Percentage doesn't always equate to better.

In the last 12 months or so, GOG put prices up, then gave greater discounts, but overall you ended paying at least 50 cents more than beforehand, and more likely a dollar or three or more. It looked good until you realized that. I realized that, because I keep a record of prices for my wishlist items, and I was wondering why the discount percentages seemed bigger than what I remembered but the paying price was higher. Things did improve later in the year though.

I'd pay more if there were less sales.

Actually I've already started to ignore sales more often, because backlog...

I kind of have a budget I'm prepared to spend on games, and in the past that almost exclusively went into "oh shiny" spontaneous purchases, because the offer was "just too good to pass on". And then the games rotted in the backlog until the "so dirt cheap" price I bought them for had become the regular price.
Now I'm trying to ignore the "oh shiny" factor, and only buy games I really want to play, and soon. And yes, I'm buying less games, and I still spend about the same amount of money, but I don't care about discounts that much, and I actually play more games that I've bought. Which feels good.

So to determine "is it worth it" it's "how urgently do I want to play it" and "how sure am I I'll really like it". If both come together I'll gladly pay even full price. But of course a 80-90% off on a game I might really like although I won't play it immediately is still a big incentive. Or the other way around, I want to try it urgently, but I'm not sure I'll like it.

What I noticed is that the less time I have to actually play, the greater the urge to buy new games. Compensating, I guess.

I generally buy games in the 2 or 3 euros range, if I had more ca$h availability I'd spend more happily around 10/15 € for the titles I find more attractive, as I could do in the past. Also, I prefer indie games and this helps me, as they are on the cheaper side and I don't care to have the last PS5 60 €, 70 € AAA hyped thing.
I might try to give me a yearly budget and see if I could fit a more expensive (in the 10 € range) game or two in it rather than 8 or 10 cheaper ones.

Depends, in my country I have to pay a lot of taxes for a game (65% of the total) so that make games here extremely expensive for example a $60 games cost me $100 (and $100 here is too much money, like crazily much) so my top for a AAA is $75 with taxes arround $45 for the game, and for an indie arround $35 with taxes and $22 without, but always try to wait for a good offer 40% or more.

The most I paid on GOG was $5.99. And basically the limit would be one 25 RON Paysafecard code, at most adding a few cents left over on a previous one if I have it. Considering their exchange fee as well, right now it says that would equal $5.87 or €4.97.
But that's for something I'd jump at. Which is highly unlikely for years now, because of a mix of backlog, poor computer and the fact that I won't buy anything with regional prices above base so very few options left on that alone. So, more normally, around $2 or so (with the same note that only if it doesn't have regional prices above base of course).
When this rotten industry will do a full 180° and start offering something worth supporting again, let me know and I'll see if that will change.

I'm more willing to pay more for physical copies than digital. If it's a game I really want, especially niche titles that disappear fast) I pay MRSP (which is usually $60). If it's a limited edition with physical goodies, I may pay more, but $80 is usually the upper limit. These purchases are rare, usually reserved for select games I'm unwilling to wait for or niche/obscure titles that are likely hard to find in the future. I usually wait for price drops/sales, which tend to happen sooner than their digital counterparts, due to retailers wanting to make room for newer games.

For digital games, there are too many big sales that there is no need to pay MRSP unless it is low to begin with. My highest purchase thus far for a single game was $30, but the vast majority of my purchases are $15 or less.

I've been dealing with inflated prices ever since the end of fair price package ($60 games costing me anywhere between $68-$72.5). That's the reason i'm buying at discounts only in the first place. The top price I stated ($30-$35) is really the max and I shell that out only rarely when I just can't wait to play something. Most of the time, I buy at a 66% or 75% discount and up.

You need to adjust for inflation dude.

With the old boxed versions a game was around 40 to 60 € (the same as a digital AAA title today). When they were offered cheaper they were aound 20-25 €.

I consider that more than 30 € for a relatively modern digital game could be expensive; they do not need to manufacture physical manuals, or boxes, or the complex and expensive management and distribution to worldwide stores anymore.

24 € is what I paid for a boxed copy of Alpha Centauri with its big box and book manual. More confortable to use and to read than a pdf.

35 € for Quake 2 at launch etc...

Or 60 € for the boxed version of Sid Meier Gettysburg with more physical extras and its polished and interesting big book manual. Both are boxed games and manuals that I read today, like real books in my library, more than 20 years later.
Obviously Alpha Centauri is more convenient to be played with my GOG digital copy. But in this case not the manual.

Nah. 20$ gives me plenty of choices even considering when that image was made.

Yes. This gets tossed around as an argument for digital distribution often. Funny how the prices remained exactly the same for customers because the publisher keeps the savings and doesn't reduce the price appropriately. There is no supply limit for digital goods. No manufacturing, distribution or transportation costs. Yet we still have to pay the same price as before.

And otherwise, I agree. I am willing to pay much more for physical than digital.

I find $20 to be a good spot for a game now days, I never pay the full 50+ anymore due to issues in the past with massive AAA games and other games that claimed to do things and was different. Broken games and DLC and not completed versions made me wait for the complete package on discount to come out.

Witcher 3 comes to mind. Waited 2 years, got no bugs and whole game for 24 dollars on sale. I think that was a better deal than 79.99 for the base game with bugs and no DLC.

Thank god I did not get into the mess and gave in with Cyberpunk 2077. Gonna wait till the full thing is out with all updates and get it for cheap on sale.

It really depends on the game for me. Recently I bought Interstellar Space: Genesis which was on sale for $14.99. Due to all the games in backlog, I typically wait until a game is at least 75% off on my wishlist.

