Limited Run Games (producing physical copies of digital games)

[Aussie2B]

It's pretty sad when other publishers have set the bar so low that simply receiving the product you paid for eventually is laudable. It shows how much these companies have collectors over a barrel. Collectors used to care about things like receiving a product in a timely manner, getting a product that's manufactured well and made out of good materials, getting a product that's worth the asking price, having the option to purchase from a wide variety of stores both in-person and online, having the option to pick a game up at a later point in time, possibly on markdown even, so on and so on. But with physical games going more and more niche, turning into a boutique item, this is what we're left with, being happy with receiving the absolute bare minimum, just so we can place something on a shelf.

[Steve W]

I have nearly 100 LRG titles for the PS4. But I never ordered anything directly from them, it's all been either locally found or off Amazon. I like that they keep old games alive (who else would clean up and publish the unreleased Atari Jaguar game American Hero? Who else would even care?) but they've felt a bit sketchy at times. Like limited amounts of copies supposedly made, and yet I buy one in a Best Buy... in Shreveport, Louisiana. That doesn't come across as a limited run of copies, that seems like mass production but calling it a limited amount.

[kupomogli]

I agree that it's a terrible company, but LRG, the Literal Representation of Greed, are the most popular and have more reach than any other limited games publisher that they've released games from Sega, Square Enix, Microsoft, and now Capcom. They even released Larian's Divinity Original Sin 2 who also normally publishes their own games.

While I am glad they're around, I really hate the company for many reasons.

First off is price, yes, I'm a collector and I spend more than your average gamer would on games, but I don't make a sh-- ton of money, I am able to buy more games because I'm pretty frugal with how i spend my money. Remember back in the day when LRG stated their games were never going to be more than $10 in excess of the game's digital price with a minimum of $25? Now the games are $20 more on nearly every single title, for Sword of the Vagrant, a game that was $10, LRG was selling it for $35. 350% of the digital releases cost. I already bought the PAL version for $22, but I do prefer NTSC U(ESRB rating,) I didn't buy it. I did buy certain games from LRG still though, like Ender Lilies(an amazing 9/10 game,) Infernax, and others despite being more expensive from LRG than other retailers because I wanted the NTSC U version.

And I don't know if anyone else has noticed this, but whenever LRG releases a game for sale, that specific game's preorder release almost always coincides with a sale. What I do know are these games are no longer making any money after weeks, but especially not after the months or years that LRG finally decides to sell them, so odds are the publishers aren't getting 70% of the digital price, odds are they're getting a much smaller cut, maybe LRG states that they'll wait for the games to release on a sale date and start selling them at that point. I don't know, no one really knows but LRG, but I'm pretty certain that LRG is making in excess of the extra $20 that you're paying.

Then there's shipping costs. LRG is the US, I live in the US, shipping costs for most retailers are free if you purchase a certain amount, most retailers will also give you a free box, the item in question will often times be packaged securely with padding to make sure it's safe from damage. LRG not only overprices their shipping costs, but the item you receive is in the cheapest packaging possible. I've bought games from Ebay with free shipping that have better packaging than LRG's releases. I can pay less on my own to ship an item with better packaging than LRG. Yet a company that I'm certain gets a discount in shipping due to the hundreds of thousands of products they ship per year, bends us over and isn't just pricing us shipping costs, they're making more profit off shipping itself.

Then, LRG often makes certain releases fully patched on disc/card, and when they do that they'll make big announcements all over the place, they make it a big deal, but when they don't make these announcements, that's when you need to be worried. For example, their Yakuza rereleases, which they sold every Yakuza game from 0 to 6 at literally outrageous prices and every single game on the PS4 has version 1.0. There are literally no updates on the disc. N++ which people constantly asked before the preorder was over can LRG wait for t he Ultimate patch to release before they release it, a game with a limited print back in the day, nope. The game is missing 50% of the total content that LRG could have waited and released it completely up to date. My favorite game of all time is Brigandine The Legend of Forsena and also the remake Brigandine Grand Edition, so I bought the Switch version on release of which is not patched, however, it gets worse. When the PS4 version released, it was announced by the publisher to be releasing on the PS4 with a day one patch that would update the enemy AI, add a few more difficulty options, and add two more third tier monsters, the Shadow Goblin which could now move and use its paralyze wave with an MP cost and the Titan which could use a two hex AOE skill called Ragnarok. All of this was announced on the exact same publisher announcement that this patch would be releasing day one of the digital release. A digital release which happened only a couple months after LRGs preorders ended and around six months before we received the physical copy, only for once again, the patch to not be included on the disc. A patch that was revealed during the announcement of the game on PS4.

Limited Run Games is a POS company that unfortunately, as collectors we can't do anything about and we also can't do without if we want the games that they're releasing.

