I suspect piracy will become increasingly popular in these countries
turkish here, piracy is already a big thing for any kind of media/games here, but steam almost ended piracy for gaming. i’ve not pirated a game since like 4 years, but i suspect i’ll go back to it after this change, i’d like to support the devs but i just can’t afford it,sorry.
As someone from a developing country, I’m painfully aware of how most big publishers choose to ignore recommended prices and just go with a straight USD conversion most of the time so I can only hope this doesn’t screw them even further.
I really wish it was viable for Valve to enforce a ceiling on suggested prices or something along those lines, it’s about the only way I see that ever changing. Well, that, or everyone just becoming a full-time sailor, I suppose!
At first when I saw the title, I thought this was done to stop people who VPN swap stores. The article however paints a different picture: Developers do not want Lira or Pesos since they are too unstable. Doesn’t make sense to price a game at X Argentine Peso if next month X is now 30% less valuable. If you have too much inflation, no one wants your currency. Even the Argentine government or presidential candidates said something along the lines of wanting to swap to the USD too.
Piracy is actually part of Argentinian culture, steam almost changed it, but they couldn’t.
Taringa, ah, those were the days!
May all regional pricing end. I do not want to subsidize development costs for third world nations.
I suspect you’ll gladly accept their seriously undercharged labor though
I’d rather force companies to not use third world labor so they stop suppressing our salaries and pushing down investment in first world labor productivity.
Do you really think they’re going to make more revenue by making the pricing more than they’re willing/able to pay?
Because if publishers did, they wouldn’t offer regional pricing.
Oh I think they are making more revenue by charging the first world more, but I also think they shouldn’t be able to get away with it.
“Making more revenue with negligible cost of distribution” and “we’re subsidizing poor countries” are not compatible.
Yeah they are.
The game is being sold to the third world only exist because the first world is paying as much money as they are.
It’s literally a scheme to extract more money out of people. It should be illegal to prevent people from the ability to use things like VPNs to get those cheaper prices opening up the market and ensuring the prices actually match supply and demand.
No, they are not.
The fact that they’re making more net money from those regions than they otherwise would, by definition, makes it literally impossible for you to be subsidizing them. The alternative is not listing in those regions, not lowering prices for you. There is no theoretical world where you get a cheaper price in developed countries without regional pricing in lower income regions.
The alternative is not listing in those regions, not lowering prices for you
The alternative is marginally lower prices for the first world and higher prices for the third world as the prices become global instead of a massive grift which charges you based on how much money you’re able to spend.
