725 million actually. I think it is almost double the next expensive game.
They are trying to do something on a never-before scale, but the company seems to have been run like complete shit.
They better get great overtime pay or be able to take like 2 weeks extra paid holiday after this bullshit, but I would guess not.
Sorry, but inflation is a not great reasoning.
Wages in a lot of the world (especially the US) have been completely left behind by inflation, so many people are paid very similarly to how they were paid in the 2000s. That is the entire driver behind the insane wealth inequality gap.
Video games are a luxury good, so if you up the price (especially for shitty cranked out AAA games with little replay value and dubious quality) then they will see profits actually fall because so many people will see those games as not worth it. Not to mention that orders of magnitude more people are just struggling to pay rent now with skyrocketing housing prices (corporations switching to housing for investments and buying up all property) and worsening working conditions.
The reason companies are switching to subscriptions and micro transactions en masse is because they just work, take minimal effort, and make massive profits. They are literally exploiting flaws in the human psyche.
According to blizzard, 1 single horse skin microtransaction in world of warcraft made more money than all of the sales from the entire game of StarCraft 2: wings of liberty.
Plus, let’s say all of this was successful in switching the content of games to less exploitative means of earning profits. Do you think developers will be treated better? Do you think shareholders will forgo their worship of yearly increasing profits and treat employers fairly? More likely they would just increase the price and double dip by micro transactions, loot boxes, and battle passes for those precious profits.
I would love to go back to the better times of games also, but corporate greed prevents it at every turn.