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NoahFuel [any] @hexbear.net

people are right to be upset their hobby is pricing them out.

"Mario 64 was 60 dollars in 1995 meaning that it would be about 100 dollars today"

Pay has NOT kept up with inflation. People are poorer.

Folk need to stop pretending like people have as much money as they did in the 90s. Rent costs, house prices are astronomical.

Xbox's business is still impacted today by outpricing people with their initial Xbox One reveal pricing a decade ago.

Nintendo Treehouse comments are absolutely packed with people complaining about prices.

Again, I'm vastly aware that game budgets, inflation etc have increased!

but Pay has NOT increased accordingly. I don't know the solution, but that's the reality.

And I make these points as someone who is lucky enough to earn well enough to just buy them regardless. Most aren't as fortunate.

Game bubbles regularly disregard the poor, unfortunately, as the industry has an above-average number of middle-class background workers.

Price increases combined with physical knock effectively prices the poor out of legally gaming (Buying directly from them/the digital store)

81 comments

  • Pay has NOT kept up with inflation. People are poorer.

    Do you have any kind of source for that beyond just vibes? Cause generally speaking, pay absolutely has kept up with inflation for the last 30 years. There are plenty of reasons to hate game companies but "won't someone think of the treats" isn't very compelling lol

    • There are plenty of reasons to hate game companies but "won't someone think of the treats" isn't very compelling lol

      fuck Nintendo and all, but it sounds like you're arguing only rich people should be able to afford video games... ://

      Cause generally speaking, pay absolutely has kept up with inflation for the last 30 years

      are you referring to US?

      it hasn't kept up with inflation in the US. you can check almost any median wage chart v. inflation.

      edit: just randomly: 137% inflation since 1990 whereas wages only increased 34.3%.

      https://inflacalc.com/inflation/us/1990/to/2024

      https://www.gobankingrates.com/money/economy/median-american-household-income-over-last-40-years/

      https://politicalcalculations.blogspot.com/2025/01/median-household-income-in-november-2024.html

      the picture is even more dire with you compare it to an accurate CPI like True Living Cost or Common Man [sic] CPI.

      if you're talking about inflation in video games (i think you are), you're probably absolutely right that it hasn't increased compared to the median wages.

      • Your links seem to agree with me? This is from the third one, income adjusted for inflation has still increased.

        fuck Nintendo and all, but it sounds like you're arguing only rich people should be able to afford video games... ://

    • If a person is lucky to have a job that does inflation matching that’s great but I know a lot of people that are barely making a dollar more per hour than was common a decade ago while the cost of everything has gone up astronomically. To me it’s not really about “think of the treats” as much it is everything has gotten outrageously expensive (which the treats are just a component of), particularly the last 5 years, while they’re cutting assistance, and minimum wage is still like 7 bucks.

      • Who are these mythical people that are making a barely a dollar more than a decade ago? In the last five years alone, the bottom 10% saw the largest real wage growth (i.e. adjusted for inflation) in decades.

        • I have a ton of friends including my own partner barely making more than 15 bucks an hour, hell the job she just left a few months ago was making 12 bucks

          Maybe stop listening to liberals bullshit to justify our fucked up economy? The cost of things, especially rent is waaaay outside of what wages have kept up with, which have been pretty much stagnant in terms of real purchasing power since the 70s

          • This is why I don't take people on Hexbear seriously. Zero theory, zero evidence for anything, it's all just fuckin vibes and anecdotes about how hard is it to be American while you make an order of magnitude more than any random global south country

            • You know things are relative right? I’m bottom rung in this country, I’m working poor, most of my friends are working poor.

              90% of everything I make is gone before it’s in my bank account

              I have a mil who is stroke victim that my wife and I can’t afford to properly care for bc we barely have enough money for food and bills every month

              The other person pointed out the discrepancy between nominal and real wages to you already but I’m sorry, whatever BULLSHIT you’ve read from economists doesn’t change the reality of how downwardly mobile life has been for me and every one of the other lower parts of the working class in this country

              You are a fucking liberal idiot, I would be embarrassed to call myself a communist and be so fucking blind to my privilege you don’t realize how many people in America are struggling, it doesn’t matter if I make 2000 bucks a month and it sounds great when THE SHITTIEST roach infested apt around me are 1500 dollars a month. I haven’t had insurance since I was 25 bc I quite literally can’t afford it. And the majority of the jobs accessible to ppl in my strata have not upped their wages meaningfully in over a decade while groceries have doubled in the last 3-5 years.

              Genuinely go fuck yourself

              The theory for it it’s simple, bourgeoisie exploit working class people, they’ll get as much as they can out of us. There has been 0 meaningful working class pushback to the stagnation of wages in the USA since basically 100 years ago, and 0 political parties working on our behalf, it’s entirely left to the good graces of individual corporations, which is to say: rare and next to none, particularly to the lower class workers.

              • Evidently you aren't embarrassed to be a communist because you don't even know what communism is. There's no meaningful pushback to exploitation in America because it's a racist settler-colonial monster of a country.

                I don't have health insurance, or a well paying job, or savings, or really any significant future prospects at all, but I can still recognize that what I do have is built on imperialism, on the backs of people around the world who have it much, much worse than I do. So when I see posts like "video game too expensive :(((" or "life is so hard making over double the minimum wage" in between posts about the newest Israeli massacre then yeah, it's kinda fucking hard to give a shit.

                I'm just gonna stop replying because nothing I say is going to convince you of anything, and nothing you say is going to convince me America deserves anything other than a nuke

                • “Double the minimum wage” and it hasn’t been upped in 30 years.

                  You’re a miserable pos who’s political understanding is driven by wanting to see people as miserable as you, you’re not meaningfully different from any chud that’s self aware about imperialism.

        • If you're making $15 an hour, 15% is a $2 raise, and 11% is a dollar and change. Meanwhile prices have gone up 20% in that time (according to inflacalc which you linked)

81 comments