After seeing the Baldur’s Gate 3 Collector’s Edition bundle going for nearly $4,000 online, Larian’s publishing director calls out scalpers.
It is a sad state of affairs when it’s not all that shocking that someone would buy up something limited, like the Baldur’s Gate 3 Collector’s Edition, and then sell it for a hefty profit to someone who just couldn’t get their hands on it during the initial release. It happens all the time. With tickets for concerts. With Playstation 5’s (and other consoles). If there’s even a whiff of scarcity, people will race to snatch things up for a profitable resale.
Give humans an inch and they will optimize the fun out of anything. And that’s what’s happening here. As, this weekend, Larian Studios publishing director Michael Douse shared a screenshot of the Baldur’s Gate 3 Collector’s Edition bundle going for £2,900 (or around $3,785.12 in USD).
Larian Developer Calls Out Scalpers—”All You’re Doing is Making Someone Sad”
First of all, $3785 is an eyewatering price, considering that the original price was something like $283. That is more than just “a little markup.” But what’s even more striking is that this isn’t even the worst of the lot. Hiking up the prices on something like this has become the norm—you might recall the early days of trying to get a PS5 (when they didn’t exist) or a Switch and you couldn’t without paying an additional premium, not to the manufacturers, but to the people who were reselling them.
It’s not the way that these were intended to be sold, and Larian’s Douse called this out on Twitter:
“Hate scalpers, man. I understand how commodity works, but this CE isn’t a commodity it’s designed to make someone happy, not rich. If you’re buying it to trade, all you’re doing is making someone sad.”
And since you can’t get the Collector’s Edition anywhere except from resellers anymore, it seems it’s a seller’s market. But that’s how it works. Even if, as Douse says, all it does is make someone sad. Still, there are plenty of other ways to enjoy the phenomenon that is Baldur’s Gate 3, which has been rising up to the top of the Xbox charts as well following its recent console release.
So even if you can’t party with the Collector’s Edition for less than round-trip airfare to somewhere nice, you can still travel to Baldur’s Gate and the environs beyond.
Talk about a dark urge!
