This piece first ran on Kotaku Australia on February 6, 2023. It has been retimed for the Easter long weekend because we are not here! We’ll be back on deck Tuesday. – David.
Megajump, a Steam game infamously priced at $500,000, is now available to anyone for free, forever.
Megajump is a game about jumping. It’s the kind of game designed to lure in content-hungry variety streamers, asking the player to access higher and more challenging platforms with precision jumps. The game has been out since October of 2020, and its developer, who goes by Laptop gaming, has been dropping regular updates ever since.
The game’s comically high pricing came after Laptop gaming noticed an exploit in Steam’s revised pricing system. Using the exploit, the developer was able to push the price of the game as high as $505,000, within the bounds of Steam’s terms of service. While it started as a joke, Laptop gaming decided to make the game free after accusations of money laundering began to pile up online. So, to combat that, it’s now free, for everyone, for good.
“I got called Tang Xiaolong the money launderer,” “and this has been a pretty stressful experience (I wish I had enough money to need to worry about laundering it).”
As for whether the developer ever intends to charge for the game again, the blog makes their intentions (somewhat) clear: “DLC or Microtransactions for skins maybe in future but not ATM.”
Charging insane amounts of money for games on Steam is something of a cottage industry. No, I don’t mean AAA publishers charging $110 for new releases, though it does strain credulity from time to time. No, I mean like people creating weird men’s rights activist games and chucking a $2,900 price tag on there.
You can find Megajump at its Steam page here.
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