Video games have gotten expensive. 
Post-COVID, the average price for an AAA game is now around $70. 
The trend goes as far back as late-2020, when Take-Two’s NBA 2K21 became the first official new-gen game to hit stores at $70. 
Black Ops 6, Modern Warfare III, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Marvel’s Spider-man 2, Borderlands 4, and countless other titles have since been released at a similar price point. 

There was even the Microsoft controversy a few months ago when the company announced The Outer Worlds 2 would hit the market at $80. This sent fans into a meltdown on social media and Microsoft, embarrassingly, had to walk back the game’s outrageous price tag. 

It’s a sign of a flagging industry, where game prices are high yet so many consumers aren’t willing to pay. 
Luckily, this has led to the rise of ‘forever games’, which are allowing players to keep playing without necessarily throwing boatloads of cash at their PC or console. And these games are only continuing to grow in popularity. 

The Rise of Forever Games

• Live service ‘forever games’ dominate the U.S. video game market and make up 70% of sales 
• Supercell, the company behind Clash of Clans and Brawl Stars, reports over 300 million monthly players 
• Even Old School Runescape, an all-time classic live service game, has just passed 240,000 concurrent players 

A forever game is just what it sounds like: it’s a game that’s, quite literally, intended to play forever. 
As a gamer yourself, you’ve already played these games before. 
We’re talking Fortnite, League of Legends, Minecraft, and all the other games you can think of that have no definitive story or end. 
In most cases, you simply download these types of games for free, enjoy the gameplay, and look forward to new updates getting released each year. 
There’s also a strong focus on a community experience, where players come together in a multiplayer environment, interact with each other, level up, and make in-game purchases like cosmetics and subscriptions (microtransactions are, indeed, what sustains the forever games industry).
It’s something that even the sweepstakes casinos listed on SweepsKings currently do, allowing users to play casino games for free while giving them the option to purchase virtual ‘Sweeps Coins’ and compete for prizes. 
This, in a nutshell, is what a forever game is. Once it’s yours, you play forever, or until you feel like you’ve squeezed as much juice as you possibly can from it. 
And in a timeline where traditional video games are more expensive than ever, it’s not surprising that millions of gamers are hooked on them. 

Gamers Are Shunning Expensive $70 Games, While Microtransactions Take Over

With such a huge range of free-to-play, or at least extremely affordable, ‘forever games’ to pick from, it becomes increasingly obvious why so many gamers are turning their noses up at expensive $70 games. 
Why spend hundreds of dollars on new AAA games, most of which you’ll only play for a few months, when you can simply do one-time purchases of forever games instead? This, seemingly, is what most gamers have realized. 
With a forever game like League of Legends, you can pour all your effort into it over countless years and never get bored. And during those years, you likely won’t come close to even breaking the $50 barrier, let alone $70.  
Let’s not forget that the global economy is also struggling, and the average young American just doesn’t have disposable income like they used to. 
This, again, is why today’s gamers are much happier playing F2P forever games rather than splashing big cash out on AAA games that, in many cases, don’t even live up to their price tags. 
The proof is in the data, too, with Circana recently finding that young people are spending much less on video games. 
Between 2024 and 2025, there’s been a 25% drop in spending on video games by those aged 18 to 24, with forever games gaining a serious market edge on premium titles off the back of this. 
Because people are spending less money on actual video games, the money they have is, instead, going on in-game microtransactions. 
In 2024 alone, microtransactions accounted for 58% of PC gaming revenue. If there was ever an indicator of where gaming is heading, it’s this. 
With video game sales down, the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S struggling to shift units, and forever games quickly becoming the industry’s saviour, it seems as though microtransactions will soon be the go-to source of revenue for game publishers (in some cases, they already are). 

The Upcoming Release of GTA 6 Could Impact Things 

The forever games trend is in full flow at the moment, but the upcoming release of GTA 6 next year could potentially shake everything up. 
Rumors have been circulating for a while that GTA 6 (remember, this is the most anticipated video game of all time) will release at $100, making it the most expensive video game ever. 
And with how much influence Rockstar has over the gaming industry, they could easily do this and still break sales records. 
By releasing a $100 game, it would undoubtedly have a huge effect on the wider industry and lead to triple-digit pricing for premium games being normalized. 
Publishers might even opt to release fewer games, but hike the prices up to balance it out. So, instead of two $60 games a year, they’d release a single $100 title instead. 
Would this cause controversy? Absolutely, as gamers are already furious about the ongoing release of $70 AAA games. 
But in this timeline, anything is possible, and even though forever games are the industry’s saviour, there’s nothing to say that future AAA game releases won’t eventually start hitting the $100 mark if Rockstar do what many expect they will. 

Forever Games Are the Future, and It’s Good for Gaming 

What happens with GTA 6 remains to be seen, but what we do know is that forever games are likely going to be the future of gaming, with all the current data supporting it. 
Gamers aren’t happy about having to spend upwards of $70 on brand-new releases, and it appears as though they’re finally starting to vote with their wallets. 
It might only be a matter of time before the trend of $70 games is completely dead, as they’re already starting to flag. 
Forever games, particularly the free-to-play ones, are benefiting from this across PC, console, and, of course, mobile, where live service games are bigger than ever. 
Sure, there is a possibility that publishers will be able to ride this wave and get people buying expensive premium games again in the future, but the signs point more towards a seismic cultural shift in how games are sold and played over the next decade. 
Between now and 2030, you can expect more ‘forever games’ to come out at extremely low price points. These games will, naturally, continue pulling in millions of players, while making money from in-game microtransactions instead of traditional unit sales. 
And if publishers can find a way to keep it profitable for them, then forever games will be the future of gaming — which is a much better alternative than having to spend $70 on every new game that comes out.