Time to start lowering the prices of games.
Compare Steam today to Steam in 2014...and I can probably make an argument that every indie game releasing nowadays is 5-10$ more expensive than it should be.
$15 is the new 10
20 the new 15
30 the new 20
40 the new 30
Valve should strongly recommend every dev a follow a Hollow Knight rule before they release their game.
Basically...is your indie game bigger or better than Hollow Knight? If not then you shouldn't be pricing it higher than 15$
Doesn't help that so many bundles, subscriptions and other deals just make it too difficult to support devs at a high rate.
Honestly I thought Hollow Knight was too cheap for what it was.
I don't think pricing will fix anything though. I think ultimately it comes down to a "simple" matter of supply and demand - there's just so much more supply of great games than people can keep up with.
Making a game is easier and cheaper than ever. Publishing a game is easier than ever.
There's over a hundred interesting games coming out
each month. While old game just don't magically vanish or get worse, but instead get cheaper.
I've bought just over a hundred games this year and only 4 of them were newly released (Yakuza Kiwami 1 & 2, Touhou Luna Nights, Devil May Cry 5). The only other new game I'm planning to get day 1 this year is Digimon.
Next year, I'll probably still not buy significantly more new games and instead buy some of the games I've missed out on this year, or the years before. (And 1 year after release many games are usually already 50-75% off).
At the same time the industry realized their love for GAAS games which are specifically designed to keep people from buying and playing other stuff and instead just play this one game hundreds of hours while continuously spending money, and at the end of the day everyone only has a limited time for entertainment.
And now add Game Pass and other renting services into the mix and people have another avenue of getting tons of games for cheap instead of buying them.
I don't really know if there's even a way to "fix" this though..