History Main / KarlMarxHatesYourGuts

Often a JustifiedTrope in {{RPG}}s, since no matter how much the player is [[FridgeLogic obsessing over the profitability of various sales]], the character is most interested in pursuing the plot or his profession as an adventurer and has little interest in trade and Return on Investment metrics. It can also be used as an AcceptableBreakFromReality, with the prices representing what the character is willing to accept and the designers kindly cutting out the hours he spent wandering the city looking for an inn that only charged what he considers a fair price.

[[folder: Adventure Game ]]
* In ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaTwilightPrincess'', the shops have varying selections, but everything that is sold has the same price regardless of where you buy it... with three exceptions: the Gorons who set up shop in Castle Town, who sell Red Potion, Lantern Oil, and Arrows at a 10-Rupee markup from the standard (they call it "regional pricing"); the other shop before it becomes a branch of Malo Mart, which sells a good selection of things, but at a higher price than even the last wallet upgrade can hold; and Malo Market Castle Town, which has the same selection at ''half'' the standard price. Of course, you drop some serious Rupees making these discounts ''available''...
* In ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaBreathOfTheWild'', while the selection of goods varies from merchant to merchant, they mostly always charge the same amount for any given item. However, you can sometimes buy items in bundles (typically arrows), for a discounted price. There are exceptions to this, however, due to some of the traveling merchants:
** Kairo, a Goron who walks around between the Maw of Death Mountain and Foothill Stable, sells Topazes, Rubies and Sapphires for significantly less than the ore shop in Tarrey Town.
** Agus, who walks around between Duelling Peaks Stable and Hateno Village, gives a lowers his prices by ''two'' rupees if it happens to be raining.
** Yammo, who travels throughout the Ridgeland region, actually charges two rupees more than usual for his wares when it's not raining. When it is raining, he'll sell Goron Spice at a slightly lower price than the shop in Goron City does.
** There are a few Yiga Clan members who disguise themselves as normal-looking merchants. When you speak to them, they will offer to sell you Mighty Bananas for the extravagant price of 99 Rupees each (they can be bought in Gerudo town for 20 Rupees). While you ''can'' buy them, the Yiga member will still attack you afterwards. Humorously, the Yiga member has an inventory of ''99'' Mighty Bananas, and will sell you as many as you're willing to buy before attacking.
** There are a few fetch-quests where characters will ask you to bring them a specific item. In return, they will pay you an amount higher than the market price. They'll usually offer to keep buying more of that same item, but they usually will not pay you quite as much as they did the first time around. They still tend to pay more than the shops typically would.

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[[folder: Role Playing Game ]]

* One town in ''VideoGame/DragonQuestIV'' is short on armor for a while, and will buy armor for far more than it costs, at least until each type of armor is sold enough.
** The merchant Taloon is also able to invert this for a time during his chapter after setting up his own shop: his wife will sell any goods you give her at a much ''higher'' price than any of the other shops around. Lady must make one ''hell'' of a sales pitch... Needless to say, this can be abused to GameBreaker status, if you know how to work the system...
*** Earlier in the same chapter, Taloon is a salesman at a weapons shop, and can haggle with customers to get more than the usual price. Or to prevent them from buying an item that you want to buy yourself.

* Simultaneously averted and played straight in VideoGame/DragonQuestVIII. Thanks to the alchemy pot, you can buy and combine certain ingredients to make potentially hefty profits, but only a certain amount of times that varies by item. Doubles as a GuideDangIt on two fronts as there's no indication of what is profitable until you have already made it and nothing letting you know how close you are to an item's sell price decreasing.

* Averted in ''VideoGame/{{Fallout|1}}'' and ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 2}}''. The price you sold things for was fixed ([=RadAway=] always sell for 500) but the buying price varied depending on your Barter skill, reputation, and the general disposition of the merchant in general. In several cases you could actually selling things for more than you bought them ''from the same vendor'', allowing you to literally clean out the store by buying everything and selling back smaller and smaller shares until the merchant was left with a single chip or a worthless junk item.

* In ''Franchise/FinalFantasy'' games, items can generally be sold for half the purchase price. However, in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVIII'', the player can learn the "Buy Low" and "Sell High" abilities of the Tonberry GF, which allow the player to buy and sell items at 3/4 the standard price. With those abilities and the Carbuncle GF's "Recov Med-RF" (Recovery Medicine Refinement), you can buy Tents and Cottages, turn them into Mega-Potions, and sell those for about a 20% profit.

** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyX2'' has a GameBreaker exploit that happens early in the game: if you rescue merchant O'aka from his creditors and then buy enough from him to pay his debts, he rewards you by selling things to you at a discount... which puts every object at a lower price than what the bartender right in front of O'aka buys from you. Buy 99 of everything from O'aka, sell to Barkeep, and see the money rake in!

