Still waiting on Total War: Warhammer to get a sale..

what does 1% of the game cost has anything to do with regional pricing?
3rd world currencies are valued low so that Americans can afford to buy goods at a cheap price. After all, don't Americans need the paycheck leftovers to pay off student and healthcare debts?

descender wrote on Jun 24, 2016, 18:23:

They are priced regionally because consumers in certain markets CAN NOT AFFORD to pay what first-world Westerners pay.

Ummm, yes! Their not being able to afford it is also a result of their shitty economic situation. It's cheaper to deliver the content because the people running the data centers in that country don't get paid that much, so they also can't afford to pay full price.

The "problem" isn't really a problem. Steam is allowing people to work around the regional pricing by not region locking all keys. If they cared it would end tomorrow.

There are problems with region locking keys. If I buy a game in the USA and gift it to my brother who lives in Spain, he might not be able to play it. It inhibits sales.

Creston wrote on Jun 24, 2016, 13:38:

jdreyer wrote on Jun 24, 2016, 03:12:

You should go eat dinner at an Indian restaurant and leave $2 for the bill, since that's what a curry dinner would cost you in India. Just leave a note, "Regional pricing, bitches." Just don't whine when your boss starts paying you $1 per hour, because that's what your job pays in Indonesia.

Well, sure, but then will my mortgage also go to $25 a month? And can I get groceries for $5?

Yes, but you can't have any health insurance. And your roads are unpaved. Electricity only comes on an hour a day. Your uninsulated house has no heat or running water: you have to haul water from the pump at the town square 2 miles away and shit in a hole out back. And the local police come by the shop to shake you down once a month. Also, the fire department has a dog, but no fire truck.

They are priced regionally because consumers in certain markets CAN NOT AFFORD to pay what first-world Westerners pay.

Ummm, yes! Their not being able to afford it is also a result of their shitty economic situation. It's cheaper to deliver the content because the people running the data centers in that country don't get paid that much, so they also can't afford to pay full price.

The "problem" isn't really a problem. Steam is allowing people to work around the regional pricing by not region locking all keys. If they cared it would end tomorrow.

The reasons for regional pricing are obvious, it's simply cheaper to operate and deliver content in certain countries.

Ummm no, that is not why games are priced regionally. They are priced regionally because consumers in certain markets CAN NOT AFFORD to pay what first-world Westerners pay. Publishers can lower prices in those reasons to make some kind of money, or set one price globally and not make any money at all in poorer markets. Problem is the internet is by it's nature globalized and without borders, so of course people are going to work around regional pricing.

Steam is still region locking games. You can not activate an EU key for example on a US account.
You can however buy global keys on key sites that work everywhere. Those are a few $ more expensive than the bottom line Russian keys.

This comment was edited on Jun 24, 2016, 15:23.

At some point Steam changed it so that keys were only region locked for 3 months, and that opened this flood of pirate sites selling keys from cheaper areas. They should just turn that back on and region lock them forever. I don't have any idea why they are allowing this to continue. The reasons for regional pricing are obvious, it's simply cheaper to operate and deliver content in certain countries. Take a basic economics course... jesus.

People here constantly whine about how "shitty" Steam is for one reason or another, and then basically steal money out of their pockets while still requiring full services to be provided. By not buying appropriately priced Steam keys for your region you are literally taking money away from the services hosting the content you just bought.

These are probably the same idiots that whine constantly about lowering taxes, but then also complain about how shitty the government and other public services operate after they just defunded them.

Acleacius wrote on Jun 24, 2016, 12:19:
Right, so this is about coming up with a solution that causes the least amount of damage to developers (imo fuck publishers), the game marketing industry and legitimately selling. So the question, is there a solution yet, if not all I'm saying is none of us should jump to pitchforks and torches as a first solution.

I don't think anyone has, unless you think someone not buying from G2A because they don't have faith in the legitimacy of the purchases qualifies. Fraud protection generally falls on the retailer. In a situation where the retailer has no incentive to do anything about it, there's not much solution to be had.

So, make the wealthier countries pay more to indirectly let other countries for the price of a pizza? No, thanks. If you can not afford the price, do not buy. Do not ask other people to pay more so you can get it for a dime.

Plus: If some people think they do not want to pay $60 for a game that others have to pay only $20 for, they could pirate it - and the guys behind it get nothing. Or they pay $30 for it and the studio makes at least some money - based on what people here wrote the publisher is happy to make at least some money from the "poor" countries (Russia and China are poor? When did that happen?!)

I think I said clearly, the revenue situation is sufficiently lopsided that a halfway point would damage overall profits while making zero in territories like AF/RU. The "subsidy" argument is dumb. Everyone country's optimal price is already set in stone. There's no reason to make anyone's price go *up*. You could give away digital goods to Martians without inflating anyone's else's prices.

You're the guy who thinks Valve should ignore German laws because, what's Germany going to do, go to war, right? This is probably a pointless discussion.

It's always so odd to me when people complain about regional pricing. Well, other than Australia getting screwed, that complaint make sense, as it is based on freight, not wages.

jdreyer wrote on Jun 24, 2016, 03:12:

You should go eat dinner at an Indian restaurant and leave $2 for the bill, since that's what a curry dinner would cost you in India. Just leave a note, "Regional pricing, bitches." Just don't whine when your boss starts paying you $1 per hour, because that's what your job pays in Indonesia.

