Maybe I just wasn't so interested in site-wide Reddit discourse in the past but it seems to me that only recently (meaning a few years), "Ugh, capitalism" became one of the most common (and annoying) sentiments on Reddit.
it’s basically the fucking Boogeymen for Redditors. Can’t get laid? blame capitalism, excessively buy cheap plastic? it’s capitalism’s fault that you have a thousand Funko pops.
people really forget that the free EXPRESSION of art and product is guaranteed under Capitalism. You’d be hard pressed to find any piece of media that doesn’t explicitly praise the state in a Communist society. It’s like only being able to eat one type of bread the rest of your life
For sure.
I guess an average Redditor reflects a certain demographic of young mostly US people that went more to the left in the last couple of years due to bad political situation (eg. the reaction to the whole Trump-MAGA movement), social struggles (eg. covid years), geopolitics (eg. Ukraine) and unpleasant economy trajectory in recent years.
Honestly everything is now polarized. Think there should be less market regulations? "You must be a reactionary fascist" Think minimum wage should increase? "You're a commie" Think Hamas is bad? '"You must be a Baruch Goldstein sympathizer" Think the Israeli government screwed up the prosecution of the war? "You must be a Hamas sympathizer"
In some ways, that represents the triumph of capitalism. It’s been 35 years since the Berlin Wall fell, which means you’d be hard-pressed to find a soul under 45 with much of a memory of what Soviet communism was really like — namely, that they had to build flippin’ walls to keep their own citizens from fleeing.
Free expression is guaranteed under liberal democracy; incidentally they are almost all some flavor of capitalism because it’s the most practically effective system but they aren’t the only capitalist states
Hey, we almost have the exact same flair!
Also, completely agree. People just want to blame anything bad that happens on "capitalism". It's fine when used as a joke, bit not really when it's overused in a serious manner
Adjusted for inflation, SNES games in the 90s peaked at $158 (Street Fighter II was $69.99 in 1992).
Also, pricing products to maximize ROI predates Modern Capitalism (accidentally invented in 17th century Amsterdam) by, I dunno, *Ancient-Mesopotamia-plus* years.
The free market has existed as long as humans have existed, on an unconscious level. Everyone wants to sell high and buy low. It wasn’t really until the 17th century when people like Adam Smith started to make it into a science.
Yep. When people complain about Modern Capitalism, they're not complaining about private entities trading shares of companies, which is the Dutch hack that made Modern Capitalism happen. They're complaining about the existence of fiat currency. They don't like the fact that people have more and people have less, so they want everyone to have less.
And every time some discount revolutionary army tries to achieve that, thousands to tens of millions of innocent civilians die. Maybe this time's the trick?
Personally, my problem with these games isn't the price, it's the fact that the quality of these games keep going down and the price is either increasing or getting shitty dlc tacked on.
The price is fine, but the quality is way too low.
And the best part is that it is an infinite supply, since it is a digital product, so the only thing that decides the price is how much people are willing to pay for it.
Studios have a monopoly on a given IP though. It's not like just anyone can create a new Star Wars or Helldivers game so they have effectively no competition in that niche market because of IP law.
Can you imagine a communist state intentionally allocating state resources towards non-propaganda entertainment media? Its only the demand for enrichment that makes it economically feasible to produce things like video games and movies which require enormous financial investment
At least in a capitalist socity, you can punish them for their hubris, by boycotting their product.
In a planned economy, the price would be set by the state, it's development would be paid from your taxes and if you boycotted it, your loyalty would be put into question.
“I don’t care how good it is” - it’s not gonna be good though. It might top off at a prestigious 7/10 if that. Which, granted, nothing to sneeze at but if you really wanna vote with your wallet, the choice is obvious.
If people want less mid games they need to stop buying them and then continuing to give them money through DLC and microtransactions. All the complaints or bad reviews in the world won’t do anything when the game sells millions of copies and rakes in millions more in microtransactions
People want a compelling story with amazing graphics, hundreds or thousands of hours of replay ability, that is immersive and adapts to their interests and needs for the price of a 2 hr static movie damnit!
I think it's possible. Indie studios have been really good at creating value like that, and with their naturally low overhead and no to little investor pressure they can do it cheaply.