On a further note, I think after the last few years, and I'm certain this is because of these limited print publishers and developers and publishers are realizing that collectors are willing to pay so much money for these physical releases, this the reason why since around 2020 we haven't price drops as quickly and as frequently for the vast majority of games. Yes, there are price drops, there are still deep discounts of physical media at some points in the year, but as someone who generally waited until everything was at a low cost, it seems publishers are just keeping everything as high priced as they can now days and I believe it's because these limited print companies have shown these companies we'll eventually pay these exorbitant prices as long as they don't reduce them. It's not just Nintendo anymore that it's so hard to find a reasonable price on games without waiting over a year in some cases.

[Aussie2B]

The shipping + tax is definitely brutal with LRG at this point. Way back, when most of their releases were $25, I could get a game shipped to me for under $30. At that price point, I'd give practically anything a shot (and literally did buy every single LRG release for a while). Now most LRG releases are $35+, and shipping + tax add over 10 bucks more to that. If what should be a cheap indie or retro re-release is costing me nearly $50, not terribly lower than AAA games and matching what a lot of Switch games cost when they first launch, I seriously have to question if it's worth it. Meanwhile, other stuff I'm interested in on Switch that got regular physical releases available from all the typical retailers see markdowns to under 30 or even under 20 bucks, with free shipping available from the retailers.

It's also as if LRG goes out of its way to disallow anybody from getting a better value out of the shipping expense. Like, they added that "Vault" thing for picking up older releases, but want to get both a preorder and something from the Vault at the same time to get more bang for your buck on shipping? Well, screw you, can't do that. Heaven forbid they sit on some Vault items while waiting for the preorder item to come in, even though they have no qualms holding the customer's items hostage if you preorder multiple things at the same time and one item ends up being in production waaaaay longer than the rest. I ordered both Volume and Skullgirls for Vita at the same time. Skullgirls took over a year (which was unusual in those days and resulted in apologies and a bonus item being included, which is quite quaint now, considering they think nothing of games taking a year or longer to ship). The recent Shantae Advance also took forever and had a couple other games I ordered with it in limbo. So if its their actions that cause them to hold on to your purchases for many months, it's fine, but the customer can't willingly choose to have something held by LRG.

The funny thing is that their shipping costs for CEs aren't terrible. Granted, if you're dropping $200 for a CE, you sure as hell should be getting free shipping, but $8-something for a big box full of goods isn't bad compared to $5-something for a single Switch game that barely weighs anything because they obviously rarely have manuals these days. Makes me wonder if it's all just another way to manipulate the customer, trying to push them into spending a lot more on a CE.


Like limited amounts of copies supposedly made, and yet I buy one in a Best Buy... in Shreveport, Louisiana. That doesn't come across as a limited run of copies, that seems like mass production but calling it a limited amount.

They have had some sort of deal with Best Buy for some time. And they have their own Amazon store too for some of their items. They are definitely pushing the FOMO angle way more than the reality justifies. It's not like the early days when print run sizes were predetermined and announced and sold out within minutes. And I am a grateful that availability seems a little improved in that regard, but I could do without the deception and manipulation. I've heard rumblings that they've done secret reprints too, but who knows. I think a lot of people have always been confused by the fact that they would hold back some copies as potential replacements and then sell those off later.

[kupomogli]

One other thing I forgot to mention about shipping, it's been awhile that they started to do this. But if there was a second item I was kind of interested in, I'd buy it because it wouldn't increase the shipping cost, but if you add a second item to LRG's order, the shipping cost increases. Try it out sometime and check.

Added one game, shipping cost to my house is $7.61, added another game to the same order, shipping cost is $8.94, and there is absolutely no way that the shipping cost is going to change with a second bluray disc. If you add a third game it's still the same price, still $8.94, but I'm betting a lot of people don't know they sneak in extra shipping costs.

[Tron 2.0]

One other thing I forgot to mention about shipping, it's been awhile that they started to do this. But if there was a second item I was kind of interested in, I'd buy it because it wouldn't increase the shipping cost, but if you add a second item to LRG's order, the shipping cost increases. Try it out sometime and check.

Added one game, shipping cost to my house is $7.61, added another game to the same order, shipping cost is $8.94, and there is absolutely no way that the shipping cost is going to change with a second bluray disc. If you add a third game it's still the same price, still $8.94, but I'm betting a lot of people don't know they sneak in extra shipping costs.
LRG does get you with that shipping because of that when it comes to releases by retrobit i will often just go with rondoproducts.com or castlemaniagames instead.

[Spartacus]

I purchased 6 games from LRG yesterday. The shipping charge was $11.94. Does that seem excessive?
I purchased Shovel Knight Dig from Super Rare Games last Thursday. The shipping charge was $16.50. Should a thread be started for Super Rare Games to infer they rob, cheat and swindle it's customers?
I can remember when buying a game from Limited Run Games was an extremely stressful and often even unsuccessful event. They have made great improvements in my opinion.

[Aussie2B]

Super Rare Games is based in Europe, selling European, PEGI-rated versions of games. It's not really fair to compare what Americans pay for domestic shipping on domestic games versus the shipping cost to import. International shipping is of course going to be more expensive.

