Steam Updates Pricing Restrictions to Combat VPN-based Exploitation of Regional Pricing

[Caring1]

I personally think this is said by someone in a privileged position who doesn't have a shred of empathy towards those with much lesser opportunities than yourself. Yes, games aren't required for surviving. Excuse these people for earning much less than you and wanting to find some solace - in a freaking videogame - from economical situations they alone have no power to change, and for which most of them have no blame whatsoever other than a massive stroke of dumb luck for having been born in a country that's eons behind ours. But I understand. It's like, man, they're having fun, in a way that totally doesn't affect you at all, and they shouldn't.

Yes i'm totally privileged to be a disabled pensioner living it up on a pension that was under the poverty line last I checked.
It seems knowing the value of a dollar and what people with excess income whine about, makes me unempathetic to their plight.

 

[rtwjunkie]

I’ve read the whole thread and not sure exactly where I stand on this. My personal thoughts may be a little random, so bear with me. Maybe I will reach an actual viewpoint by the end.

On one hand, games are indeed a luxury item and should be a discretionary item, as such. When someone is not well off or has fallen on hard times, and every dollar (I will just use that term, dollar, for easy reference) counts, then spending money on games will not improve your situation. That money is better spent on slowly but surely saving every dollar you can so that one can lift themselves up.

25 years ago I had left active duty army service after 4.5 years (I continued till 14 years in the Reserves). My job prospects were horrible in the expensive state of Vermont, so I took whatever I could, even working 3 jobs. Wife and a son, with another on the way, I still couldn’t make it. We moved into public housing, got food stamps for about 6 months, and saved every dime I could. I bought no CD’s (yeah, that’s the time period, LOL), had no cable, went to no movies. Finally with alot of hard work and getting a good job here in Louisiana, I was able to keep the creditors at bay and handle the necessities.

Even then, there weren’t many extras. Saved some more, worked as many hours as I could and finally bought our first house, just a small one. It wasn’t until 2005 that I finally had enough income to actually have discretionary income. Suddenly we could go to movies, get all the cable channels, and only then did I really start buying PC games. Now, after 22 years in that job I had worked hard enough that I was able to retire early today.

What’s my point? Well that lesson should apply to those hard working people that are not well off at the moment, and who are in what we may call the more affluent countries. Yes, it sucks giving up nice little luxuries like games. But the payoff in the long run IS there. This is related to why I used to give away games here. I felt that people who put their names in probably had a harder time buying them new, so why not give them some of those luxury items to make their free time better without a financial burden.

Do I think this same model applies to people in what we term less affluent countries? No, because even my example may not work for them. So for those countries I believe in regional pricing. Reason being is that many may be somewhat comparable to a situation like mine in their country, but at a lower income level. So even those people who are doing all the things I did, aren’t going to be able to reap the rewards and buy for instance, nice games. They should have regional pricing. They deserve leisure activities too. There also should be some system in place to keep people from more affluent countries from cheating the system and buying their games cheaply on regional pricing models. This can only hurt our fellow humans in those countries.

So, in both situations, when times are extremely tight, buying games is not going to improve your financial situation. But once it has improved, and there is discretionary income, Everyone should be able to only buy games from their region. Basically I see it from both sides.

 

[londiste]

Well, region-locked games are a thing. Valve could tell game publishers that they should lock games to the region they were bought or force-implement it themselves worldwide (if their contracts and the different laws involved allow it)

View attachment 164064

It works the other way around - publishers tell Valve that they want this. Regions are not a specific Steam thing but defined by publisher - regions can and do vary depending on what the publisher has chosen. The same screenshot for example - Baltic states are in Euro zone when it comes to Steam but whatever this game is, publisher (looks like it might be a 1C or 2K game) has different region definition.

 

[InVasMani]

I want my poverty discount on all items not just games. Ironically if they had a VPN and were using it in the first place they'll probably abuse it now the other way. This doesn't make me very interested in buying new games on Steam in a hurry and I didn't buy any games on the last Steam summer sale for the record. Seems more and more when you get a Steam sale the item isn't on much of sale in the first place you're paying for the unfinished DLC that exponentially jacks up the price. That said there are legitmate expansions that justify it, but for everyone of those that do there are probably twice as many that don't, but people end up buying anyway to have all the content because they simply feel like they might be missing out on something and often aren't missing as much as they over optimistically are hoping to be.

 

[londiste]

I want my poverty discount on all items not just games.

When it comes to regional economic differences you are already seeing that. Most obvious examples are probably real estate and any services.

Steam sales stopped being what they were when refunds became a thing. This effectively stopped any variable discounts like daily sales and some others that were a nice pull to the store.

 

[windwhirl]

Steam sales stopped being what they were when refunds became a thing. This effectively stopped any variable discounts like daily sales and some others that were a nice pull to the store.

Wait, what? You're telling me that discounts were even more extreme before?

 

[londiste]

Wait, what? You're telling me that discounts were even more extreme before?

That might not have been the case exactly but the degree of discount varied across the sale period - daily deal was bigger discount than the game was usually. Say the game was discounted by 50% in the sale but as a daily deal it was discounted by 75% on one day. This made watching the sales and prices a bit of a game when trying to catch the best price.

When it comes to the actual discount you get, it might be the same, but the game element of it was indeed captivating

 

[Renald]

There's a lot of crap and non-sense in this thread ...