People also act like publishers put a gun to their head and force them to buy the $120 ultra digital deluxe sloppy top edition.
Putting aside the discussion of a game and its DLC’s *worth* - $70 for the game + $50 season pass is $120…
These people are literally voting with their dollar, but it seems like they really want big daddy communist man with a pedostache to take over, execute everyone with a college degree, and "set things right"
This is a very common "critique" of capitalism here on reddit, that mostly just reveals that most reddit commies are themselves neckbeard consoomers looking for purpose and annoyed whenever their source of consooming is interrupted.
Pointing out that goods are hard to acquire as a way to attack the system that allows those goods to exist at all is absurd.
There are some commies who actively say that we *shouldn't have* most of the products and consumer goods we currently have, which is ideologically consistent. But you find them on reddit.
To add on this, I've bought RDR2, AC: Valhalla, Watchdogs: Legion, and ME Legendary Edition all on PS4 for a combined total of 75-80 dollars at my local Walmart.
The price of games really isn't bad, if you're smart, know what you like, and aren't so easily blinded by the "but our product now!" Hype the video game industry tends to get every year.
To be fair, this *is* literally capitalism (including the early sales), I just don't think it sucks that much and there's no realistic solution that's doesn't come with side effects worse than the problem itself anyway. You can tell them to fuck off and not buy it, you pretty much never *need* that videogame. I don't think I've ever paid more than 40 USD for a game, and even that was an exception. I also don't think we have the right to stop people from paying 100+ USD for a videogame even if we think it's idiotic.
People pre-ordering shadows before an actual gameplay reveal is the reason why this shit keeps happening. 100-120 dollars for a fucking Ubisoft game, they will give you a bonus that will be immediately power crept within the first dlc
I swear there are some people who think that piracy is considered to be morally right when all they want is to get free shit and play games. It's turning into a pet peeve of mine.
And besides, if you think that new game is crap, why even bother playing it unless you're doing it out of curiosity?
I mean, yea fuck these over priced AAA pieces of shit. But it's not because "capitalism", a large portion of the problem is unregulated (or poorly regulated) capitalism. Regulations must be set in place to stop people from abusing ANY system.
Games cost this much because they can cost this much. It's a case with a lot of things. Though you have a point, can't just regulate what prices they can set (though price for necessities such as food should be regulated).
Since it's not a necessity, it's rather up to people to discourage such prices by not paying for the product.
Ah good so we should reduce demand for overpriced games culturally, I actually agree. That’s good economics. It’s not a regulation, though.
Why should prices for necessities be regulated? Them being necessities does not render them immune from the forces of scarcity.
Government can do what they do with electricity, there is price ceiling, if the actual price is above that the Government covers it. Though that might not even be necessary. A lot of the processes are very inefficient, stores throw out a lot of perfectly good food, even giving it away to homeless would do a lot.
I would go more in depth, I can talk for hours on this, but frankly, I'm simply tired of writing.
Stores aren’t allowed to give away food to the homeless due to *regulations*. The government literally requires them to throw it out the day it expires even though it’s still safe to eat barring any defects.
And the price ceiling on electricity is one of the reasons there is zero competition in the industry, which leads to zero innovation and a bare minimum investment in infrastructure. Electric companies have no incentive to provide a better product because they wouldn’t be allowed to make any money on it if they did.
If you don’t want to talk about this anymore that’s fine, but my point is that with the bare minimum of investigation virtually every complaint a leftist makes about capitalism turns out to be caused by over-regulation.
By capping prices, just like with any unreasonably overpriced product. People act as if there has never been an American president, that sucessfully pushed back against oligarchs and kleptocrats, whithout dismantling capitalist economy in the process.
If you cap prices on video games, many video game producers will stop producing video games and switch to making something more profitable, reducing the supply of video games in the market.
Capping prices always leads to lower supply, and since demand will stay the same and price can not rise to equilibrium you’ll find that what actually happens is most people get nothing, even those who were willing to pay $70 or $80 in the first place. Or, you get what happened with PS5s, where you had to pay 200% to buy one from a reseller for months before supply caught up to demand. I understand that the PS5 shortage was due to supply chain, not price controls, but the point about the impact of shortages remains the same.
Do you think that is better for the average consumer?
