Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-7153552-20130501210839

This is kind of an off-topic discussion, but I saw it in a few threads relating to different Skyrim issues (the OI Glitch for one). What are you paying for when you buy a game disc or digital copy?

When you spend your $60 (or non-US Dollars equivalent) you are purchasing a copy of the game client. What does that mean? Well, to put it simply, it means you are spending a one-time fee to be allowed to play the game legally. You do not "own the game", this is why the developers and publishers are allowed to change whatever they feel is needed (or just want to on a whim) to improve gameplay in the way they see fit for it to be played.

This initial cost is not really how much they need to charge in order to make up for overhead (it's usally a bit over), and this is because they are looking to make a profit. By the time a game reaches it's local $20 bin all of the overhead has been covered and they are simply covering the cost of producing the case/disc/manual/etc. and leaving a little wiggle room for minimal profits. Now that last point should make a few people upset when they realize that they're paying the same amount for a digital game as they are for a physical media copy most of the time, but that's a whole other discussion for another day.

What does all that mean for you? It means that you need to stop complaining when the company changes something because you bought the client! It essentially means you've payed them to not only deliver you a game, but to continue to make it fit their vision of what it can and should be. This subject slightly changes when you look into the pay-to-play games like World of Warcraft.

In games that still use the afore mentions business model (like WoW), you are paying for the game client up front and through that any additional patches to fix content, then you are paying a subscription for them to be able and allowed to continue working on additional (non expansion pack) content that releases in major patches to the game. Single player games do not have that luxory, and this is why we pay for the DLC and expacs.

Thank for reading (if you read the whole thing), I'm sure some of you flame me over this, but perhaps you should read a ToS or License Agreement from time to time (I do because I record the games and use them to make YouTube videos, and what you are and aren't allowed to do is also covered in those). 