Thanks to new tariffs, many more physical game discs may “simply not get made”

Analysts also warn that tariffs could increase prices for game software and hardware.

See full article...

 

[Mechjaz]

Man... most of the raw materials of the ammo are from elsewhere... brass for the casing (US imports 50% of the copper it consumes, and 87% of the zinc), raw materials for the gunpowder inside, and the lead/copper casings for the bullet itself...

I was gonna say something like that. The second amendment is plated with Canadian nickel, you self defeating idiots.

It's been 6 weeks. What the absolute fuck is going on

 

[Sjoerd Verweij]

The previous administration got railed by COVID and, to a lesser extent, the war in Ukraine. After the pandemic fuckery calmed down inflation rates returned to the realm of normal, though they're a bit higher than pre pandemic still.

Current administration is fucking us out of spite, pettiness, or, most likely, so that their business friends can raise their prices by 25% and then not lower them once the tariffs end.

The two parties are not the same.

It's getting a little old at this point, people blaming Democratic administrations for cleaning up the Republican-caused shitshows they walked into.

 

[Juvba Fnakix]

You're arguing the value of an item when it's in a shipping container is zero because it can't be sold and that tariffs should be on that zero value, but then the item gains value once it's on the store shelves and can be sold.

Very best of luck in your future dealings with the tax man.

Software and music companies have been arguing for years that you are buying a license along with the physical medium. (The license allows listening to the music at home, but not at a club. Installation on one machine, not two, ...) I can have thousands of disks printed, packaged and delivered in bulk for a relatively small amount of money. I can point at an invoice for a truck load of disks to back up my valuation. I then wave a fake magic wand and add a license to each of those disks. They suddenly gain extra value that never crossed a border. A valid argument along these lines should be well within the ability of a competent lawyer.

 

[Sjoerd Verweij]

Imagine if Obama actually kept his promises and we saw ACTION from him, rather than just another establishment politician.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affordable_Care_Act

Sorry, a little flippant... ACA, Dodd-Frank, pushed Obergefell, Paris accord, brokered nuke deal with Iran, withdrew militarily from Iraq, drew down from Afghanistan, killed bin Laden and al-Anwalaki, overthrew Khadaffi, new START agreement, started sanctions on Russia, FTA with SK and Colombia, DACA, Ledbetter, shrank the deficit, oh, and pulled the country out of a recession that was losing the economy a million jobs a month when he came in.

I already posted the What Have The Romans Done For Us skit yesterday, so I won't do it again and risk pissing off the mods... but imagine it here.

 

[HiroTheProtagonist]

I was gonna say something like that. The second amendment is plated with Canadian nickel, you self defeating idiots.

It's been 6 weeks. What the absolute fuck is going on

My theory is that the people cheering for this clusterfuck must be under the assumption that America is going to revert to early 20th-century imperialism where we just invade places to get resources. To hell with soft power and diplomacy, they want blood.

 

[scrimbul]

people just don't understand how globalized our economy these days

The USA is about to get a crash course in economics and inflation on 'No single country can produce an iPhone on its own'.

I just hope the right people are blamed for it.

 

[killerhurtalot]

The USA is about to get a crash course in economics and inflation on 'No single country can produce an iPhone on its own'.

I just hope the right people are blamed for it.

I mean.... a single country can probably produce it... it would just probably cost like $10k a phone instead of $1k...

 

[DoubleBaconCheeseburger]

I should probably point out that this may not apply equally to all console manufacturers and/or publishers. From my understanding, Sony actually produces their game discs for the US market in Austria and then ships them back to the US to that Indiana plant mentioned in the linked article when it was brought up how disc manufacturing used to exist in the US for final assembly (which also handles packaging manufacturing as well).

It could be possible that shifting the packaging manufacturing and final assembly parts of production to the US could lessen the impact since the costs to produce the discs and packaging isn’t really all that high to begin with compared to how much the final product is sold for.

At that Indiana plant, back in the early 2000s, they used to replicate discs on premises.

 

[Urist]

Yep! and I'm happy with my choice. Do you actually think that anyone that voted for Trump is gonna see that less of an already obsolete thing is gonna get made and then feel regret?

