I agree that it'd be nice if they depreciated in value like in the days of physical media.

In those days though, the store only has a certain amount of shelf space. So in that sense it makes sense that they depreciated because a new game is always going to have a higher perceived value.

Digital storefronts don't have that problem. The game can be shared infinitely without accruing a ton of publishing costs. There's always more shelf space.

In this sense, there's no financial motivation to depreciate. And we all know the social responsibility of big companies will be to only do what they're forced to do.

We often feel games ought to depreciate because that's how it's always been. But just because that's how it's always been doesn't mean that's how it always will be.

Battlefield is an interesting case though where each game in the franchise is highly derivative of the previous game. So if each new game is essentially an upgrade of the previous one, then I'd agree that there should be an expectation that the older version is less expensive.

The same could be said about many of the giant titles. Call of Duty, Assassin's Creed, and most major sports games come to mind.

One final thing to think of is that many games have continuing development. It's basically the early access model (a whole other can of worms), and you could argue that many of these games appreciate in value. Some notables have - Factorio comes to mind.

I don't think Battlefield 2042 falls into that category though