If someone has deep pockets and is looking to order large quantities of games with each LRG order, such as full-set collectors, sure, the shipping may seem reasonable. But LRG isn't a storefront that has much of a back catalog available simultaneously. Nobody knows when a game they want is going to be listed for sale, and once it is, you typically only have a month to purchase it, otherwise you're at the mercy of whenever and wherever it may reappear for sale and whatever the price may be at that point. So you're limited to only whatever else is currently available for preorder within that one-month span if you're looking to make a combined order to get a better value on shipping. Or whatever Vault items are currently in stock, as, like I said before, you can't mix and match preorders with Vault items and have them ship together. Rich, full-set collectors are a tiny minority of people who like to buy physical games. The vast majority of LRG orders are going to be for one single game at a time, maybe two or three, and it's the people making these smaller orders who don't like the shipping costs. And people probably would make larger orders if there were a reasonable order total that qualified the customer for free shipping, as so many other game retailers offer ($58+ from Idea Factory International, $75 for free worldwide shipping from VGP, etc.), but LRG is greedy and refuses to offer free domestic shipping no matter how large the order is. Would I say $11.94 is an excessive shipping fee for 6 games from LRG? Yes, absolutely, because that's likely a $200+ order. Any shipping fee is excessive at that point. But $16.50 for a single game to ship from the UK to the US is about what I'd expect of international shipping.

For what it's worth, if anybody wants to create a topic about Super Rare Games, they're welcome to. And this topic wasn't started for the purpose of criticizing LRG. It was created with much enthusiasm and hope for the business concept of LRG, before they even had a single customer. But a lot of time has passed since then. With the massive number of orders I've placed with LRG since their inception, if I haven't earned the right to share some criticism about them at this point, then nobody has. I agree that LRG has improved in some ways, but in my personal opinion, they've worsened in even more ways, and I think they've overall had a profound negative impact on the game industry and the existence of physical video games. If they stayed true to producing physical versions of games that definitely would've been digital-only otherwise, that would've great, but huge publishers who absolutely can produce their own physical releases and sell them in the traditional manner should not be partnering with LRG to sell their stuff under this garbage FOMO model. It used to be a necessary evil, now it's just an evil, haha.

[Tron 2.0]

Super Rare Games is based in Europe, selling European, PEGI-rated versions of games. It's not really fair to compare what Americans pay for domestic shipping on domestic games versus the shipping cost to import. International shipping is of course going to be more expensive.

If someone has deep pockets and is looking to order large quantities of games with each LRG order, such as full-set collectors, sure, the shipping may seem reasonable. But LRG isn't a storefront that has much of a back catalog available simultaneously. Nobody knows when a game they want is going to be listed for sale, and once it is, you typically only have a month to purchase it, otherwise you're at the mercy of whenever and wherever it may reappear for sale and whatever the price may be at that point. So you're limited to only whatever else is currently available for preorder within that one-month span if you're looking to make a combined order to get a better value on shipping. Or whatever Vault items are currently in stock, as, like I said before, you can't mix and match preorders with Vault items and have them ship together. Rich, full-set collectors are a tiny minority of people who like to buy physical games. The vast majority of LRG orders are going to be for one single game at a time, maybe two or three, and it's the people making these smaller orders who don't like the shipping costs. And people probably would make larger orders if there were a reasonable order total that qualified the customer for free shipping, as so many other game retailers offer ($58+ from Idea Factory International, $75 for free worldwide shipping from VGP, etc.), but LRG is greedy and refuses to offer free domestic shipping no matter how large the order is. Would I say $11.94 is an excessive shipping fee for 6 games from LRG? Yes, absolutely, because that's likely a $200+ order. Any shipping fee is excessive at that point. But $16.50 for a single game to ship from the UK to the US is about what I'd expect of international shipping.

For what it's worth, if anybody wants to create a topic about Super Rare Games, they're welcome to. And this topic wasn't started for the purpose of criticizing LRG. It was created with much enthusiasm and hope for the business concept of LRG, before they even had a single customer. But a lot of time has passed since then. With the massive number of orders I've placed with LRG since their inception, if I haven't earned the right to share some criticism about them at this point, then nobody has. I agree that LRG has improved in some ways, but in my personal opinion, they've worsened in even more ways, and I think they've overall had a profound negative impact on the game industry and the existence of physical video games. If they stayed true to producing physical versions of games that definitely would've been digital-only otherwise, that would've great, but huge publishers who absolutely can produce their own physical releases and sell them in the traditional manner should not be partnering with LRG to sell their stuff under this garbage FOMO model. It used to be a necessary evil, now it's just an evil, haha.
For how much LRG has changed when they started out it was to give indie video games a physical release.Now there publishing for konami,snk,sega and recently capcom for it's arcade stadium.For which i don't like they have gotten away from where they started period.