Life giveth, and life taketh away. A prank title called This Game Costs $200 was put on sale for, you gussed it, $200, nearly making the solo developer behind it a millionaire before mass refunds on Steam left him with just over $2,000.
The creative mind behind this endeavor is Michael Major, an 18-year-old who had a brainwave: what would happen if I put a random game on Steam for $200, the maximum price tag possible?
Thus, This Game Costs $200 came to be. The project is a meme-filled asset flip, described as a "psychological 'comedic' experience" on the store page, and running anyone who buys it a solid two hundred American dollars. In a report by WMUR-TV, Major says he didn't think anyone would bother, but he was wrong. 6,717 buyers wrong.
The game went up quietly in January, a spiritual successor to another digital joke, This Game Costs $10 - I'm sure you can imagine what that one's like. In recent months, there was a surge of activity, leaving Major with potential returns of over $1,300,000.
"I think I almost died," he says. But before he could get too excited, Steam's refund policy kicked in to bring reality crashing down. 6,707 of those purchases sent This Game Costs $200 back, leaving Major with just over $2,000. Oh, what a world!
Most of these users are from China according to sales data, and many of them refunded without even opening the game. It's difficult to ascertain whether this was a concentrated effort of some kind or just odd coincidence. Steam and other digital stores have been tied to money-laundering schemes before, but without further evidence, it's all just pontification.
Sadly, what matters here is that Major isn't an overnight millionaire. But hey, This Game Costs $1000 might be what does it.
