strategies that work. Microtransactions and collector’s editions aren’t going anywhere while they still bring in that much cash. If we must continue down this path, companies need to make purchases fair, listen to feedback, and understand that many just can’t afford digital nonsense. Players don’t need to experience opening their Fallout 76 special edition only to find out the canvas bag was actually made of cheaper, shittier nylon or that the DLC they were promised might not apply to them. And if I’m going to be surrounded by little tchotchkes from my favorite games, I better not regret paying $200.
