Limited Run Games

[VideoGameCritic]

Is it just me or is Limited Run really taking off? I can't even keep track of the games they are publishing. And apparently they've branched out into controllers and cables too.

https://limitedrungames.com/

I love these guys. They offer quality games at reasonable prices. And they're usually the kind of collectible games I like! The main downside is that if you miss your window, a game might not be available.

I think they demonstrate there is a demand for physical media, and they are publishing titles the big publishers won't touch.

[Retro STrife]

I love Limited Run Games and what they're doing. I'm very big about the long-term preservation of games. With digital games, they disappear forever when the digital marketplace goes down (for example, we lost a ton of WiiWare games forever when the Wii marketplace shut down). Limited Run Games is taking a lot of great digital games and putting them on physical media, ensuring that there will always be some copy of the games out there. While Limited Run is probably the biggest name, there's a few other companies that are similar to them too. For example, Fangamer did the physical release for Undertale and Hollow Knight.

But I'd disagree that they have reasonable prices. You definitely pay a premium to get your physical release from Limited Run. Most of their games cost much more than their digital versions. For example, Windjammers is a $15 digital game, and sometimes goes on sale for around $5. The Limited Run release cost me $30, plus the $5 or so to ship it. $5-$15 for the digital game or $35 for the physical release? At those prices, it's only worth the physical copy for a diehard Windjammers fan. Personally, in retrospect, I'd have preferred the $5 digital sale price for that game.

The gap isn't always that big, but it's pretty common with Limited Run. And their games never drop in price (even on ebay), so you basically have to pay their asking price or you miss out. For most new retail games from regular publishers, the physical copy is the same price as the digital copy. I'd buy more from Limited Run if they weren't so expensive.

[Retro STrife]

Another company is "Special Reserve". I just learned of them yesterday, because Limited Run teamed up with them to do a physical release of Hotline Miami on Switch. Limited Run and Special Reserve each released their own physical version. Between the two companies, around 11,000 copies were available and they sold out instantly.

Hotline Miami might be my favorite game of the last 10 years-- such a great game. But it's always been download only. I bought it for $5 when it went on sale on PS4. Seeing a physical release, I decided I really needed to own it, even though it cost $40 from Special Reserve. My thought process was like this: 30 years from now, Hotline Miami might no longer exist anywhere besides my PS4 hard drive, and if my hard drive dies then I might not get to play it ever again. So to me, that preservation on physical media is the best part about Limited Run, Special Reserve, and other companies like it.

I bought the $40 Switch version, since it's the only physical version, even though I don't own a Switch yet. And it's crazy the resale value of these games-- I don't plan to resell mine, but the ebay listings for confirmed purchases are already selling for $110. And the games won't even be shipped out for a couple months.

[VideoGameCritic]

We should start a company called Unlimited Run Games; we'd make a killing!

[noah98]

I'd like to see Limited Run just do preorders like they do with the Switch games sometimes and then only produce that amount. It sucks when you have to wait for a small window and then maybe miss out on it because the production run is much less than the demand.