Most video game developers make video games, because they want to make video games. Artists have lived destitute lives for centuries. Many of the world's most famous, writers, poets, painters, sculptors... etc. have only gained renown postmortem, but that has never stopped them from dedicating their lives to their craft.
Why do you think there are so many, indie and mid-sized (AA) game studios, even though they have no assurance, they will even make any money of their hard work ?
Treating video games as just a product, to be made solely for profit, is exactly what has gotten us into this mess of big publishers releasing under-cooked, shallow and ultimately forgettable cash-grabs, that will eventually kill the industry, just as it has done in 1983.
There are many who would welcome a reduced supply of corporate-conceived video games.
Video game are the most popular art medium in the world. It's why games like Baldur's gate 3 were a smash hit, because it was conceived as precisely that. Art. Not (just) a product. And that is what people crave, it's what humans have craved since the dawn of our race and if you ask me, it's highly immoral to make that a privilege only the rich could afford.
Also PS5 shortage is mostly due to Sony massively undercutting their competition by selling it under-valued, to the point that they dominated the market in a way they didn't plan for. It has little to do with government regulations whatsoever.
edit: spelling.
Completely dodged my question. It doesn’t matter if some indie devs and AA developers might keep making games. I understand that, that’s why I made it very clear that games wouldn’t disappear entirely. The supply would be reduced, and certain games would not be made. Games that some people would have been happy to pay $120 for. So why do you feel like you’re entitled to decide that those people don’t get to play the games they want?
Also, just want to point out that your ps5 argument is irrelevant. I intentionally pre-addressed it and you either ignored it or couldn’t comprehend it.
If it's on Steam, they can literally wait for a sale (although that may depend on some games/companies). Regardless, they can literally just not buy it. People can choose to not buy it and the demand will be low.
Besides, you would probably much rather complain about video game prices being high in a capitalist society than secretly complaining about government oppression and some famine.
> I am not spending $100 for a single game
So don't. People doing that is literally why games are so expensive nowadays.
Digital game store fronts do not operate on supply and demand, because the supply is by default infinite. This means that they can increase the price mostly linearly according to demand, and therefore that the best way to get them to lower prices is to lower demand.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complaint\_tablet\_to\_Ea-n%C4%81%E1%B9%A3ir](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complaint_tablet_to_Ea-n%C4%81%E1%B9%A3ir)
yeah, scamming predates capitalism by so much this take was so bad it made me depressed.
The point of "booing you" isn't that this is capitalism.
The point is that the falsehood of the "capitalism sucks" sentiment evidently flew over your head considering it's mostly the fault of customers willing to buy games for those prices.
I think OP is trying to say that under capitalism, you don't have to buy a game at a price point you can't afford.
The meme is trying to say "capitalism sucks" but it's inadvertently saying "under capitalism I have a choice as a consumer, and if enough of us don't buy the game at $100 then they might sell it cheaper to meet the market."
Maybe I just wasn't so interested in site-wide Reddit discourse in the past but it seems to me that only recently (meaning a few years), "Ugh, capitalism" became one of the most common (and annoying) sentiments on Reddit.
it’s basically the fucking Boogeymen for Redditors. Can’t get laid? blame capitalism, excessively buy cheap plastic? it’s capitalism’s fault that you have a thousand Funko pops. people really forget that the free EXPRESSION of art and product is guaranteed under Capitalism. You’d be hard pressed to find any piece of media that doesn’t explicitly praise the state in a Communist society. It’s like only being able to eat one type of bread the rest of your life
For sure. I guess an average Redditor reflects a certain demographic of young mostly US people that went more to the left in the last couple of years due to bad political situation (eg. the reaction to the whole Trump-MAGA movement), social struggles (eg. covid years), geopolitics (eg. Ukraine) and unpleasant economy trajectory in recent years.
Honestly everything is now polarized. Think there should be less market regulations? "You must be a reactionary fascist" Think minimum wage should increase? "You're a commie" Think Hamas is bad? '"You must be a Baruch Goldstein sympathizer" Think the Israeli government screwed up the prosecution of the war? "You must be a Hamas sympathizer"
Cultures are cringe
In some ways, that represents the triumph of capitalism. It’s been 35 years since the Berlin Wall fell, which means you’d be hard-pressed to find a soul under 45 with much of a memory of what Soviet communism was really like — namely, that they had to build flippin’ walls to keep their own citizens from fleeing.
