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Bethesda inflated the price of Skyrim Legendary Edition prior to Steam sale

Posted By: Peter Parrish June 25, 2016

Skyrim Dragonborn DLC coming to PC next month

In what appears to be a blatant effort to take advantage of people looking for a cheap version of Skyrim: Legendary Edition on PC (and qualifying for a ‘free’ upgrade to the Special Edition), Bethesda inflated the price ahead of the Steam sale.

Technically speaking, it was even more devious than that. Perhaps in an effort to avoid another run-in with the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority (which eventually cleared Bethesda of similar shenanigans with Wolfenstein: The New Order in the 2015 Steam summer sale), the version of Skyrim: Legendary Edition currently on sale through Steam is (semantically speaking) a different one.

The prior version, listed in this pricing database for $40.00 USD (some $25.00 cheaper than the pre-discount listing for the present version) actually no longer exists on Steam. Bethesda’s current version of Skyrim: Legendary Edition is now a ‘bundle’ of the regular game and the individual DLCs, rather than a single title.

It’s exactly the same, content-wise, but it allows the publisher to re-list the game at an inflated price, and exploit those who want to get in on the Legendary Edition before the Special Edition update shows up. So, rather than the Legendary Edition being on sale for $10.00 as it was just six months ago on Steam, it’ll instead cost you almost $27.00; and no doubt more in Europe.

All (probably) nice and legal, thanks to the “no no, it’s a bundle now” dodge. But all rather unpleasant from a customer’s point of view.

Update: It’s been noted that the $65.00 price listing is the cost for buying everything individually before the new ‘bundle’ discount, so the total price under this new format would presumably be $43.71 outside of a sale (assuming you always get the bundle discount for buying in bulk). That’s worth making clear. But that would still represent a near 10% base mark-up over the prior Legendary Edition; even though the ‘double’ percentage reduction tries to make it look like an amazing deal. The real discount here is closer to 33%, but the price shenanigans means it can be shown as both 39 and 59%.

Thanks to reader DrearierSpider for initially bringing this to our attention.



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Comments

  • john

    Scumbags. Call of duty games do this all the time, though they don’t bother changing the listing.

    • nige111

      No, they just never drop the price to begin with.

      • gibson707

        I feel like the first Modern Warfare is still $20

      • john

        Wrong. Look up a price chart. They drop them obscenely slowly yes, but also still do what I said.

  • Herb Sensai

    Shady

  • Tyler Watson

    I can already see the hatred train chugging by quick. Harsh move. But smart in a devious fashion. Take advantage of sales, the business can use that to their own advantage.

  • ThatGuyFromThatPlace

    It only makes sense, otherwise people would buy the legendary edition just because they know the new version is coming out, and get a huge discount, its not shady, it’s stopping other people from finding loopholes

    • Dooshe Nozzle

      Or, you know, keep the same packageid, and just don’t put it on as deep of a discount – then you still get all your extra money from the new people who somehow don’t own the game 5 years after its release… and you don’t look like massive twats about it.

      • Zomby2D

        The new package is actually cheaper (by $0.36) than the old one, so nothing shady going on here. And that’s exactly what they did, not provide as big a discount this time around. The author of this article just failed at math.

    • -El_Greeko-

      Loopholes, shnoopholes… It’s simply idiotic to even defend this practice. I don’t care if they are giving the PC version away for free. It simply wouldn’t say on PC, and it would make the console versions dead as well. They are giving it away for free because modded Skyrim is simply better, and with it being better in every way, people (including modders) wouldn’t move to the Remastered Edition. That’s the reason why they are giving it away. Because they want people to make mods for consoles, because we all know they don’t give a fuck about the PC. It’s been proven time and time again.

      Fallout 4 is so bad THAT THE GTX 1080 GETS DROPS BELOW 60FPS with everything on Ultra at 1080p. TEN FUCKING EIGHTY P!! The game looks like shit, runs like shit, and is a mediocre game.

      They still haven’t fix the GPU usage problem, where players’ GPU usage is at less than 50% and they are getting 25fps. Simply ridiculous. Fuck Bethesda (the dev team, not the publisher).

      EDIT: Also, it is shady. It is 100% shady. Steam sales aren’t obligatory. They could’ve just not go on “sale”. But no… They purposefully inflated the price to deceive customers into thinking they were buying at a discounted price. What a bunch of scumfucks.

      • The Phase Warrior

        I don’t get why they even bother trying to get people to mod their shitty games on console, console modding is virtually non-existant as far as I’ve heard. Why try to convince your customers to do something that gets harder and harder to actually do with each console that gets released when they can just mod on PC and have it be easy for them? It’s so fucking stupid, I hate companies that act like this.

