EA has jacked up the prices of lots of old games on Steam

EA has done a cunty thing again, surprise!

EA quietly hiked a ton of game prices on Steam, from Mirror’s Edge to Dragon Age

EA has hiked the price of many of its games on Steam. A number of older games are affected, but only in certain regional currencies – and not US dollars. Notably, 11-year-old Mirror’s Edge has jumped in price by almost half, from £9.99 to £17.99.

As spotted by user MJuniorDC9 on Reddit, three games that have just received price increases on Steam include SimCity 4: Deluxe Edition, Mass Effect Collection, and Crysis 2: Maximum Edition. That’s according to SteamDB, a site (not affiliated with Valve) that tracks changes across a bunch of Steam’s features, including price changes of games – or ‘packages’ as they’re referred to in the way the site analyses them.

According to a SteamDB graph for the game, SimCity 4: Deluxe had a consistent, ‘regular’ price of £9.99 / €9.99 / CA$19.99 when not on sale, reaching at least as far back as December 2015. Now, however, the price tracking chart records a steep incline upwards on February 5, 2020. The new prices shown are significantly higher: £17.99 / €19.99 / CA$26.99. For British pounds sterling, that’s an 80% increase in price. In Euros, that’s double the original price.

Similarly, as MJuniorDC9’s Reddit post highlights, Mass Effect Collection (which includes Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2: Digital Deluxe Edition), has changed from a ‘regular’ price of £22.99 / €27.99 / CA$34.99 to £29.99 /€34.99 / CA$45.99, and Crysis 2: Maximum Edition from £19.99 / €19.99 / CA$29.99 to £24.99 / €29.99 / CA$39.99, according to the site.

Given the release dates of these titles were all years ago – 2003, 2012, and 2011 respectively – this is a little surprising.

Looking through the list of the titles tagged with EA as the publisher on Steam and then cross-checking them with SteamDB, it seems quite a chunk of the company’s game catalogue on the platform has just received price increases.

For example, Dragon Age: Origins Ultimate Edition, Command and Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars, Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3 (and Uprising), Mirror’s Edge, Medal of Honor, Dead Space, and Dead Space 2 have just become more expensive in at least two of the three currencies than they had been for at least a year previously – in several cases, for several years.

It’s not yet clear why the regional prices of these games in some currencies have suddenly been hiked. We’ve reached out to EA for confirmation and comment and will update the story with any new information.

Good thing no one is forcing you to buy them then!?

Saying this means it's ok!

I'll delete the thread immediately.

It is ok because you don't have to buy it. If you don't buy it then the price will go down. If consumers agree its worth the price, then it would stay where its at.

I don't buy things I deem is not worth the cost.

It's EA so this doesn't surprise me at all. Did the prices rise on Origin as well or just on Steam? I'm going to have to check this out.

Or, you can do this, and still complain about it and say "it's not ok".

You can always complain. Not everyone would agree but you are more than welcome to say "this shit is not ok". :)

@uninspiredcup said:

Its Steam Tax. :P

Somehow less anti-consumer than other companies, amirite?

EA sets the prices.

Okay... ? Does it excuse them for anti-consumerism though because they aren't particularly other companies you have higher disdain for to the point of "Eric Andre'ing" people who like their products?

I have no idea what you are talking about now.

Of course... probably best to leave it that way.

Are those Access subs not working out or something?

@uninspiredcup: you should probably look up free market etc. was pretty sure that was a big deal for you Yankees..

What a world we live in when people side with this BS.

It's a good thing I have EA Origin Premier so I won't have to pay full prices on their games. And if it's a game I really want to own from them, there's always CDKey to beat their overcharge prices.

Your threads bring out the best in ppl Cup

Oh man they hiked the prices on heroin.

Good thing no one is forcing me to buy it.

Do yourself a favor and just sub to Origin for a month if you want to play an EA game.

$15 to play a few games, just a little pop on pop off.

They just garnered some good-will with Star Wars Fallen Order, and with releasing games back onto Steam. I wonder if they're trying to offset Valve's cut.