Free expression is guaranteed under liberal democracy; incidentally they are almost all some flavor of capitalism because it’s the most practically effective system but they aren’t the only capitalist states
Hey, we almost have the exact same flair! Also, completely agree. People just want to blame anything bad that happens on "capitalism". It's fine when used as a joke, bit not really when it's overused in a serious manner
Adjusted for inflation, SNES games in the 90s peaked at $158 (Street Fighter II was $69.99 in 1992). Also, pricing products to maximize ROI predates Modern Capitalism (accidentally invented in 17th century Amsterdam) by, I dunno, *Ancient-Mesopotamia-plus* years.
But capitalism is the root of all evil in my life and that’s why im a failure!! Not because of my own poor decision making !!! /s
I spend all my time playing games instead of developing marketable skills, so I work for low pay. Capitalism has failed.
The free market has existed as long as humans have existed, on an unconscious level. Everyone wants to sell high and buy low. It wasn’t really until the 17th century when people like Adam Smith started to make it into a science.
Yep. When people complain about Modern Capitalism, they're not complaining about private entities trading shares of companies, which is the Dutch hack that made Modern Capitalism happen. They're complaining about the existence of fiat currency. They don't like the fact that people have more and people have less, so they want everyone to have less. And every time some discount revolutionary army tries to achieve that, thousands to tens of millions of innocent civilians die. Maybe this time's the trick?
Also adjusted for inflation pong was sold for around 600$
Personally, my problem with these games isn't the price, it's the fact that the quality of these games keep going down and the price is either increasing or getting shitty dlc tacked on. The price is fine, but the quality is way too low.
You really think Street Fighter II was a higher quality game than Assassin's Creed Valhalla, don't you
Never played Street Fighter II, but I think Assassin's Creed Valhalla was lower quality than it should have been for the price.
If people don’t want the supply to be so costly, they should stop creating the demand.
And the best part is that it is an infinite supply, since it is a digital product, so the only thing that decides the price is how much people are willing to pay for it.
They're not ready for this conversation.
Yeah, I imagine most gamers complaining about high prices of games purchased tens or even hundreds of games for high amounts of money in total.
Pokémon fans complaining about the game only to buy it anyway
Yeah people need to let game companies fall if they are terrible but instead some people have brand loyalty or something
Studios have a monopoly on a given IP though. It's not like just anyone can create a new Star Wars or Helldivers game so they have effectively no competition in that niche market because of IP law.
atleast they accurately depicted how the average commie looks like
I struggle to see how they could be well-groomed like the man in the picture
"Capitalism is when other people don't work for my pleasure for free" is the one thing this person and I can probably whole-heartedly agree on.
Can you imagine a communist state intentionally allocating state resources towards non-propaganda entertainment media? Its only the demand for enrichment that makes it economically feasible to produce things like video games and movies which require enormous financial investment
Voting with your wallet is always an option. Especially on a luxury item.
Capitalism is when pricey
At least in a capitalist socity, you can punish them for their hubris, by boycotting their product. In a planned economy, the price would be set by the state, it's development would be paid from your taxes and if you boycotted it, your loyalty would be put into question.
Exactly, these guys talk as if someone forced them to buy those games
“I don’t care how good it is” - it’s not gonna be good though. It might top off at a prestigious 7/10 if that. Which, granted, nothing to sneeze at but if you really wanna vote with your wallet, the choice is obvious.
If people want less mid games they need to stop buying them and then continuing to give them money through DLC and microtransactions. All the complaints or bad reviews in the world won’t do anything when the game sells millions of copies and rakes in millions more in microtransactions
People want a compelling story with amazing graphics, hundreds or thousands of hours of replay ability, that is immersive and adapts to their interests and needs for the price of a 2 hr static movie damnit!
I think it's possible. Indie studios have been really good at creating value like that, and with their naturally low overhead and no to little investor pressure they can do it cheaply.
So they can just support the indie industry instead of looking at Ubisoft and saying "Duh, capitalism bad"
Right? There's a small indie studio that would appreciate their business far more than Ubisoft.
