Pricing News, Tips, Tricks & Ideas

It’s a matter of when we’ll see the Steam Deck 2, not if we’ll see it. Valve has talked publicly multiple times about its plans for a next-gen Steam Deck, which shouldn’t come as a surprise given that the original is easily the best handheld gaming PC you can buy.

If you're an Avatar: The Last Airbender fan, chances are you were looking forward to the recently launched Fortnite collaboration that has seen Aang, Zuko, Katara, and Toph (sorry Sokka) head to the island. All four characters have been added to the Item Store to celebrate the collaboration, along with some emotes and Avatar-themed items, but many players have been coming away furious after seeing the prices.

Thrones of Decay, the upcoming expansion for strategy game Total War: Warhammer 3, will now be available to purchase as either three separate faction packs, or as a bundle at a discount. So, if you don’t fancy shelling out the full £19.10 for all three factions, you can grab new bits for either Nurgle, the Empire, or the Dwarfs for £7.49. If you do buy just one to start off with - say, to get a feel for the quality of Thrones of Decay as a package - you’ll get a 15% discount on the remaining two packs in the future.

Sony has announced that the slimmer variant of the PlayStation 5 console, which first launched in the US in November last year, will be available in India, starting April 5. Both the disc and digital editions of PS5 slim will go on sale in the country this week, with stock availability at participating retailers confirmed. PS5 slim, a lighter and thinner version of the original console, retains much of the PlayStation 5 design language, but comes with a detachable disc drive and slightly bigger storage.

Maruti Suzuki has dominated the hatchback segment in India for decades. Time and again, Maruti has launched new hatchbacks that strike the right chord with buyers. The Swift is one such hatchback that enjoys immense popularity among buyers even today.

Vivo is gearing up for yet another smartphone launch in India today with the much-anticipated arrival of the Vivo T3. Following the introduction of its flagship models earlier this year and the recent debut of the Vivo V30 series, the T-series aims to offer affordability without compromising on performance. The official launch event for the Vivo T3 is scheduled for March 21 at 12 pm, and it will be conducted virtually, accessible through the Vivo India official website and Flipkart.

The fourth set for Disney's tabletop card game,, has been announced and is arriving soon with new cards, and an entirely new way to play the game in solo or cooperative play. With this next chapter in the game, called, even more franchise characters are joining the fray, with cards from and more. As the third set,, introduced the new game mechanics of Locations to the game, will also have "," although specifics have not been released.

Epic Games has detailed its upcoming pricing changes for Unreal Engine, and in doing so has kept its promise to keep the situation the same for game developers.

Capcom has gotten candid about the issue of the $ 70 retail game.

Dragon’s Dogma 2 is the first Capcom game priced $70, but it sounds like there’s more to come.

After months of anticipation, OnePlus has finally launched its latest smartphone, the OnePlus 12 series in India at its ‘Smooth Beyond Belief' event. The series debuts with two models - flagship OnePlus 12, and the more affordable OnePlus 12R. The OnePlus 12 series was already launched in China on December 5 and has made its global debut today. It also marks the first time that OnePlus is selling the ‘R' model outside Chinese and Indian markets. From features, specifications to price, know all about the new OnePlus 12.

Yes, Paradox Interactive has increased the price of its expansion subscription to Europa Universalis 4 in multiple regions, but not to the extent some players were worried about.

Ever since the artificial intelligence (AI) revolution began, Microsoft has been on a mission to incorporate artificial intelligence (AI) into its suite of products such as Microsoft 365, Microsoft Edge, Microsoft Office, and Windows. As part of its efforts to create an AI-assisted future, the tech giant in recent months has unveiled a vast range of products and services that leverage the power of AI, including Bing Chat, Microsoft's very own AI chatbot. All these AI services have been brought under one brand - Microsoft Copilot. Now, the Redmond-based tech giant has launched Copilot Pro, opening up the AI assistant to consumers, as well as making it available to smaller companies without any minimum purchase restrictions.

is an upcoming RPG from the mind of Akira Toriyama, creator of and longtime character designer for the series. It's based on a 14-chapter manga originally released in 2000, but it's not the only upcoming adaptation: following a CGI film last year, there's also a streaming series scheduled for late 2024. The manga and film have all the hallmarks of Toriyama's work: singular character design, off-the-wall humor, and epic battles.

