Warhorse co-founder wants GTA 6 to blaze the trail on higher game prices

Kingdom Come: Deliverance studio co-founder Martin Klima doesn't care about GTA 6 as a game — but he's rooting hard for it to succeed, because he wants Rockstar to drag the rest of the industry into a price hike.

Klima was blunt in a recent PC Gamer interview: the Grand Theft Auto series doesn't appeal to him at all, he has no plans to play GTA 6, and he genuinely doesn't understand why it's so popular. That said, he thinks it's good that someone is making those kinds of technically ambitious games. His real interest is economic. The games industry is in a bind: development costs keep climbing as players expect bigger and more complex experiences, but the revenue levers are mostly tapped out. Audience growth has plateaued, digital storefronts are already squeezing maximum returns, and as Klima put it, "We destroyed retail, and we took all their money." The Covid-19 pandemic created a temporary demand spike that masked the problem, but that's gone — and the wave of layoffs and studio closures that followed shows how badly some companies overextended. "The last thing you can do is to increase the unit price," Klima said. "That would help a lot, but everybody's scared to death about it. Now, hopefully, GTA will blaze the trail, and it will allow us to increase the cost." Only Rockstar and Take-Two have the clout to actually move first, he argued — and he wishes them luck doing it.

Klima's candor is notable because most executives won't say this out loud: they want to raise prices but are waiting for someone else to take the heat first. Industry analysts have been making the same argument for a while. In May, Bank of America analyst Omar Dessouky called for a higher GTA 6 price point, saying a successful launch at a premium would "raise the price point for the entire industry." He got his wish — Take-Two confirmed in June that GTA 6 will launch at $80, a $10 jump over the standard big-budget game price. The catch: a significant chunk of content is locked behind the pricier Ultimate Edition, which effectively pushes the real cost even higher for players who want the full package.

GTA 6 is set to launch on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S on November 19. Whether the $80 price holds without major consumer backlash will be the test case the rest of the industry — including Warhorse — is watching closely.