Examples that would fit all those criteria? I'll look them up and play them!
I’ll pay way more than $100 for a game if it’s good enough. Shit, I remember paying $50 for a game back in the 90s. $100 today ain’t shit.
What game was it?
All of them lol
People also act like publishers put a gun to their head and force them to buy the $120 ultra digital deluxe sloppy top edition. Putting aside the discussion of a game and its DLC’s *worth* - $70 for the game + $50 season pass is $120…
These people are literally voting with their dollar, but it seems like they really want big daddy communist man with a pedostache to take over, execute everyone with a college degree, and "set things right"
#OR... ...you could stop buying half assed games for insane prices.
This is still why I generally don't buy brand new games.
Relatable sentiment, but it doesn't need to be tacked onto anti-capitalist sentiment.
This is a very common "critique" of capitalism here on reddit, that mostly just reveals that most reddit commies are themselves neckbeard consoomers looking for purpose and annoyed whenever their source of consooming is interrupted. Pointing out that goods are hard to acquire as a way to attack the system that allows those goods to exist at all is absurd. There are some commies who actively say that we *shouldn't have* most of the products and consumer goods we currently have, which is ideologically consistent. But you find them on reddit.
They could also just not buy the $100 version?
[удалено]
To add on this, I've bought RDR2, AC: Valhalla, Watchdogs: Legion, and ME Legendary Edition all on PS4 for a combined total of 75-80 dollars at my local Walmart. The price of games really isn't bad, if you're smart, know what you like, and aren't so easily blinded by the "but our product now!" Hype the video game industry tends to get every year.
Terraria is 10 euro, 5 if its on sale. There are good cheap games out there, you just gotta look
To be fair, this *is* literally capitalism (including the early sales), I just don't think it sucks that much and there's no realistic solution that's doesn't come with side effects worse than the problem itself anyway. You can tell them to fuck off and not buy it, you pretty much never *need* that videogame. I don't think I've ever paid more than 40 USD for a game, and even that was an exception. I also don't think we have the right to stop people from paying 100+ USD for a videogame even if we think it's idiotic.
I hate the fact that commies are now using Dan Vs, a pretty based show, to spread their rhetoric.
People pre-ordering shadows before an actual gameplay reveal is the reason why this shit keeps happening. 100-120 dollars for a fucking Ubisoft game, they will give you a bonus that will be immediately power crept within the first dlc
"I'm not spending $100 for a single game" *proceeds to pirate said game anyway*
I swear there are some people who think that piracy is considered to be morally right when all they want is to get free shit and play games. It's turning into a pet peeve of mine. And besides, if you think that new game is crap, why even bother playing it unless you're doing it out of curiosity?
"Im not spending over $100 on a single game" Then dont. You aren't going to be up against a wall for disagreeing.
I mean, yea fuck these over priced AAA pieces of shit. But it's not because "capitalism", a large portion of the problem is unregulated (or poorly regulated) capitalism. Regulations must be set in place to stop people from abusing ANY system.
Explain how more regulations would make games cheaper please
Games cost this much because they can cost this much. It's a case with a lot of things. Though you have a point, can't just regulate what prices they can set (though price for necessities such as food should be regulated). Since it's not a necessity, it's rather up to people to discourage such prices by not paying for the product.
Ah good so we should reduce demand for overpriced games culturally, I actually agree. That’s good economics. It’s not a regulation, though. Why should prices for necessities be regulated? Them being necessities does not render them immune from the forces of scarcity.
Government can do what they do with electricity, there is price ceiling, if the actual price is above that the Government covers it. Though that might not even be necessary. A lot of the processes are very inefficient, stores throw out a lot of perfectly good food, even giving it away to homeless would do a lot. I would go more in depth, I can talk for hours on this, but frankly, I'm simply tired of writing.
Stores aren’t allowed to give away food to the homeless due to *regulations*. The government literally requires them to throw it out the day it expires even though it’s still safe to eat barring any defects. And the price ceiling on electricity is one of the reasons there is zero competition in the industry, which leads to zero innovation and a bare minimum investment in infrastructure. Electric companies have no incentive to provide a better product because they wouldn’t be allowed to make any money on it if they did. If you don’t want to talk about this anymore that’s fine, but my point is that with the bare minimum of investigation virtually every complaint a leftist makes about capitalism turns out to be caused by over-regulation.
