The video game industry is going through an accelerating process of enshi**ification, with things getting progressively worse and somehow more expensive week after week. The latest bulls**t trend is selling costly collector’s editions without even including the game, and God of War Laufey is here to perpetuate it.
After Rockstar’s $400 collector’s box that doesn’t have GTA 6 in it, we’ve got Sony detailing its God of War Laufey collector’s edition, which will include a lot of stuff, except for the game it’s tied to. This $150 product has a light-up statue of Faye, the protagonist, a 51-card oracle deck, and a mini artbook, all of which are contained in a neat stylized white-and-gold box. But you know what isn’t contained in there? The actual game, which, as the bottom of the promotional image states, is sold separately.
Read what’s behind the latest news in gaming (with a bit of snark) by subscribing to the Destructoid Checkpoint newsletter!
This is part of a broader trend in the industry where the actual games do not come packaged with collector’s editions, which really begs the question: What are these people even collecting at that point? The game is the main product, the core around which everything revolves. Without it, all of these additional items have next to no value, at least not as they are marketed. If they were just toys or whatever sold separately in stores for grandparents to buy for their grandchildren during Christmas, then, sure, there might be some value to them, but as purported “collector’s edition items” they hold zero weight without the game itself.
Why not just make the collector’s box more expensive, sprinkle in some extra cheap goodies, and then package it with the game? I mean, just check out what Baldur’s Gate 3 did with its Deluxe Edition. You got 3 CDs for the soundtrack, an actual disc to install the game on PC or consoles, a map, stickers, and so many other things, and for $269.99. Now that’s a collector’s investment, not whatever this is.
But I guess we’re just on the road to hell, but it’s paved with horrible intentions instead.
