I’ve been thinking a lot about how game prices keep going up, but players don’t really seem to have many options besides “buy it anyway” or “skip it.”

What I keep coming back to is the role communities already play. Mods, servers, tournaments, guides, Discords, etc. add a ton of value to games, but its all informal and kind of disappears when a game dies.

I’m wondering if there’s a way communities themselves could become more persistent, so players feel less pressure to constantly buy new games just to stay engaged.

Not talking about investments or replacing money, more like recognizing contribution and keeping value inside a community instead of everything being tied to launch sales.

This might be a dumb idea or already solved somewhere, but I’m curious where people think this kind of falls apart, or if there are examples that actually worked.