They made Jedi: Fallen Order.

Which didn't have any microtransactions AND they published it on Steam.

So I guess I'll let this one slide... just this once.

EA is Disgusting

Even by EA's monumentally seedy standards, this is quite the feat.

https://www.game-debate.com/news/28341/ea-hikes-up-the-prices-of-all-its-old-games-on-steam-by-as-much-as-3x

Prices vary from territory to territory but Russia and Brazil would appear to be hardest hit, with price hikes up to treble the previous retail price.

Nintendoboi out for blood, very scary.

Yeah, that little sidebar made no sense lol. I just tried to read it again.

This made me laugh more then it should lol

Welcome to the digital age, where companies have control of your wallets, some people saw it coming before hand though.

Could mean they finally decided to remaster them

That's a stretch that i'd be entirely on board with. DA:O and ME series remasters would be huge for me. That being said, I have a feeling it's more to offset the 30% cut Steam takes, but i'd be more than happy to be wrong.

No, it means they are simply price-hiking them.

Gamers are just as bad, they will get away with it, it will become normality, we will forget about this probably within week.

Another piss-take in a long line of piss-takes.

Generally I believe in "money talking"--i.e. if you don't buy something, they'll get the message and lower the price--but doing something like this speaks more of business strategy than general economics. I reckon they want more people to subscribe to Origin Access or whatever it's called.

I recommend it btw, it's a good deal. EA has a huge back catalog and there are a lot of good games on there (there was a point in time where EA was a respected and trusted company lol).

Anyway, not the worst thing in the world to me. They're still fairly inexpensive and tbh Activision is 10x worse. CoD BLOPS is stil 39.99 USD, CoD BLOPS 2 and 3 are still 59.99 USD, and so on. Hell even Prototype 2, a game no one played (which is too bad, I like the Prototype series) is 39.99 USD still.

If nobody has played these by now I doubt they ever will. Anyhow, like most older EA games I want to replay but don't wanna splurge on, they have like several sales a year where their games are dirt cheap. Keep your eye out.

Anyhow, ran across random article talking up EA Access the other day like big changes coming, didn't read it just saw headline. But I had it for two or three years and finally cancelled it at end of last year, became clear they weren't going to be adding much else, no Xbox BC catalog expansion, they take way too long with new games being added. Honestly crossed my mind on a number of ocassions that they totally forgot they had a subsription service to manage.

Sorry but you hermits don't get to complain, as you let Gabe bend you over and put his little winky into your bottoms by going all digital, I mean is EA's winky bigger and thus hurt more LOL.

Meanwhile physical copies can be bought for under a tenner, Physical FTW.

Sim city 4 deluxe.

All those games are like 1-5 bucks max.

But have fun living in the past mate, maybe at some point those spinner discs will come back in fashion with some hipster group.

Honestly the only reason u shop at steam store is when there is a heavy discount going otherwise its useless.

Nice, makes it easier on the conscience to pirate these games. Not like the og Visceral games or Maxis still around to support Dead Space or SimCity and did you look at Sims 4 dlc and expansions? there is like 30 of em $20 and $40 packs now.

Just pirate those EA games, who cares if ur pc gets used for mining bitcoins its better than actually buying EA made games.

EA doing slimy things?

It's not slimy, but seems kind of dumb.

How many people buy ancient ass games anyway? Raising the price just makes it even less likely. It's not like it's going raise revenues in any meaningful way, as these old games I can't imagine sell much at all. In some cases they might only have sales figures in the tens or the hundreds. So who cares.

This take could have potentially been worse.

Be hard, but it's definitely possible.

Where as I think it sucks it must mean that the games were selling well enough to where they thought they could get more. I'm sure it's nothing more than the big fish shaking things up to see if it makes a difference or if anyone notices..

I'm not saying I agree, but I don't really care either.. lol

I'm already going to have all the games I wanted that are 5-15 bucks anyway.. just saying.

EA has maybe 1 or 2 good games ever, you shouldn't be impacted by their prices to begin with. Buy funner things.

It's EA. It's not surprising at all.