Debate continues to rage on the internetworks about whether premium video games, and especially the ones with the largest budgets, need to have higher price tags. This time, the culprit is Matthew Ball of analyst firm Epyllion, who remarks in a sprawling State Of Videogaming 2025 report that "some gamemakers hope GTA 6 will be priced at $80-$100 [in the USA], breaking the $70 barrier and helping $50 titles to move up to $60, $60 to $70, $70 to $80, etc."
Picked up by VGC, these comments have now been circulated on social media, and have attracted the extremely polarised mixture of responses you're probably expecting. Among those chipping in is Larian's director of publishing Michael Douse, who makes the familiar argument that overall prices for games like GTA aren't necessarily higher today when you factor in economic inflation, while also acknowledging that up-front price alone doesn't explain the industry's recent mass livelihood devastation, and that few people would happily pay that much for a video game - not even Our Lord In Open Worlding GTA.
Back when Baldur's Gate 3 first got its official modding tools last year, one of the big questions folks were immediately asking was whether it'd be possible to create any big custom campaigns, and whether many modders would actually take on the daunting and time-consuming task of delivering such a thing.
People are talking about GTA 6 again, and this time it's in relation to how much cash you might have to fork over to play it. According to an analyst, there's some "hope" in the industry that Rockstar might opt to buck established pricing trends with the game, potentially helping address something Larian's publishing boss says "isn’t the reason the industry is in the s**t for now", but "is an uncomfortable truth".