I certainly don't. It's already years since I bought anything that came on a disk.

You mean like medicaid, social security, civil service, the VA, a functioning economy, democracy... idk if id call any of those "already obsolete" but I'm sure you'll enjoy your dystopian oligarchic dictatorship without physical game media!

 

[Zephro]

So the administration's position seems to be "Tariffs will make America great again! But we might exempt cars and video games because, err, we don't want to be too great if we can avoid it..."

 

[mozbo]

Recent history has shown, time and again, that you don’t own anything you buy digitally. I’ll continue buying physical releases until I literally have no option.

I do the same for anything I want to keep long-term. (That's mostly music.)

I only buy digital for limited-use stuff. E.g. games I'll play through and be done with, and kids' stuff I know they'll outgrow.

 

[ackmondual]

Recent history has shown, time and again, that you don’t own anything you buy digitally. I’ll continue buying physical releases until I literally have no option.

For me, price is my main criteria. I've noticed that after decades and decades of gaming... I have no desire to play most (say.. 99%) of what I played previously. A big issue of time being the bottleneck. There's only so much time I have for gaming (even at times, it was my primary hobby!). I also don't have the space for it.

For example, I was initially bummed that my Famicom and its games were gone, but TBH, it saves me the space of having to keep them around. I guess I could've gotten some money from them, but it's also a hassle to sell these things. I still have my SNES, GB, and a bunch of games at my parents' place.

When I had to move 2,500 miles, I opted to ship everything and then fly myself to the destination because I didn't want to drive cross country (let alone with a trailer hitch or Uhaul). NOT having a large physical collection of games was nice! On the Wii side, I had the console, a dozen+ games, and accessories (Wii-motes, pro controller, cables). On the Switch side, I had its accessories (cables, docking station, Pro Controller, Joy Con strap), and 6 (six) physical games! I took the Switch console/handheld with me when I flew.

I still kept my old iPad, Ipod Touch 3 and 4, and several old Android phones, but those are flat and/or tiny and took up very minimal amount of space. However, I ended up giving those away anyways (I had a bunch of games that never survived the "app-colpyse" and Android updates, but I ended up never going back to most of them).

I get what you're saying, but it's still (functionally) wrong. You still don't own jack whenever or wherever there's a EULA, such as the one for the online services needed to do most things online. And considering how games are usually launched broken on disk and need a day one patch to be half playable more often than not now, the disk is more or less useless by itself even for single player only games.

With forced online requirement and day one patches on anything, the physical medium is pretty useless.

This is a neat site where you can do a search on a game and for what platform, and it'll tell you how playable it is "out of the box", without having to resort to updates/patches...
https://www.doesitplay.org/

 

[Lord Evermore]

Because OBVIOUSLY they couldn't just make the digital version cost less and simply say "you're being charged for the physical media" because then they'd have to explain publicly again how "but you still don't OWN the software and we can disable it if we want".

 

[David Mayer]

The last administration promised to help lower costs and it got worse. This administration is promising to help costs and so far, it's getting worse. All I know is, I hear a lot of promises on the campaign trail and the Oval Office, and every month my cost of living increases.

The last administration promised to bring inflation under control and they did:

 

[David Mayer]

Friendly reminder that there are so many videogames out there that even if no more were ever made, like, ever, a couple of quick downloads and you'll have more games than you could play in several lifetimes that all run on free emulators.

You know that BotW/TotK business you like? Get you one of those sub-$100 Anbernic devices and download Link's Awakening, Oracle of Seasons, and Oracle of Ages. If you're a real masochist, you can even play Link to the Past or the very first Legend of Zelda. Those random characters after "Final Fantasy"? They're actually numbers, and that same cheap handheld console can play the first nine of them without breaking a sweat.

Friendly reminder that instead of demanding good policy from your leaders you can just suffer with shitty alternatives.

 

[Psychophant]

I'm so confused. The cost of the media itself is really low. Like, tariffs are bad and all, but in this instance I'd expect an enterprising lawyer to argue that the tariff should be charged based on the cost of blank media. You could also imagine some financial engineering so that the value of the disks as they cross the border is near zero, but once unpacked from a shipping container and distributed to stores, the MSRP is similarish to what it is now.

