Epic has revealed that they are raising the prices for Fortnite’s V-Bucks.
Epic shared this statement in a blog post:
“We are adjusting the price of V-Bucks and our real money content Pack offers in Czech Republic, Denmark, Eurozone countries, Hungary, Japan, Norway, Poland, Romania, Sweden, Turkey, and the United States (including all storefronts where the United States Dollar is used) on October 27, 2023.
These adjustments are based on economic factors such as inflation and currency fluctuations, and follow similar pricing alignments recently completed in the United Kingdom, Canada, and Mexico.”
While Epic lists several countries, US pricing is important, and not just for the US itself. The new US prices will reflect for all countries and regions that have prices in USD. So, this will effectively be the new prices for V-Bucks for most of the world.
We have listed out the new prices for US dollars below:
Extinction Code Pack – $ 4.49
Untask’d Courier – $ 17.99
Gifted Battle Pass – $8.54
1,000 V-Bucks Bundle – $ 8.99
2,800 V-Bucks Bundle – $ 22.99
5,000 V-Bucks Bundle – $ 36.99
13,500 V-Bucks Bundle – $ 89.99
These new prices seem to reflect something that has characterized gaming in 2023, but we may have taken for granted in light of the large number of AAA releases that also came out this year.
And that is the fact that the games industry is struggling, in spite of what appears to have been a banner year. Interestingly enough, the large number of AAA releases and the industry’s struggles stem from the same common cause – the continuing effects of the pandemic on the global economy.
So, fortunately, the industry has been bolstered by these AAA games. Many of them should have released months or even years earlier. The pandemic itself, the succeeding shift towards remote work, and also the unmentionable effect of the pandemic to the workforce, led to delays for these games all around.
All these companies were quite fortunate to have been able to get their games completed and released this year. That’s especially true when you consider the number of games that are still swimming in development, and possibly struggling in development hell. Ubisoft, for example, has spent too long without a new title release.
What Epic Games is doing here now, is their equivalent of companies like Sony deciding to raise the price of their games to $ 70. It may not be what fans want, but this change is necessary to make the industry sustainable, in terms of keeping these companies feasible to keep operating the way they do.
This may not be a permanent change, as the industry is sensitive to consumer behavior, including backlash. However, in the meantime, it does mean that we may have to spend a little bit more than usual so that we can keep on gaming.
