Steam to start region locking games

Haggisman said:
I'm sure Jose in Brazil and Vladimir in Russia think it's unfair that their wage is 10% of yours ;)

Ultimately the developers/publishers need to sell the game at a realistic price for the market. If the realistic price for the UK market equates to a month's average salary in another market, then it's not a realistic price for that market.
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This!
 
CD Key sites aren't going to like this.

MooMoo444 said:
I think it's unfair how José in Brazil or Vladimir in Russia can buy the same game for 10% of the money I have to pay for it.
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That's exactly it, buy for 10% of the money, sell for 5% under the usual price.

Seller receives 5% profit, key sites in a nutshell.
 
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JimAroo said:
CD Key sites aren't going to like this.
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Doubt you'll see much sympathy for money grabbing resellers:o

End of the day, you guys are shooting yourselves in the foot, the more people that do the cd/vpns, the less the money take from rich domestic markets where the likes of ubi/ea make their bank.

If it were that and only that, the less likely you would see a pc version. That being said services such as steam are such a visible platform, I doubt the balance would swing it the other way.

More people are buying at a price, be thankful for it.
 
Bad news for me, a lot of my games are cheap as possible from a seller I know who was getting them from Indonesia. COD AW cost me £8 the other week for example, so yeah I am a little dissapointed. Hopefully they will find a way around it.
 
Haggisman said:
I'm sure Jose in Brazil and Vladimir in Russia think it's unfair that their wage is 10% of yours ;)

Ultimately the developers/publishers need to sell the game at a realistic price for the market. If the realistic price for the UK market equates to a month's average salary in another market, then it's not a realistic price for that market.
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I hadn't even looked at it this way, that's a very good point.


Ok Vladimir, you buy the game mate, sorry for being a Richard :p
 
Doesn't really bother me and if I want the game badly, I pay full price but if I want it cheaper, I wait till I see it in a sale.
 
Steam has been going down the toilet for a while now. Origin and Uplay get most of my game time these days. Better prices, better download speeds and simple user interface.
 
Mynight said:
Although I haven't used a vpn to purchase games it seems rather unfair when some countries get the same content for much less. If it were just the exchange rates I wouldn't care but when we're effectively subsidising other countries purchases it feels unfair.
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We're not subsidising other countries. Countries where piracy is extremely high due to poverty or extremely low costs of living, publishers would rather sell their games at a greatly reduced price, than not at all, and that's fair enough when you consider that in some countries the cost of a game can be more than the monthly food bill.

So really, the problem isn't that we're subsidising them, we're getting rinsed because they know we'll pay, so they keep the prices high.

It's supply and demand. In some countries the demand is low so the price is brought down to meet the demand. In this and other western countries the demand is high so they have a more realistic chance of pushing prices up.
 
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The issue is people just don't care, people are very selfish when it comes to our own money so we get wound up when we see the same product for half the price in another country and take measures to get it.
 
neoglow said:
The issue is people just don't care, people are very selfish when it comes to our own money so we get wound up when we see the same product for half the price in another country and take measures to get it.
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There's nothing wrong with the selfishness of acquiring a game cheaper from a different source. It's your money and you work hard for it.

The real issue is this:

ubersonic said:
A bigger question is, if they can sell for cheap in those countries and still make profit, why are they ripping us off?
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Because people unfortunately pay. This is why Activision has been able to raise the prices of their COD games and keep them high. People will buy them anyway. Remember that COD boycott group? Most of the group were playing the game on the day of release.
 
I agree with the comments regarding basic economy structure and the fact that the average wage in the 'vpn' countries is a lot lower than ours, so prices are set accordingly.

However, it has to be said that if new releases were priced at £25, I'd actually buy some. Right now I just wait until games come down to a more reasonable price (rather than using vpn's).
£35-40 (then a bit more for release day/week/month dlc- sometimes pushing the price up to £50+ for those who feel the dlc makes a more complete game) for a new release is too highly priced for me.
If more importance was put into making prices attractive to western consumers rather than how to stop consumers from getting around the system then maybe those consumers would actually stop using vpn.

Maybe.
 
ubersonic said:
A bigger question is, if they can sell for cheap in those countries and still make profit, why are they ripping us off?
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Because they make most of their money in the higher paying countries. Surely that's not a difficult question to imagine the answer for?

The low prices in the poorer countries is an effort to extract any form of income from such places, rather than lose out completely through piracy or simple non-sales.

It's much like Steam sales or, more pointedly, the absurd deals you get on Humble Bundles and the like when they have big-publisher deals: those older games sell almost no units at normal prices, but publishers get a nice dose of income by chucking them all together for people to buy for a fiver. They couldn't sustain that for new titles, as the bulk of income for AAAs comes from the new-release full-price surge.
 
If you do some looking around you can typically get new releases for <£25, Green Man Gaming usually has some form of discount code going around that will knock 20-25% off which brings most new releases and preorders to <£25.
 
cheesyboy said:
Because they make most of their money in the higher paying countries.
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Exactly, they are ripping us off simply because they know they can get away with it here as most people will take it, the price of games today is obscene.


cheesyboy said:
The low prices in the poorer countries is an effort to extract any form of income from such places, rather than lose out completely through piracy or simple non-sales.
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You mean the same why as they lose out here due to piracy or simple non sales because they charge stupid prices for their games? lol.
 
UTmaniac said:
Lets solve this by giving Steam sensitive financial data about ourselves and our household, so people who want a game and have loads of disposable income pay £1000 or more for their copy. ;)
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sounds fair.
free2play games have already fixed that at everyone else's expense though sigh.

even when they have a sub and a f2p market place the sub is nerfed to hell to make people feel like they need to spend more money...

trion milked that one in archeage

I buy very few games these days as to me £40+ for maybe 6 hours of a gameplay just feels like a rip off.

might as well be an arcade version with a chip n pin machine you connect to via usb and "insert card" instead of "insert coin" and go back to the arcade payment method some games would actually be cheaper LOL
 
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