People wanting to pay it 7$ saying it's not fair that they can't cheat the system.
People wanting for everybody to pay the same price.
People firing at Steam.
People firing at studios.

Damn. Did you even look at the situation ?

I read only one decent comment : it's not that bad that Argentinians will need hell more money to play, because they should aim at making their life better, instead of spending it on something keeping them low. It's a video game, not food or medical supplies.

If you take the whole thing, paying via VPN is cheating and selfish for others, because every game bought that way at a high price for the region encourage them to keep them high for local population.
Production studio are not even always in rich countries, remember that. A game made by people in eastern Europe will cost them a lot less to develop and 60 or 70$ is a lot for them. They generally don't sell them that high.

Paying the same everywhere ? You wouldn't believe me. In France, a good dev can ask for 40k a year... taxes not included. After taxes, it's around 32-33k€ which is, for most of Europe, pretty decent. But in Northen countries, it's not enough because you need to sell a kidney for drinking coffee !! Danemark it's 6€ for a coffee in a normal restaurant (Danish people, correct if I'm wrong). If you compare other thing of everyday life, beef is 17-18€/kg in France and 8€/kg in Ireland.
In the USA you can have 100k for the same job. But you'll need a pretty good insurance, rocket high rent, and college for your kid @100k$. Whereas in many countries, like France or Sweden, education is practically free (it's changing, but still). Same for hospitals, insurance (they are quite low compared to US ones), loans, etc.
In the end, you may think that price will stay as is, but in reality, prices will surely go higher for "the richer" because you are are falsely rich, because European system is large in favor of middle classes, giving them a good purchasing power, unlike most USA citizens.

To finish, Steam is not blame. Users are to blame. They just responded for the sake of developers. Imagine if everybody was buying the game @7$ and not 60$ ? No more profit = no more games = you will never be able to play a video game again.


Play smart not selfish, but for human kind, I found that harder and harder every day that they can do it.

 

[mechtech]

Man, the minimum wage in Argentina is 233 USD a month, or 58 USD a week...

Yep big differences on the value of money everywhere in the world. Province of Ontario in Canada min wage (non-student) I think is about $14 cnd/hr, or $560 for typical 40 hr work week. Which is below the poverty line in the province.

 

[vinnyerrero]

This might not be a popular opinion, but I was born in such a country and, well, people who spent their time playing games still remain there, in poorly maintained blocks of flats. People with more reasonable priorities can now play games on their 3080Tis in their homes located in properly managed countries. Just sayin', maybe games aren't the most pressing life priority in such places. They are essentially a luxury good.

Do you really think most gamers play with x80 Ti class of hardware? Go to steam survey and you'll see that less than 1% of gamers use that kind of graphics card.
Regional pricing for software exists because the cost to produce a license is essentially ZERO. Game producers are not doing charity by lowering pricing for LatAm.
They are seeking the most amount of profit, since if they price $60 in those countries, the game won't sell and they'll receive way less money.
For them it's way better to sell 1M copies for $20 than 100K copies for $60
Why do you think Adobe and Microsoft gives discounts on software for students?
For the same reason

 

[Lew Zealand]

Do you really think most gamers play with x80 Ti class of hardware? Go to steam survey and you'll see that less than 1% of gamers use that kind of graphics card.
Regional pricing for software exists because the cost to produce a license is essentially ZERO. Game producers are not doing charity by lowering pricing for LatAm.
They are seeking the most amount of profit, since if they price $60 in those countries, the game won't sell and they'll receive way less money.
For them it's way better to sell 1M copies for $20 than 100K copies for $60
Why do you think Adobe and Microsoft gives discounts on software for students?
For the same reason

Exactly this. This is 100% about economics and the companies finding the price in each region which will maximize profit. If most profit in Western Europe and the US is at 60€ or $60, then they will sell at that price. If the max profit can be made at 720 ARS in Argentina, then that what it will be priced at. This ain't about fair.

It's about profit.

 

[Renald]

Exactly this. This is 100% about economics and the companies finding the price in each region which will maximize profit. If most profit in Western Europe and the US is at 60€ or $60, then they will sell at that price. If the max profit can be made at 720 ARS in Argentina, then that what it will be priced at. This ain't about fair.

It's about profit.

Since minimum wage in Iceland is around 2000€/month and for example : a bus ticket cost 4€, a pocket book 27€, a burger-type fast food 25€ and gas around 1.7€/L (against 1.3 in most European countries) and scolarity is not a problem (600$ each year at University); I wonder how much does a game costs...
Anyone living in Iceland currently ?

Because if they pay twice (like basically everything), it might hurt

 

[Imouto]

You're making the assumption that I'm saying games should be more expensive somewhere else. I'm not - I'm saying they should be the same price. Maybe game companies are asking for way too much $ for games over here. And looking at the salaries of people like Bobby Kotick and Randy Pitchford, I don't think that's an unreasonable statement to make.

They are non-essential goods and they can charge whatever they want. Vote with your wallet.

 

[Deleted member 177333]

They are non-essential goods and they can charge whatever they want. Vote with your wallet.

Oh you're preaching to the choir, my fellow gamer. I already vote with my wallet on just about everything. It's quite rare for me to pay full price for games these days as most just aren't worth the asking price (or quite honestly, anywhere near the asking price). However, I stand behind my earlier statements, I do feel they should be the same in all regions, but as you say, they can certainly choose to charge what they like. They just shouldn't be shocked when people choose not pay that much for them.