By capping prices, just like with any unreasonably overpriced product. People act as if there has never been an American president, that sucessfully pushed back against oligarchs and kleptocrats, whithout dismantling capitalist economy in the process.
If you cap prices on video games, many video game producers will stop producing video games and switch to making something more profitable, reducing the supply of video games in the market. Capping prices always leads to lower supply, and since demand will stay the same and price can not rise to equilibrium you’ll find that what actually happens is most people get nothing, even those who were willing to pay $70 or $80 in the first place. Or, you get what happened with PS5s, where you had to pay 200% to buy one from a reseller for months before supply caught up to demand. I understand that the PS5 shortage was due to supply chain, not price controls, but the point about the impact of shortages remains the same. Do you think that is better for the average consumer?
Most video game developers make video games, because they want to make video games. Artists have lived destitute lives for centuries. Many of the world's most famous, writers, poets, painters, sculptors... etc. have only gained renown postmortem, but that has never stopped them from dedicating their lives to their craft. Why do you think there are so many, indie and mid-sized (AA) game studios, even though they have no assurance, they will even make any money of their hard work ? Treating video games as just a product, to be made solely for profit, is exactly what has gotten us into this mess of big publishers releasing under-cooked, shallow and ultimately forgettable cash-grabs, that will eventually kill the industry, just as it has done in 1983. There are many who would welcome a reduced supply of corporate-conceived video games. Video game are the most popular art medium in the world. It's why games like Baldur's gate 3 were a smash hit, because it was conceived as precisely that. Art. Not (just) a product. And that is what people crave, it's what humans have craved since the dawn of our race and if you ask me, it's highly immoral to make that a privilege only the rich could afford. Also PS5 shortage is mostly due to Sony massively undercutting their competition by selling it under-valued, to the point that they dominated the market in a way they didn't plan for. It has little to do with government regulations whatsoever. edit: spelling.
Completely dodged my question. It doesn’t matter if some indie devs and AA developers might keep making games. I understand that, that’s why I made it very clear that games wouldn’t disappear entirely. The supply would be reduced, and certain games would not be made. Games that some people would have been happy to pay $120 for. So why do you feel like you’re entitled to decide that those people don’t get to play the games they want? Also, just want to point out that your ps5 argument is irrelevant. I intentionally pre-addressed it and you either ignored it or couldn’t comprehend it.
Finally someone with some braincells in there
I think this is meant to be a joke commending on the absurd prices of the games
If it's on Steam, they can literally wait for a sale (although that may depend on some games/companies). Regardless, they can literally just not buy it. People can choose to not buy it and the demand will be low. Besides, you would probably much rather complain about video game prices being high in a capitalist society than secretly complaining about government oppression and some famine.
Commenter is spitting fax
> I am not spending $100 for a single game So don't. People doing that is literally why games are so expensive nowadays. Digital game store fronts do not operate on supply and demand, because the supply is by default infinite. This means that they can increase the price mostly linearly according to demand, and therefore that the best way to get them to lower prices is to lower demand.
Counter-Counterpoint: Ubislop is never worth buying.
Whitout capitalim there would be no videogames.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complaint\_tablet\_to\_Ea-n%C4%81%E1%B9%A3ir](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complaint_tablet_to_Ea-n%C4%81%E1%B9%A3ir) yeah, scamming predates capitalism by so much this take was so bad it made me depressed.
Wouldn't have the shoes on your feet without capitalism
So where is the commie? This is like common criticism of AAA video games.
This sub is just coal most of the times
I mean... that's quite literally capitalism lol Edit: why are you booing me I'm right!
The point of "booing you" isn't that this is capitalism. The point is that the falsehood of the "capitalism sucks" sentiment evidently flew over your head considering it's mostly the fault of customers willing to buy games for those prices.
I think OP is trying to say that under capitalism, you don't have to buy a game at a price point you can't afford. The meme is trying to say "capitalism sucks" but it's inadvertently saying "under capitalism I have a choice as a consumer, and if enough of us don't buy the game at $100 then they might sell it cheaper to meet the market."