Premium, Still Worth It
The expensive shelf, and the few games on it that earn the price.
Out of 875 games priced at $40 or more, 18 clear a BANG of 78. That is the entire list. Drop the bar to 70 and you get 42. I left it at 78 because a lower bar just surfaces the least bad expensive games, and the question I wanted answered is whether any full price release is defensible on value at all.
The list filters on a live price, so it moves. A game that drops under $40 leaves without changing in any way that matters, and during a real Steam sale this collection can nearly empty itself. There is a structural bias too. At the top of that band the only way to survive the value term is length, so nothing short and expensive shows up here even when it is very good.
CLANNAD tops it at 97, 54.8 hours of main story, 11,007 reviews. Baldur's Gate 3 is 92.8 for 73.1 hours, with 856,089 reviews behind it. ELDEN RING is 84.3 for about 60 hours, with 1,153,988 reviews behind it.
