You forgot "because COVID", "because licensing fees", "because shareholders". Yes, there is no shortage of scapegoats for the ever-increasing prices. If there weren't a tariff war going on they would blame something else.
All I'm saying - and I will drop it after this - is that yes, we know they love to increase profits, and I assume they were already trying to do that regardless of cover or justification. But for this latest round of hikes we have "They probably would have raised prices anyway, because they've raised prices before" and on the other we can point directly at a specific policy that we know tacked on at least ~35% to their costs, which directly preceded an increase. And while we can definitely hold two ideas in mind simultaneously, in this particular case where cause and effect are pretty damn easy to sort out I think it's worth being crystal clear about the impact people's political choices are having on all of us, even in these ways that are clearly way down the list of things to be worried about. I don't think laying it out clearly in this one instance makes Hasbro any less of a greedy corporation led by a guy named after a dick.
I think what I was trying to respond to that with was essentially that this logic means prices would never go up, because companies would set their prices at the highest possible point right away and could never go up from there. There's -always- a higher price you can get to if you can find the right justification, was my point.
This comes up with book pricing all the time, because if folks knew how much it costs to produce a book, even a digital book, it's an INSANELY good bargain that hasn't gone up in decades. Gaming books in particular are, arguably, brutally underpriced, but if you charge enough to actually make a small profit on your book price the public will take a steaming shit on your head, virtually.
A thing I can't get away with saying most places, is I've been consistently impressed with MCDM's pricing their stuff like they actually put effort into it. And like, I grant, I'm in Colville's ecosystem and have been for a while, but I believe him when he talks about the way his company works on stream, how he pays his own workers and how they pay testers and such. And the reason I believe that is because, so far, every single professional I've seen working with him up to now, including many who also work at WotC and similar places (and several who existed in the part of the AAA video game ecosystem), have nothing but glowing reviews of MCDM's business practice.
A-fucking-men. There's that thing where, every time I talk to comic folks they basically have the story that page rates haven't gone up since the 2000's... and that decade keeps getting further and further away. Shit, I've mentioned elsewhere I recently entered middle class in my early 40s after never making more than 30k previously and due to my cheap hobbies it feels like I'm suddenly a Rockefeller compared to where I was. And still dudes like Musk lose several times my annual paycheck in their couch cushions and won't notice. Hell, one bad health report and even my relative luxury now would go up in smoke.
No doubt! I enjoy the conversation though.
Yup. Our quality of life will only continue to sink as long as we allow there to be an entire class of society that exist only to leech off the system without contributing anything to it. Steph Sterling actually just put up a video about this (specifically about the video game industry and AI) that's worth a watch. It's just catharsis. No new information. But nice to hear someone else rage about an entire section of society that only takes while calling themselves 'job creators.' Fucking scumbags.
Conservatives in every developed nation have spent lifetimes destroying their education systems and gaslighting their (usually religious) base to MAKE SURE that, actually, the people that want everyone to have better lives are the real enemies and not the CEOs with the combined wealth of a medium-size nation.
Don't give them any ideas. I'm sure if they could figure out how to make it work, it'd be instituted tomorrow.
Wolfsbane is a darker tan than Feral, who is much more orangey in comparison. Feral is also a little taller. The heads are similar styles, but Wolfsbane has a more human look. Feral has little to no fur as well.
Feral will make mine. ROM from the first wave as well. That's it for me from these mini-comic waves.