  • Amir

    Disgusting but nice that you are covering these types of shady practices, most gaming websites now days are busy licking publisher’s ba**s.

    • Zomby2D

      Too bad the price wasn’t really hiked but actually lowered a few cents by use of the new bundle system. Maybe they should actually check their facts before “reporting” those kind of things.

      • Amir

        ok bethesda. it’s still not legendary edition.

        • Zomby2D

          It’s 100% the same content as the Legendary Edition, but a few cents cheaper. Plus, as a bonus, since it now uses the bundle system you’re only paying for what you’re missing from the pack instead of paying for the whole thing and “wasting” part of it.

  • Wrex

    First they turn Fallout 4 into an FPS, then they give us shitty minecraft DLC and now this. Bethesda better change their attitude soon or they are gonna be losing players by the thousands. Utterly disgusting practices.

    • -El_Greeko-

      Not to mention that they continue to fuck PC players over. Fallout 4 is yet another shithole full of problems, specially on PC. Things that not even an indie dev would dare have on a PC game. Mouse acceleration in 2016? Vertical sensibility being faster than horizontal, WHAT? No support for any aspect ratio other than 16:9 (I think it supports other aspect ratios now, but it didn’t on release), no FOV slider, fps cap even though they stated there was no fps cap and a shit-ton of other problems.

      Their quality is so far below the triple A quality expected that this wouldn’t slide easily on an indie dev. But since they are Bethesda, it slides perfectly fine.

    • Makes me happy that lot of people see F4 as a fail game. They’re covering washed out world with retarded in-game activities.. I am worried about next Elder Scrolls.. Really worried.

  • MG Sumner

    Does anyone honestly believe that the revamped edition of skyrim will be better than using the magnificent array of nexus mods. No, I’m not buying the Legendary edition for this thrill ride that will underwhelm.

    • Blaise Frazier

      It will have a 64-bit engine, which means it can use a hell of a lot more memory, which means less CTDs and greater flexibility when using a huge amount of magnificent nexus mods.

    • Yep! The new version of Creation does things that were literally impossible to do even with heavy modding in the original version of Creation.

    • waswat

      Doubt there’s gonna be much stopping you from having mods on the remastered edition; so as the others have pointed out “why not both?”

  • Jason Mounce

    And yet their biggest fans don’t mind being fucked in the ass and continue buying their broken shit – while they know they can get away with halfassing their games cause they’ll just rely on the modders, and now they know they can get away with re-releasing the same game to the console fans who’re sheep.

  • Yeltnerb1

    Of course they did. Bethesda Studio’s last three games have been all “copy and paste” anyway.

  • CalH

    I knew I should’ve just spent $3.75 more on the Legendary Edition in last year’s summer sale…

    • Morpayne RADIO

      get rekt

  • Martin

    Zionmax.

  • Em_ptySkin

    Oh, how these companies fear the economics of infrastructure.

  • Blackles

    Correction on the update: The bundle has a base discount of 39%, that makes the regular price of it $39.63 not $43.71. So in fact the change of format actually saves you a few cents as well (along with the general benefits of it being a bundle).

  • ThaAppleMan

    Yeah this was done when the special edition was revealed, so yeah it was before the sale. But it was also a while ago…

  • Pec

    Isn’t this a violation of consumer protection laws in places like Australia and Europe?

    • Paul Younger

      In the UK. the law is that a product has to stay at the same price for at least a month before it can be discounted as far as I know.

      • Elilla Shadowheart

        It’s illegal in Canada as well. 30 days is the same I believe. Canucks should file a complaint with the competition bureau.

  • killersteak

    I only needed one dlc, Dawnguard. Alone it’s $18.74, 25%off. I bought the Legendary edition instead to get Dawnguard, $11.43. Now Legendary is missing from existence, and the comparative bundle is $36.49 USD. That’s pretty dodgy. Please stop making excuses for them, they pay PR to take care of that, they’re not your friend.

    • Zomby2D

      Except that in the new bundle system, you’re only paying for what you’re missing. If all you were missing was Dawnguard, then the bundle would cost you $9.15 in the current sale.

  • The Phase Warrior

    Now that’s just the definition of greedy. The amount of negative Steam reviews spiked after they did this, hopefully that’ll convince people NOT to buy the bundle. Better to buy the actual legendary edition from somewhere else where it’s cheap, I.E. Amazon

  • Ryan Beta

    No reason they couldn’t be charging the full $60 after the special edition announcement.

    It’s kind of a scummy thing to do but given the other releases are charging full price this doesn’t feel that bad.