But sometimes, as in the case of ISG, I liked the developer's interactions when it came to supporting their customers. So I wanted to show my support by buying it. Did the same thing for Stellar Tactics and Astrox Imperium. These are the people I want to see succeed, so they can bring us more wonderful games.

Recently for the first time in years I bought a game outside GOG called Starsector for $15. I was blow away by the space action, sandbox game. The time and effort they put into this game shows in the results. So I bought directly from their site. And I'm the sort that's very reluctant to give up my credit card info to sites I barely know.

Last week for example, I really, really wanted to buy Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-Reckoning FATE Edition, but I just couldn't bring myself to buy it even at 50% off. It was still too much for me mentally. The decision was probably made easier by the fact that I own the retail version lol.

Nostalgia is one of the most powerful natural drugs (is that a word I should use here?) that's built into us human beings lol.
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Short answer: 3 Canadian dollars

Ultra Long Wall Of Text Edition answer:
It depends on the game, how bad I want it, and how bad/soon I want to play it. I have a default soft-limit max price of $3 per game or expansion rule, which is overridden by heightened desire to own and/or play the game sooner rather than later to which the price limit I'm willing to pay scales based on this desire. There is no real hard limit as to how much I will pay for a game, but rather the amount I'm willing to pay is as I said based on how strong my desire is to own and play it "right now". So it's theoretically possible (albeit extremely unlikely) that a game could be $1000 and I'd buy it, but I haven't seen anyone produce a game that costs that much yet nor would such a game be so desirable as to be willing to pay that much for it.

I almost never buy new releases at full price because no matter how interesting a game seems like it might be to me it is rare that I feel so strongly to play a new release that I just have to have it immediately upon release and pay full price for it when I now have a game library across online gaming platforms of 3600+ games. A game HAS to have some huge compelling reason for me to desire strongly to play it right now above all other as yet unplayed games in m library to be willing to fork out the cash for a new one at full retail price.

In fact, I've been gaming since 1983 on Atari 2600, then Commodore 64, then NES, and finally moved to PC gaming in 1994, and in all of that time the only full price new releases I ever bought were:

- Warcraft 3 (on release day $80 CAD)
- The Lord of the Rings: The Battle For Middle Earth (stumbled upon in store one day, whimsical purchase for $60)
- The Lord of the Rings: The Battle For Middle Earth 2 (stumbled upon in store one day, whimsical purchase for $60)
- The Witcher 3 (pre-order about 2 days before release for $37.59 CAD incl. loyalty discount)
- Starcraft Remastered (pre-order for $20 CAD to get pre-order bonus crap)
- Cyberpunk 2077 (pre-order about a week before release for $80 to avoid release day download server overloads)
- Subnautica Below Zero (pre-order about a month ago for $23 prior to price increase to $40 anticipating final release)

Yep, in 37 years of gaming I've bought only 4 new releases ever, 3 being pre-order/EA, and 2 additional games that were "OMG wow I did't know this existed must get right now!".

Other notable purchases include:
- ArmA Humble bundle for $15 that included the entire franchise minus a few ArmA 3 DLC
- Cathodomer for $22 on Steam (not a game, and buggy as hell do not buy it)
- The Talos Principle Gold $6
- Lords of the Fallen GOTY $5.29

Maybe less than 5 other games more than $5 purchased from storefronts other than GOG/Steam that I don't have handy in front of me. Virtually all other games I've ever bought were less than $5, most less than $3, and probably the majority of the purchases were whimsical "who cares, it's only $3!" type purchases that I'd otherwise have not bought.

I guess you could say that I'm a bit of a finicky game consumer when it comes to buying games - unless they are so cheap as to override my brain with "OMG must have now, this is just too cheap to pass up on!" goodness. :)

That was a fun ride down memory lane and my purchase histories on GOG and Steam... :)
$80 for The Witcher 3? I'm in Canada and paid $37.59 for it pre-order a few days prior to release, which included a 20% loyalty discount for owning the first 2 games in the series (both of which I got free previously). I've never seen the game selling for $80 anywhere ever, are you sure about that?

Good call. While the game is (or at least can be) a lot of fun, it is the buggiest game I've ever played and would recommend people wait for the NGOTY release in a couple of years to presumably get a more flawless gaming experience assuming that CDPR fixes all of the bugs and improves various in game mechanics, AI, UI and other elements. I'm not sorry I bought it, but I'm disappointed in the state it is in as a new release from my most highly trusted video game company. I guess everyone has to learn the hard way about this at least once. Lesson learned! :)

I'm not sure I would pay more, as I have so much backlog now that I could probably just go without ... with a few must have rare exceptions. It is very true though, that many games I would be unlikely to even look at twice at their regular price, get a chance of being purchased by me if cheap enough. I like nice surprises, so I see buying those as taking a punt, as well as giving some support to GOG and DEVs/PUBs. It also expands my tastes and takes me to new horizons. And I'm not just buying for me ... somewhere along the way another family member (child or grandchild etc) might enjoy it.

I also take the view, that I don't completely know what I might like to play. Sure I have my favorite genres, but I like the adventure of remaining open to new experiences. Variety really is the spice of life I reckon, and taking reasonable chances.

That said, I always reach a point where I mostly stop buying. All the free games last year, and especially from Epic for well over two years now, have complicated matters a bit, because I now have oodles of games that I got in a very short amount of time, but alas many aren't DRM-Free, and I had intended to buy many of them at GOG when cheap enough or available there at a fair price. There will come a time regardless though, where I will say enough is enough and cut back seriously on buying more, and it will be sooner rather than later now.