I agree. The value is in the license to use the software. An audio cd might get hit at full value, but software should be charged at rate of the cost of physical goods.

 

[David Mayer]

better for the environment

Only in a vacuum, the money saved by consumers who use the resale market increases the velocity of money which is good for the economy and potentially a net positive for the environment.

 

[Mechjaz]

lol. Take notes. This is what change looks like. Voted for it. Getting it. I'm happy.

Imagine if Obama actually kept his promises and we saw ACTION from him, rather than just another establishment politician.

You did realize that not all change is good, right? If I burned down the place where you live, would that be good because it was a change? Are school shootings good because they're change from kids being in school to learn? What's the line?

How about ruining our standing on the world stage, destroying credibility cultivated over a hundred years and already diminished by our perpetual hard-on for forever wars under lies and pretexts? How about bizarre protectionism what was going out of vogue 75 years ago and is absolute gibbering nonsense in the global economy? How about rapists, drunks, and anti-science hucksters running some of the most key positions in the United States? You do know that a Republican Senate stymied many, many of Obama's initiatives, right? Where was the change then?

I'm writing all of this out to avoid getting modded for saying what I actually want to say, which is go fuck yourself and learn some critical thinking. If the best you can come up with is "I voted for someone to destroy America at the behest of Soviet/Russian propaganda because three presidents ago that guy didn't do as much as I thought he should," you're delusional, an idiot, or both. I'm so fucking sick of people coming out of the woodwork to cheer for "change" as we collapse into a singularity of corrupt self-dealing clinging to disproven-because-it-was-made-up economic "theory" of a few extremely rich people being good for the country and society in it.

Get fired from your job. Lose your home, go hungry, get your car repossessed. There's some change for you.

Edit: his initiatives -> Obama's initiatives. Got on a tear and forgot we're not telepathic.

 

[Ubersoldat19]

lol. Take notes. This is what change looks like. Voted for it. Getting it. I'm happy.

Imagine if Obama actually kept his promises and we saw ACTION from him, rather than just another establishment politician.

Obama also didn't pull down his pants and shit all over the constitution.

 

[David Mayer]

What? People still buy games on disks or any physical media, really?

Sold all my physical media over a decade ago, that is CDs, DVDs and games. Not looked back. No more racks of stuff that never got used collecting dust, the world has moved on

Just glad I am on the other side of the planet to the shitshow in the US though lol

Just glad I am on the other side of the planet to the shitshow in the US though lol

You seriously think you're immune to the consequences of these policies because you are physically distant from the US? What mechanism could provide such immunity?

 

[mozbo]

I'm so confused. The cost of the media itself is really low. Like, tariffs are bad and all, but in this instance I'd expect an enterprising lawyer to argue that the tariff should be charged based on the cost of blank media. You could also imagine some financial engineering so that the value of the disks as they cross the border is near zero, but once unpacked from a shipping container and distributed to stores, the MSRP is similarish to what it is now.

I expect there will be legal games played. Like burning the discs and/or printing labels and/or creating the packaging in Mexico, but doing final assembly in the U.S.

Edit: ninja'ed by MysteryMii215. Dang you.

 

[DrewW]

Man... most of the raw materials of the ammo are from elsewhere... brass for the casing (US imports 50% of the copper it consumes, and 87% of the zinc), raw materials for the gunpowder inside, and the lead/copper casings for the bullet itself...

Look, all y'all squishy coastal e-l33ts need to get with the program and raise your own chickens, mine your own copper/zinc, smelt your own brass, and plant a saltpeter tree; it's not that hard. Civilization has made you soft. /s

 

[xcodemustdie]

lol. Take notes. This is what change looks like. Voted for it. Getting it. I'm happy.

You're happy to be poorer, well congrats I guess

For some reason right wing parties have the reputation that they are better for the economy even though its factually wrong
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._economic_performance_by_presidential_party

Heres trump saying the very thing a couple of decades ago

Of course one can't believe anything he saiz but still, it's hilarious

 

[Coriolanus]

Well, if there's one demographic that is totally okay with increased prices, it's the gamers. They will be totally fine with it.

