Here's a fact.
The following sentence has never been uttered at work: "Next item on the agenda: how much we have seen PC revenues increase due to increased grey market key reselling"
Steam prices! Grey key sites! and the I love/hate developers thread - Enter if you dare!
- Thread starter Musty Pie
- Start date
- Status
Here's a fact.
The following sentence has never been uttered at work: "Next item on the agenda: how much we have seen PC revenues increase due to increased grey market key reselling"
Caporegime
So what are you saying is the main issue? Lost VAT revenue? It's the seller's responsibility to be VAT registered in their country and to charge VAT if appropriate under their country's laws, so you aren't doing anything wrong by not explicitly paying VAT. As for import duty, under UK law there's no import duty on a supply of services, only on goods, and software delivered in this way is a service, not a good.
Soldato
thought you was coder so why would that topic be in your meetings?
Hmm, I'm not sure what I've done to "nVidiaGamer", but he's now advocating buying Russian games in Russian language with a VPN, using a VPN to play them, and modifying the game files themselves back to English language.
Steam are known for banning accounts using VPNs, so what's he's encouraging is highly risky.
But he's on a mission now to send everyone to G2A/ Kinguin
And whilst he's allowed to encourage it there, I'm not allowed to reason against it 
Steam are known for banning accounts using VPNs, so what's he's encouraging is highly risky.
But he's on a mission now to send everyone to G2A/ Kinguin
And whilst he's allowed to encourage it there, I'm not allowed to reason against it 
I'm done - I give up. This conversation is so one-sided the situation is actually far worse than I'd imagined.
Maybe 1 in 50 people wants to support hard-working developers. Everybody else just wants something for (nearly) nothing.
No, you just pay too much for games. They aren't worth what you think they are.
Welcome to the real world.
Guy complains about people buying from grey sites, Guy buys a not for sale key from ebay & still complains about people buying from grey sites.
You can say you paid full price to the guy on Ebay but the only person who profited from that sale was the guy from Ebay. Nvidia or Konami which ever way you look at it did not benefit from your purchase. Infact they lost out on a sale on either the gfx or the game if you wasn't able to get the code from the guy on Ebay.
You can say you paid full price to the guy on Ebay but the only person who profited from that sale was the guy from Ebay. Nvidia or Konami which ever way you look at it did not benefit from your purchase. Infact they lost out on a sale on either the gfx or the game if you wasn't able to get the code from the guy on Ebay.
Why should I care? Yes I want the devs to succeed but maybe they should work on there business model better.
Is it wrong to want the best deal I can get? It's not like devs/publishers don't know what's going on.
They are very aware of the grey key market. If they wanted to get rid of it then they should price there games more competitively.
The obvious flaw that a game will sell ten times as many copies if it's a fiver than it would at £20. Unless of course you can present an example.
That's not what I've said at all. They're sold cheaper in other markets because that's what those markets can/will pay for the product, the alternative being that the game just gets pirated therefore the developers lose out entirely. Why else do you think they'd be charging less?
A £6-10 game will be as much of a luxury to someone on a low income in a developing country as a £30-40 one will be to you or I, so I don't know why you'd think publishers are somehow being especially generous to them. Better to give them the option of doing the right think and make a bit of money from the sale than price it as high as the EU/US and get nothing.
Yup, you're right. Buy buying that code, I cost nVidia a sale of a graphics card and I cost Konami a sale on MGS5.
Nobody made any money, because nVidia stole the codes from Konami, and forced North Koreans to make their GPUs without paying them. Afterwards, the guy on eBay stole the graphics card, before I went round his house and stole the code.
Nobody made any money. I then personally burned the devs offices down so they lost even more.
I'm sorry that I started this discussion. It seems I am the one destroying the games industry. My bad.
What? I don't even.......
If you can't see that what you did when buying your code from Ebay lost nvidia/konami a sale then it is pointless even having this discussion with you.
Nvidia bundled the game with the sole purpose of getting a few sales because they thought people might think it was an incentive to buy that card = You should have bought the graphics card if you wanted that code. Nvidia lost out on a sale.
Konami missed out on a sale because you bought a code from Ebay which wasn't intended for your purchase.
I didn't say you were the only one destroying the gaming industry but please practice what you preach before jumping on your high horse.
It doesn't matter if Nvidia or Konami paid one another, Fact is when you bought it you made either one of those companies miss a sale.
Common sense. I bet Tomb Raider sales on pc got a nice bump from that hotukdeal thread.
You said "they're not obliged to make them affordable for the masses. ", so why do they charge the equivalent of £6.70 in Ukraine
Also the fact that grey key sellers and vpn/other region buying has become so popular perhaps shows the market here does not have the stomach for £40 games. I certainly don't.
A non physical/ intangible product like a game key is only worth what people are willing to pay.
Caporegime
*peeks in topic*
Yeah, saw a Tv in Currys, then had a look in RS, and saw the same one in there £100 cheaper, so got it from RS, don't care as long as got my Tv cheaper.