The third card set for has been revealed. Titled , the upcoming expansion for the TCG will be releasing early next year. New cards, special sets, and accessories have also been officially revealed, and for the first time ever, Location cards will be coming to, allowing players' glimmers to visit popular locales from Disney's properties.

Sign up for the GI Daily here to get the biggest news straight to your inbox

Sign up for the GI Daily here to get the biggest news straight to your inbox

Today, GameMaker announced a massive change to the pricing for its game development engine that will make it far more accessible to indie game developers and hobbyists. It’ll also allow anyone creating a game with the engine to make their title profitable sooner.

Sony will face a mass lawsuit in the United Kingdom that could cost them up to £5 billion ($7.9 billion). The lawsuit was filed on August 19, 2022 by Alex Neill, a renowned champion of consumer rights and co-founder of Consumer Voice, on behalf of the 8.9 million PlayStation consumers located in the UK.

Over the years, various social media platforms have opted for the subscription model. They are looking to monetize as large a proportion of their users as is possible and for that, they are willing to go the extra mile in providing other, more useful, services and value-adds. Now, a new ad-free subscription plan is being considered by platforms like Snapchat, having already rolled out the Snapchat Plus subscription tier and the carrot that it is dangling is to allow these subscribers to get an ad-free service. However, the question that might arise in your mind is, will users be willing to pay more for ad-free viewing? The jury is still out on that. Check out what the new Snapchat subscription plans say.

Sony will be going to UK court over allegations of ripping off consumers with its PlayStation Store. 

Unity have said that they expect to lay off staff in the coming months, following the engine maker’s catastrophic rollout of their new pricing plan earlier this year and as they turn towards a more “focused” offering, including the likes of AI, for growth.

GPU silly season continues with a new round of claims from serial 'leak' outlet Moore's Law is Dead. This time it's the pricing and full specs for Nvidia's rumoured RTX 40 Super GPUs.

Konami and Genvid Entertainment’s interactive horror streaming series Silent Hill: Ascension premieres Tuesday — on Halloween night — and for the next 16 weeks, viewers will decide the fates of its characters and influence Silent Hill canon through their choices. A new trailer for Silent Hill: Ascension helps to better explain how the interactive series works and how much it will cost.

Roblox, the popular online gaming platform, is set to modify its User-Generated Content (UGC) program by implementing a new pricing model for avatar bodies and heads. This change, aimed at "boosting creator earnings," will put an end to the era of free avatar customization on the platform.

Mortal Kombat 1 players have hit back at a new Halloween-themed DLC fatality that has a horrifying price tag: $10.

PC games giant Valve is no longer going to be supporting local currency in both Argentina and Turkey.

Valve is making changes to Steam pricing in Argentina and Turkey that will see game sales in those countries switched from their local currencies—the Argentine peso and Turkish lira—to US dollars. The change is being made to address «exchange rate volatility» that Valve says has made it difficult for developers to set and maintain prices for their games.

NVIDIA has confirmed via its Customer Help page that GeForce NOW pricing is set to increase in Europe and Canada starting on November 1st.

Unity's audacious plan to charge developers for the privilege of players installing their games has hit an unforeseen snag, with the announcement that CEO and architect of the scheme, John Riccitiello, will conveniently be retiring, effective immediately.

With the seventh Season of Overwatch 2 finally dropping, players are getting a look at the new cosmetics. While some are available through the Battle Pass, some free and others not, many skins are only available through the digital store. Advertised alongside the new Season was a Diablo 4 crossover, except it’s not exactly cheap. Overwatch 2 players are upset about the Season 7 exclusive skin bundle’s pricing, and complaining about it online.

Unity CEO John Riccitiello has retired — effective immediately, as of Monday — as president, chief executive officer, chairman, and member of the company’s board of directors, according to a news release from the game engine developer. The move comes weeks after the disastrous announcement of Unity’s new “Runtime Fee” pricing model attracted widespread condemnation across the game development community, and necessitated a swift climbdown from the company.

