Here I was, browsing through Steam when I saw something baffling: the Call of Duty Franchise Collection is currently listed as the number eight best-selling product in Canada at the bargain-bin price of $1,031.10 CDN ($865.40 USD). What's crazy, though, is that some crazy canucks bought this thing enough times to have the Franchise Collection beat out best sellers like Assassin's Creed Odyssey, Ark, and Black Desert Online. As a Canadian, I just don't know what to think.
It's this bloated price that makes the Franchise Collection the most expensive single thing you can put in your Steam shopping cart. Other bundles come close, like the $936.49 USD Paradox Interactive Collection and the $1020.46 Activision Collection. The difference here being that the both the Paradox and Acitivision bundle offers 50-plus different games while the Call of Duty Franchise Collection has about 14 actual games in it.
Of course, this doesn't come close to Train Simulator 2019's whopping $8,392.14 worth of DLC, but that chain of choo-choos isn't sold as an individual product.
Steam's best-sellers list ranks games by revenue, not by copies sold. The reason that it's even selling right now is likely due to a 19 percent discount (this megapack of CoD usually costs $1,069.60 USD), which shaves a few hundred off the price. But, really, what's a few hundred to a person who is even willing to drop a cool grand just to own every Call of Duty.
On second thought, I get wanting to own every Call of Duty game. What I don't get is why anyone would spend $417.25 just to own every map pack, season pass, and other dumb DLC from each of these games that no one is likely playing any way. Roughly half of this package is just multiplayer-focused DLC. Do you really need Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2's "Stimulus Package"? I doubt it.
I shouldn't judge, though. None of us here at PC Gamer are particularly savvy consumers, but still. This is obviously not a good deal—especially because this bundle still has games as old as Black Ops at just under full price, and it doesn't even include the newly released Black Ops 4.
Anyway, if you're from Canada and you have a thousand dollars to burn I guess this would be one way to do it. You can find the Call of Duty Franchise Collection here.