*Leaves topic*
Yeah, saw a Tv in Currys, then had a look in RS, and saw the same one in there £100 cheaper, so got it from RS, don't care as long as got my Tv cheaper.
*Leaves topic*
Caporegime
No one really lost anything from him buying the key on ebay. The person who picked it up with their graphics card has paid for it, because they bought the graphics card and the key was included with that. nVidia or whoever paid Konami to include the game, so Konami have been paid. The seller has sold something they didn't want. It's no different to them selling the box or something.
Now the EULA probably says you can't do that, but those things are garbage anyway, no one cares.
Nvidia will be paying Konami peanuts compared to what the game actually retails at. So yes, they have lost out. Because he decided to buy a nvidia code off someone instead of "paying fullprice and supporting the developers"
It's not that simple. How many of those cheap sales were cannibalised from full-price sales? How many of those would've bought the game when it was £5 less, or £10 less? The vast majority would've bought the game anyway at some point and at some price, so all that's happened is they've bought it now instead of in 6-12 months time and paid a fraction for it instead. Which is great for them, but not great for the publisher's revenue figures. Whether you care about the publisher or not is up to you but ultimately they make the big decisions about whether games get sequels and whether studios get the budgets to be ambitious.
If they thought selling a game at £6 instead of £40 would result in more profit they'd probably be doing it.
Because as I said once already, that'll be what they've deemed is a suitable price for a game in what is a lower-income market. I know nothing about Ukranian economics and I imagine comparatively it probably is reasonably cheap even for there, but as I also said, in markets with huge piracy rates they'll have done the maths and worked out that if they can convert some of those pirated copies to actual sales, they'll benefit in the long run. Why else do you think they would do it, just to spite us?
If you can't afford or aren't willing to pay £40 for a game that's fair enough; there are some games I'll buy on release and others I'll buy when they hit £10 and those that I might pick up in a Steam sale for a few quid just because. That doesn't mean however that I think all games should be at the cheapest price point to begin with because that simply isn't realistic. They're hugely expensive to create and understandably the publisher wants as much return on it as they can get, which is way launch window sales are so critical to them. So much so that they'll spend millions in advertising, promotion and in-store events just to get people to buy it on the day.
Indeed, and in some markets what people are willing (or able) to pay is less than what we in the UK are, hence the lower price they charge.
I've always thought we mostly got pretty cheap games in the UK anyway both on PC and consoles, so I find it a bit odd that people complain. Steam's prices are a different matter but then PC gamers made their own bed there by pushing for everything ever to be on Steam and only Steam. Only a few years ago you'd see posts where people would gladly pay £10 more just to have a game on Steam, I notice those posts aren't so common now.
Permabanned
Do you live in some kind of fantasy land?
1) I support a game, an idea, a vision, a promise.
2) You assume ALL developers are hard working. If that was the case why are games like Battlefield constantly released in a buggy, unbalanced state? But that is beside the point. I'm sure mid gen said something in the TD thread that developers aren't in it for the monies.
https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showpost.php?p=29076346&postcount=564
3) I want what I consider "value for money" which is measured differently depending on who you ask.
4) We live in an opportunistic world. If I have the opportunity to get a game cheaper then I shall. That saved money can go towards saving a Donkey instead.
5) Share holders care about meeting deadlines, sale figures even if it means sacrificing the quality of a game, so if they take such a unsympathetic approach towards gamers then I react the best way possible which is by voting with my wallet. Yeh screw you Hardline and Battlefront, never bought the games and never will. Powa to the people
(This does not apply to CD Projekt RED, the best developers in the World, who deserve every penny for their games)6) I will reward good developers by praising their game and hopefully this is shared amongst other gamers too. If they see positive reviews, good server population several months after release (for mp games) then that is a satisfaction for them. I will then buy DLC to further support the game I enjoyed.
Did you ever read how upset a Visceral dev got when a "popular" Youtuber said that Hardline wasn't worth buying? Especially when Visceral flew this person out to the studio to be a PR puppet for EA. They didn't get upset about money but the fact that they couldn't stand the fact that their game was crap and shrugged off by the PC community. https://www.reddit.com/r/battlefiel...eral_developer_is_upset_with_matimi0_that_he/
7) I care about my interests first. That's life. I don't depend on developers, they aren't my livelyhood.
Last edited:
The code was a valid UK code, from a UK product. Any (presumed) loss of income was voluntarily agreed by Konami and nVidia.
Konami do not set Ukraine/India prices to give UK citizens a 1/2 price discount. That is not intended. And not the same situation.
I also keep hearing people say I'm advocating paying full Steam price. The number of times I've said I buy from authorised, cheap resellers I've lost count.
I don't buy full price Steam games. I don't buy codes from India. I'm somewhere in the middle
I'm buying codes intended for the UK market at less than Steam prices.If you're going to accuse me of anything, at least be accurate
Do you live in some kind of fantasy land?
Evidently, yes.
Last edited:
- Status