Well, sure, but then will my mortgage also go to $25 a month? And can I get groceries for $5?

So, make the wealthier countries pay more to indirectly let other countries for the price of a pizza? No, thanks. If you can not afford the price, do not buy. Do not ask other people to pay more so you can get it for a dime.

Plus: If some people think they do not want to pay $60 for a game that others have to pay only $20 for, they could pirate it - and the guys behind it get nothing. Or they pay $30 for it and the studio makes at least some money - based on what people here wrote the publisher is happy to make at least some money from the "poor" countries (Russia and China are poor? When did that happen?!), so they can also be happy to make some money from people who neither want to get screwed nor want to pirate a game.

In the end it is great to have a choice. Customers are free to decide, and this is a good thing.

Oops.

Orogogus wrote on Jun 24, 2016, 11:15:

Acleacius wrote on Jun 24, 2016, 10:06:
I'm not saying there aren't some bad players selling keys. I just don't want to cast judgement on everyone and the whole game sales market. This is just the kind of scandal the big corporate's want to push people away from independent sales. This is how big corporate played the Crowd Funding too.

It's not everyone, but if there are no controls on it there's no reason to think the "winners" -- the ones with the lowest prices -- aren't the criminal element. It's just like a game, really; in a competitive game with no cheat protection, how much faith are you going to have in the scores of the people at the top?

Right, so this is about coming up with a solution that causes the least amount of damage to developers (imo fuck publishers), the game marketing industry and legitimately selling. So the question, is there a solution yet, if not all I'm saying is none of us should jump to pitchforks and torches as a first solution.

Personally I do everything possible not to have any cheat protection software on my PC. Nor, do I have any problem never logging onto a competitive server. I'm not a competitive person, strictly COOP gamer and RL'er!

Acleacius wrote on Jun 24, 2016, 10:06:
I'm not saying there aren't some bad players selling keys. I just don't want to cast judgement on everyone and the whole game sales market. This is just the kind of scandal the big corporate's want to push people away from independent sales. This is how big corporate played the Crowd Funding too.

It's not everyone, but if there are no controls on it there's no reason to think the "winners" -- the ones with the lowest prices -- aren't the criminal element. It's just like a game, really; in a competitive game with no cheat protection, how much faith are you going to have in the scores of the people at the top?

PHJF wrote on Jun 24, 2016, 11:06:
Or I will buy it. At the lowest price I can find. Because America is supposedly a capitalist bastion, and to do anything else would be decidedly un-American.

I mean, yeah. "Fuck you, got mine" is basically the American/capitalist motto. The endpoint of the regional pricing argument is basically, do you care about people who can't afford to pay the NA/EU price. One argument is going to be, that's sad and all but tough shit for them, and that's going to be where people are going to have to agree to disagree.

Wowbagger_TIP wrote on Jun 24, 2016, 10:04:
So, instead of figuring out a single price that will allow you to recover your costs and make a nice profit, you try to segment the market and charge whatever you feel each segment will bear.

I can't say what it's like for entertainment goods, but for my industry that single price would just be the high US/EU price. US/EU generates upward of 85% of the revenue, and to sell to the AF/LA/RU/AS territories you would have to lower the US/EU price far enough to tank your overall profits. If it were required by law to have a single price then those territories just wouldn't get anything, because it wouldn't be worth it.

Those are not randomly arranged bits, 100's of thousands of man hours were spent arranging them. It is a product like anything else. Don't like the price, don't buy it.

Or I will buy it. At the lowest price I can find. Because America is supposedly a capitalist bastion, and to do anything else would be decidedly un-American.

PHJF wrote on Jun 24, 2016, 08:55:
Great comparison? Bits of data don't have material value which significantly varies from region to region. It's a god-awful comparison.

Those are not randomly arranged bits, 100's of thousands of man hours were spent arranging them. It is a product like anything else. Don't like the price, don't buy it.

I'm not saying there aren't some bad players selling keys. I just don't want to cast judgement on everyone and the whole game sales market. This is just the kind of scandal the big corporate's want to push people away from independent sales. This is how big corporate played the Crowd Funding too.

Yes, the owners answers were evasive, but do you remember when Steam first started? How did Gabe's answer any different or how does Google answer about their metrics?

Actually Regional Pricing isn't always about regional wealth, often times corporations want to flood a country with their product for free, just to get PR and whole countries hooked, i.e. microsoft.

Edit: Mostly for shitty grammar and syntax.
This comment was edited on Jun 24, 2016, 10:14.

Regional pricing has nothing at all to do with the cost of producing the game. It's simply charging some people more because they live in wealthier countries, and charging others much less because they don't, but you want to sell to them anyway because your incremental cost per unit is essentially zero, so why not get what you can get from them.

So, instead of figuring out a single price that will allow you to recover your costs and make a nice profit, you try to segment the market and charge whatever you feel each segment will bear. This is becoming more and more granular over time though, with retailers experimenting with adjusting prices at individual levels based on all the data they gather about your buying habits. I think there's going to be more and more push-back against this sort of thing.