 

[Alexstarfire]

I was gonna say something like that. The second amendment is plated with Canadian nickel, you self defeating idiots.

It's been 6 weeks. What the absolute fuck is going on

IDK, all I see is sand.

 

[Sajuuk]

I feel like yall got bigger problems now than video games

Bread and circus

Egg and game

 

[theSeb]

Add me to the other poster who does not understand why the tariff would be on the full value of the game. I thought the tariff's were on the added value portion of an import. That is more than the physical media (e.g. labor, local SG&A, and capital equipment depreciation) but it would be way less than the retail package's cost. I expect there is a declared value-add that the tariff applies to.

I suppose I could be wrong but that would make no sense to me. My (American) factory sends some partially finished goods to Mexico for a factory there (that we also own) to add work and send those back. I do not expect the tariff to apply to whatever value we created in the American factory.

Businesses will use any excuse to hike prices and every excuse to not lower them once that issue that caused the hike is resolved.

 

[mmiller7]

You motherfuckers voted for this. Including those of you who stayed home that day.

I sure didn't, but seems too many others didn't care and couldn't see the obvious in front of them

 

[David Mayer]

I appreciate what you're going for here, but that chart pretty clearly shows that the instantaneous rate of increase in prices increased and remained in an elevated, though decreasing, state. The sample period shown has a trend line with a positive slope, even if the magnitude of that slope is small.

It also completely ignores the other side of the situation, which is the ability of households and firms to offset those costs because of changes to income. Both parts of that discussion are equally important, and neither much matters without the other.

The first half of the chart is the result of the previous four years of harmful policy, the second half of the chart is the miraculous result of combating the damage done before.

 

[Granadico]

Video game prices is pretty on the importance hierarchy in the grand scheme of this country going down the shitter before our eyes, but damn if it's not depressing for my main hobby. I've already figured that the next generation or two would be the last for physical games, and that whenever that happens I'm quitting buying most games that aren't indie on GOG or something. It looks like that timeline is rapidly accelerating sadly (if the country is even in a state where I can play video games without worrying about hunger or war etc)

 

[Dogs in a Pile]

Well, Americans, you voted for this (or didn't vote, or "protest" voted). Enjoy!

GFY
I didn't vote for this, nor did 75,017,612 other Americans.

 

[David Mayer]

GFY
I didn't vote for this, nor did 75,017,612 other Americans.

Fair, the time for voting has passed, for the foreseeable future if you do nothing, what are you doing now?

 

[Heart of Dawn]

If you ship the disc in three parts, do you have to pay a tariff on each part?

It's still better than this

 

[Lorentz of Suburbia]

Recent history has shown, time and again, that you don’t own anything you buy digitally. I’ll continue buying physical releases until I literally have no option.

Same. With four gamers under one roof, I enjoy not paying for four licenses when we have one disc we can pass around when not playing, or pass on when one of us has beaten it. That goes for online-multiplayer games when we only ever play with our own peeps.

Not sure subsequent replies you got that tried to refute "ownership" with "EULA" and "ships broken and needs a patch" when none of that hand-waving changes my previous paragraph. Possibly they live alone and assume everyone else goes too.

 

[Sjoerd Verweij]

You mean like medicaid, social security, civil service, the VA, a functioning economy, democracy... idk if id call any of those "already obsolete" but I'm sure you'll enjoy your dystopian oligarchic dictatorship without physical game media!

Forgot the utter destruction of science, the arts, soft power AND local economic stimulus through foreign aid, making the entire world debate whether to laugh or vomit at our idiocy, erasing about a century in human rights for anyone not white, Christian and male, making sure there will be hundreds of thousands slaughtered in the Middle East and Ukraine and that there will be absolutely no end to those conflicts for decades to come, tanking general goodwill towards and faith in US business from consumer to weaponry to anything else to the point it will softly and slightly cost trillions in lost business over the next few decades,

I'm sorry, I could do this for a few hours, I'm about to pass out from the sheer blinkering idiocy of it all, I'll leave it at that.