“I’d Hate to Get My Bill for Skyrim, Then.” – Fans Share Their Opinion on Take Two CEO Strauss Zelnick’s Views on the Pricing of Games

Ever since Rockstar Games announced that the trailer for GTA 6 will be out in December, fans have been over the moon. Many fans have been waiting for any news about the game ever since its announcement back in February. The game that fans have been waiting for over a decade will finally be out and on the occasion of the announcement of the trailer, Take Two Vice President, Strauss Zelnick had some words to say.

During an internal meeting, Strauss Zelnick spoke to investors about his plans for charging players for their games. In this Strauss mentioned how he believes how games should be charged and fans could not disagree more.

Strauss Zelnick on pricing games

Zelnick outlines his pricing philosophy for entertainment properties. He states that it revolves around an algorithm based on the value of expected entertainment usage. This algorithm considers the per-hour value multiplied by the number of expected hours of engagement. Zelnick suggests that longer games should be priced higher because players get more hours of entertainment, making it a better value for their money. Specifically, he believes that GTA is one of the best values on the market based on this algorithm. This indicates the substantial hours of engagement it offers.

In the meeting, he said, “In terms of our pricing for any entertainment property, basically the algorithm is the value of the expected entertainment usage, which is to say the per-hour value times the number of expected hours plus the terminal value that’s perceived by the customer in ownership if the title is owned rather than rented or subscribed to.”

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Zelnick acknowledges that the suggested pricing model may not be practically applicable in the gaming market due to various factors. The recent increase in game prices to $70 is seen as the industry’s attempt to maximize pricing within current market constraints. Upon learning about this philosophy, many fans have disagreed with Zelnick on Twitter.

Fans take on Take Two Bosses’ views

Strauss’ opinion was unpopular with many gamers. One of the fans mentions how GTA Online still makes money through the Microtransactions in the game. And explains how the developers should not use gameplay time to factor into its price.

One gamer had a funny comment to share while talking about the amount of hours they spent in Skyrim.

This fan pointed out their observation about games like Spider-Man 2 when compared to Baldur’s Gate 3. They stated how both the games cost the same and while Spider-Man 2 takes 30 hours to finish everything in the game, BG3 provides 100 hours of just story mode.

Another user thought about how much speedrunners would be charged for the games.

An interesting observation was made by this one commenter, who spoke about how Take Two’s idea is similar to old-school arcade machines.

It is very hard to explain how much a game is worth and why. Many factors come into play while deciding how much the game should be priced. Graphics, storyline, mechanics, and replayability are some things that players can look out for while buying a game. But that is still very subjective. While players wait for GTA 6, there is a chance that we see this pricing philosophy implemented by Take-Two in the new game.

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