In a Twitter economics lesson, a Larian developer said that Baldur’s Gate 3 and Divinity: Original Sin 2 were priced “below their value” because they “believed” they could recoup their costs.

Keep calm, everyone; this is a story about the economic realities of video games and how that affects companies and consumers.

Baldur’s Gate 3 and Divinity: Original Sin 2 are both video games that Larian’s publishing director said were priced “below their value” because the studio “believed” it could recoup its investment and was concerned about the costs we ordinary people were already facing.

The claim ultimately came in a tweet with the following context. Influenced by the pricing of Star Wars Outlaws, Relevant Publishing Director Michael Deuce said in another tweet earlier this week that he believes “the base price of almost all games should be higher as production costs (inflation being one of them) outstrip pricing trends.”

The developer added that he believes “games should be priced commensurate with their quality, breadth, and depth,” and ended the post by joking that the studio is simply waiting for GTA 6 to reset the market with a higher price that feels worthwhile before following suit.

Now, Douse is back on the subject, including a “brief economics lesson” because Twitter is absolutely the best medium to deliver this content. He says that “the bulk of development costs are salaries,” and that he thinks many studios and publishers are responding to inflation by raising the costs they pay to developers, especially in the later stages of development as things are released in several different ways.

This is where things like AI are seen as simple cost-cutting measures, Douse believes, with another consequence being that many AAA studios try to “reduce risk” by following established gaming trends. While there are some “exceptions”, the publishing director believes this strategy is unlikely to result in “better games”.

Finally, Douse outlined his approach to pricing Larian games in response to this issue, saying, “I priced both DOS2 and BG3 below their value because I care about people’s cost of living and believe we can recoup our costs,” adding that the collector’s edition price is “well below” what the studio could have set.

Now, let’s all take a breath.

While this is obviously a complex situation that you can’t fully comprehend through a Twitter thread, Douse has clearly given it a lot of thought and offers a useful perspective with his post There may be no easy answers to this conundrum that will ensure that consumers who are currently being squeezed by rising costs in every aspect of their lives, developers who deserve to be paid for their hard work and have job security as the industry sees mass layoffs on an almost monthly basis, and executives who need to check spreadsheets and please shareholders are all equally happy.

Then again, there has to be a way to make all of this work, which is supposedly one of the reasons people at the top of the gaming industry are paid more than the developers who actually make the games their companies sell, isn’t it?