Nintendo revealed last week that it was teaming up with Lego to create Animal Crossing sets, in line with its previous Super Mario Bros. and Donkey Kong sets. Now, the company has released a new trailer for the Animal Crossing x Lego collaboration, alongside the official reveal of five Lego sets, their prices, and the release date. 

It was confirmed yesterday (Monday, October 9) that Unity's president, CEO, chairman, and member of the company's board of directors, John Riccitiello, is retiring from his roles, effective immediately. This comes just weeks after the company announced its controversial Runtime Fee for certain users of its game engine — a decision that’s received significant backlash from developers.

Unity has announced the departure of its CEO John Riccitiello, just weeks after the company became mired in controversy following hugely unpopular changes to its engine pricing model.

John Riccitiello, CEO of Unity, has resigned from the company in the wake of a pricing controversy that left developers in open revolt.

is the second set of cards coming to the popular trading card game from Ravensburger. Following up from, Set 2 of the TCG already has a release date for later this year. This second set will feature over 200 new cards, which can be acquired through booster packs, starter decks, a new gift set, and a new Illumineer's Trove that's focused on characters.

Epic Games founder, CEO, and primary stakeholder Tim Sweeney took the stage at this year's Unreal Fest, hosted this week in New Orleans, to provide more context and details on the recent mass layoffs that affected the company. In a video grabbed by Fortnite creator and shared on Twitter (X), Sweeney admitted that even if the engineering teams were barely affected, there might be a degradation of quality in some of the future work. He also revealed when exactly Epic became aware that it had significant financial problems.

A week after laying off almost 900 employees, Epic Games announced that it's increasing the price to use Unreal Engine—just not for the game development community.

By Mia Sato, platforms and communities reporter with five years of experience covering the companies that shape technology and the people who use their tools.

After Unity announced, then modified, then re-announcened its new Runtime fee program, the video game development community wanted to know how and why this disastrous roll-out happened. In addition to the letter Unity Create president Marc Whitten published on Friday, he also held a live fireside chat on YouTube in which he addressed some of the community’s biggest questions and concerns.

After facing quite a bit of backlash and criticisms for its recent monetisation update, the company behind the ubiquitous Unity engine has released a new updated plan for monetisation going forward, along with an open letter to its community explaining the changes.

Ten days after Unity successfully enraged huge swathes of the development community by announcing sweeping, and wildly unpopular, changes to its Unity Engine business model, the company has said it's «sorry» and walked back on significant aspects of its new pricing plan.

After two weeks of chaos, Unity Create president Marc Whitten has a message: “I’m sorry.”

By Ash Parrish, a reporter who has covered the business, culture, and communities of video games for seven years. Previously, she worked at Kotaku.

Unity has proven to be a popular video game engine. This engine also has proven to be quite popular for newcomers to the video game industry. As a result, we have seen quite a few indie games launch through Unity. However, this month was quite rocky for the engine as a new pricing policy was being implemented. Called the Unity Runtime Fee, the outrage that came with the policy spread online with protests and calling out Unity developers to change their engines or even delist their games.

The BIT.TRIP series was a WiiWare staple and one of the first franchises that went from the Wii to PC pretty seamlessly. In the case of Runner, it has been the most-enduring of the BIT.TRIP games – getting two follow-ups and now a remake. However, while the first game had an almost Atari 2600-esque art style alongside more color gradience than would be possible then for its backgrounds, it was a simple-looking game – but one that could run on pretty much anything. The sequels featured fully 3D character models and environments and that same art style is brought back now for the remake – offering a completely different visual experience.

By Ash Parrish, a reporter who has covered the business, culture, and communities of video games for seven years. Previously, she worked at Kotaku.

Unity has apologised to developers for “confusion and angst” caused by its proposed new pricing structure that sought to charge game creators a fee every time their game was installed, promising that changes will be made - but without suggesting that it would pull away completely from implementing the much-criticised plans.

Unity Technologies will make changes to its wildly unpopular install-based fee policy, the company said Sunday in a post on the platform formerly known as Twitter. The update comes days after Unity announced plans for a new pricing structure, which would add a fee for developers after every install once a revenue and download threshold was met.

When game engine company Unity announced a change to its pricing plan last week, the response from developers was overwhelmingly negative. The change would mean developers would be charged an increasing fee as they crossed set thresholds every time their games were installed. It was called, among plenty of other things, «an astonishing scumbag move».

