Valor Mortis costs 40 euros, and the reason is more honest than most pricing PR

Forty euros. Not 70, not 80, not "from 69.99 plus a three-day early access tier". Valor Mortis, the first-person Napoleonic soulslike from Ghostrunner studio One More Level, launches on 13 October at $40 / €40, and the team said out loud why: this autumn is packed, and players' time and money are limited.

That's a rare thing to hear. Usually a lower price gets dressed up as generosity. Here the message is basically "we know you're choosing between us and much bigger games, so we're making the choice easier". The developers admit they agonised over it, and that the biggest worry was that a lower price would send the wrong signal about the game itself - that people would read "cheap" as "small" or "unfinished". They insist it's a decision made out of confidence, not doubt.

I believe the worry more than I believe the confidence, and that's fine. The game was already moved once to get out of a crowded September. A studio this size can't outshout the giants, so it competes where it can: on price.

Now the part that matters here. Forty euros in our region is not the same forty euros as in Germany or the Netherlands. With average pay where it is, a 70-80 euro game is a purchase most people make two or three times a year and think hard about. At 40, a game moves from "I'll wait for a sale" into "okay, I can try that at launch". The story reportedly runs around 20 hours, which I count as a plus - a game you actually finish is worth more than a 60-hour one abandoned at the third boss.

Two caveats so we don't get carried away. One: euro parity with the dollar means we, as usual, pay a bit more than Americans once their sales tax quirks are set aside - nothing new, but worth remembering when the price is praised as universally low. Two: there's a $59.99 Deluxe Edition with cosmetic packs and a story DLC planned for next year. So the complete package isn't really 40. Still, the base game is whole, and there's no pre-order period at all, which means nobody's pushing you to pay before reviews land.

If this works, I hope other mid-sized studios are taking notes. Not every game needs to cost the same as GTA 6 will. Most of them shouldn't.

Image: Piotr Michałowski / Public domain, source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Napoleonic_parade.PNG