* Played straight in ''VideoGame/MarioAndLuigiDreamTeam'', where every item and piece of gear costs the same across the entire island. And the shops only start selling more advanced stuff as you personally progress through the story, so literally nowhere in the world sells anything you'd need in the final dungeon before you reach the final dungeon. It is sort of explained by how there's literally just one brand of shop in most places though, with an identical design, shopkeeper and goods selection.
** Sort of averted in ''VideoGame/MarioAndLuigiSuperstarSaga'' though, where your Stache stat dictated how much things cost in shops and how much you'd get if you sold them back. So if you raised your stats high enough you could make a tidy profit, although it wouldn't be in a particularly realistic way.
* Averted in ''VideoGame/{{Mother 1}}'': eventually, you encounter a man who will fill up your inventory with mouthwash, and his assistant will sell you more for only $10 apiece. If bought from anywhere else, Mouthwash costs more than fifteen times that amount, yet the mouthwash you get from the man can be sold for the normal price of half what it's worth at the store, thus allowing you to make a pretty good profit.
* Averted in ''VideoGame/PaperMario,'' where it's possible to buy items in one town and sell them at another town for a profit. One of the possible ways to do this is told to you as payment for a side quest. "Go to Petalburg, buy a Sleepy Sheep, go to Rogueport, and sell the Sleepy Sheep for a two-coin profit!"
** Using logic and the principle of supply and demand and how it affects price, this can be cranked up. In Keelhaul Key, buy Fire Flowers. Sell them in Fahr Outpost for a 3-coin profit. Before leaving, buy Ice Storms, which sell for a 4-coin profit in Keelhaul Key. It's easy to make money in the late game without killing enemies for it.
* In most ''Franchise/{{Pokemon}}'' games, shops will typically buy items from you at half their retail price. However, due to an endless promotion, the Thrifty Megamart in ''VideoGame/PokemonSunAndMoon'' and ''VideoGame/PokemonUltraSunAndUltraMoon'' will always give you back half the money you spend there as a rebate, yet will still pay you the standard rate for anything you sell to them. You can effectively get free, unlimited Premier Balls here by purchasing standard Poké Balls in groups of ten for $1,000, pocketing the free Premier Ball, then selling back the ten Poké Balls for $1,000. Repeat as much as you so desire.
** On top of all this, you can sell back the Premier Balls for $100 each. It's a slow, monotonous process, but you can essentially get unlimited money through this method.
* In Guadia Quest of ''VideoGame/RetroGameChallenge'', there are bars of precious metals that sell for the same price they cost. However, these are useful, as they prevent you from losing half of your money if you are wiped out.
** Various gems you can buy in the brutally difficult VideoGame/The7thSaga work the same way, which is where they likely took the idea from originally.

* Played straight in ''VideoGame/{{Xenosaga}}'', in which all goods cost the same amount of money everywhere, and no goods ever increase in price. Acknowledged and possibly averted somewhat be a subplot that involves possible cuts in price depending on free-market investing on Shion's part. However, a shop is a shop is a shop in Xenosaga.
** Which makes perfect sense, as their version of the internet, the UMN, includes a FTL teleportation system that can transmit non-living objects. Where you are really ''shouldn't'' budge the price, you can download it anywhere!

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[[folder: Turn Based Strategy ]]

[[folder: Wide Open Sandbox ]]

[[folder: Genre Defying ]]

[[folder: Real Life ]]

** Using logic and the principle of supply and demand and how it affects price, this can be cranked UpToEleven. In Keelhaul Key, buy Fire Flowers. Sell them in Fahr Outpost for a 3-coin profit. Before leaving, buy Ice Storms, which sell for a 4-coin profit in Keelhaul Key. It's easy to make money in the late game without killing enemies for it.

* Merchants in ''VideoGame/{{Albion}}'' may have varying prices. Some even have two separate inventories for selling and for buying that have different exchange rates, but the rule of thumb is that regardless of the exchange rate, they will give 20% less for everything you sell them, then what they would ask when you're buying the same item. The way it's set up, buying something from the cheapest merchant then reselling it to the most expensive merchant will most likely get you the price back, but not much more. On the other hand, there are a LOT of merchants who are more than willing to buy your hard earned loot and VendorTrash, for pocket money (read, half the price an average merchant would give you).

** The series in general is a rather egregious offender considering one of the big selling points is being a WideOpenSandbox that allows for more playstyles than simply endless dungeon-crawling. However, you're pretty much limited to alchemy and thievery. (And thievery is less lucrative than it may sound because few homes have items of real value, leaving you to max out your carry weight with stolen VendorTrash in order to turn a profit.) While it would make sense that items would be cheap in the big cities' trade districts and more expensive in little podunk shops with supply problems, prices are set by item so they remain basically the same, excepting some skill-based variation and how much the merchant likes you, no matter who's selling.

* Nook and Able stores in ''VideoGame/AnimalCrossing'' series [[WeBuyAnything buy everything]] for one-fourth the selling price. In games with the periodic "Flea Market" event, NPC neighbors will pay about twice that. With the exception of white turnips and fruit, which are hard to take advantage of without [[SocializationBonus multiple systems and multiple copies of the game]], the price for everything is the same in every town. So the primary way to make money is to pull VendorTrash off the trees or [[FishingMinigame out of the river]], and that's [[AntiPoopSocking rate-limited]] by the [[InUniverseGameClock system clock]].

# The only way to earn money is ''via'' MoneySpider. If speculation is unprofitable, upgrading equipment becomes dangerous.

->''Management has just granted you access to the Trade Terminal. You can now buy and sell minerals, but be warned: Trading is ''not'' in your favor -- this is not a gift shop.''
-->-- '''MissionControl''', ''Videogame/DeepRockGalactic''

[[folder: Mecha Game ]]
* ''VideoGame/ArmoredCore'' is this in spades. No matter how ravaged the land due to war is, that little missile launcher will still only cost you 12000 [[GlobalCurrency Coams]] all the time.
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