By Ash Parrish, a reporter who has covered the business, culture, and communities of video games for seven years. Previously, she worked at Kotaku.

Mobile game developers and publishers, with hundreds of games and millions of installs, are protesting Unity’s new controversial install-based pricing model by turning off ad monetization services for their games. In an open letter published on Azur Games’ and other company’s blogs, the companies are turning off all ironSource and Unity Ads features, two services Unity offers to developers to monetize their games. They’ll turn these services back on when Unity reviews and reverses its new policy, which has developers across the entire industry upset.

Filed under:

By Ash Parrish, a reporter who has covered the business, culture, and communities of video games for seven years. Previously, she worked at Kotaku.

In the wake of its hugely controversial engine pricing changes, Unity has closed a number of its offices over what it has called a «potential threat».

Unity staff have been sent threats in the wake of the controversial unveiling of a new pricing structure for Unity games. The company has now closed several of its offices to protect employees, and a law enforcement investigation is underway.

Earlier this week, Unity announced that from 2024 it will start charging developers for the number of downloads / installs of their games.

Developer Massive Monster has stated that, thanks to Unity’s recently-announced new pricing model, the studio will be deleting Cult of the Lamb from Steam on January 1. While the studio might be joking with the announcement, a similar sentiment has been shared by other studios as well thanks to the overwhelmingly negative response garnered by Unity Engine’s new policies.

Indie game developers are up in arms over changes to Unity's pricing system that will see them charged on a per-install basis once certain thresholds are met. The developers say the changes could end up costing them more than their games will ever actually make, and worse, leaves them vulnerable to abuse and impacts their ability to take part in game giveaways, bundles, and and even subscription services like Game Pass.

By Ash Parrish, a reporter who has covered the business, culture, and communities of video games for seven years. Previously, she worked at Kotaku.

AMD's gaming graphics supremo, Scott Herkelman, has been expounding the virtues of the company's new Radeon RX 7700 XT and 7800 XT GPUs, characterising their pricing as «super aggressive».

In a move no one wanted, Sony announced they were increasing the cost of all three tiers of Playstation Plus, despite not announcing any additional benefits to the program than what we currently enjoy. The rates will take effect for all users upon renewal of their current subscription. So hopefully you all have stacked up, or can wait until you see a good sale.

Take-Two has chalked up another body in the GTA modding scene, and barely a week after Rockstar turned heads by buying up the FiveM mod makers. This time the victim was the creator of Sentient Streets, the AI mod that allowed you to chat with, cajole and extort the NPCs of Los Santos that we covered last week. Rockstar's parent company was none too happy with it, apparently, so all trace of it has now been blasted from the internet.

Apple, by all accounts, is TSMC’s most lucrative client, which would mean that both entities would draft and sign exclusive deals that would not be available to any other company, with a recent report claiming that any defective 3nm wafers would not be billed to Apple, saving it billions. However, one analyst has refuted these claims, stating that the company is billed according to the finished goods.

Red Dead Redemption publisher Take-Two Interactive lifted the lid on all of the remaster/remake rumors earlier this week, revealing a PS4 and Nintendo Switch port that has gone down like a lead balloon with the fanbase. On top of the general disappointment that the port will be locked to 30fps, will have no graphical improvements, and will have the multiplayer stripped out, the asking price has been a big topic of debate, as Take-Two is asking fans part with $49.99/£39.99 if they want to play Red Dead Redemption on PS4 or Switch.

Trying to sort winners from losers as artificial-intelligence spreads through the economy? The stock market already is, and it goes way beyond Nvidia Corp. and Microsoft Corp.

A reliable insider has leaked the pricing options for the recently-revealed Spider-Man 2 limited edition PS5, DualSense, and faceplates for both the digital and regular PS5.

Samsung's fifth-generation foldables are finally here and it is the Galaxy Z Flip 5 that is likely to steal the limelight with its new Flex Window. On the other hand, the Galaxy Z Fold 5 only brings incremental upgrades on paper such as the new Flex Hinge and a faster processor. But that isn't likely to stop buyers from purchasing Samsung's flagship foldable smartphones.