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We’ve all been there at one point in our gaming careers. A game company announces the incredibly high price for a hotly anticipated DLC and your heart drops. Your first reaction is to go to the nearest message board or your Twitter account and blast that company for their unfair prices. Surely some DLC coming out this soon after the game releases means they simply held this back just to be able to charge extra for it. In most cases there is no actual download, just a code to unlock the content on the disk; the game you already paid $60 for.

So you vow to never play that game again, not to support that company, and most importantly never to pay for that overpriced horse armor. Why would you support a company that is clearly not looking out for you as a customer? Oh, but on release date all your friends all seem to have it, and that armor is shiny. Just like you, I was able to hold off the DLC for a few days until I broke and bought the overpriced content that was simply locked down on the disk in the first place.

As gamers some of us can be a fickle bunch. Our ideals and standards are only as high as the game company allows them to be. Some do right by us. Valve has been a company that gamers can trust when it comes to extending the life of their games with competitive pricing and strong DLC support. Unfortunately, companies like Valve are few and far between. Some of these steep prices would not occur if the gaming community drew a line in the sand in regards to what we are willing to pay for and what type of services we cared about.

Allow me to state the obvious, game companies are trying to make a profit. While most of them are not evil, we as gamers need to keep those that tread the line, from being dishonest. Last generation the MSRP for most games was $50 and if gamers wanted a few more special features we could pay $10 more for the Collector’s Edition. Guess what? Collector’s Editions are huge sellers and it seemed nearly every release, minor or major, had a “special”, collector”, or “limited” edition tagging along with it.

This as we now know, was just a testing ground for companies to see how much gamers were willing to pay to get their games. Fast forward to present day and the MSRP for games has been raised to $60 and that special, collector’s or limited edition is no less than $70 and can go as high as $150. Who is to blame here? The game companies saw a window of opportunity to make a few extra bucks more on their multimillion dollar investment. There is nothing wrong with that but sometimes they can go a bit overboard. It is up to us to show some maturity and find the will to not buy every bit of entertainment we are offered solely because it’s the next thing to get.

We need to vote with our wallets, we need to create a standard. A map pack for a game should never cost a quarter of the actual game. Extra game modes that come out only weeks after the game releases usually means it’s a cash in, and could have been bundled with the main game in the first place. These are released and priced for the gamer that is willing to buy everything to make sure they are up to date. As gamers and geeks this has been our greatest weakness, but I firmly believe the more we push back against some of these outrageous situations, if stick to our guns on the subject we may begin to truly see some fairness displayed. The game companies will have no choice. Either cater to us- their customers- or cater to no one. With our wallets, we have the power choose which games, ideas, and even companies sink or swim. When we finally realize that, we will see how fast these companies begin to play nice.

The video game industry is still relatively young. There is much to learn, so we as gamers can help it grow up a bit along the way.