regional pricing isn’t always applied. Egypt still has USD pricing making a $60 game a quarter the median monthly income making that $60 game the equivalent of $700
Same in Vietnam. The average gamer demographic makes like 15k-25k VND/hr. That’s like $.60-$.1.10 an hour. So 55-110 hours of labor for a video game. Everyone here is a pirate, and rightfully so.
Valve does a relatively good job with regional pricing. But after last year’s readjustments price in India is at the very least 50% more expensive than it used to be.
No, our economy didn’t improve to warrant this change, it’s in fact tabled heavily, and disposable income has also shrunk but a lot. It’ll get a lot worse too, as our policies become worse and worse.
There are other countries in similar situations where the prices were adjusted to be cheaper, but not in India, sadly.
So while Valve usually does a good job, they didn’t this time. We can’t expect individual developers to manually keep track of global economies and set their own prices, so it’s very understandable for then to just say they trust Valve for this. I just hope more of them realize that Valve is not perfect in how they go about it.
This is sometimes the case with god forsaken countries like Venezuela, we’ve had the same prices as US since forever and we’re the worst economy in the whole continent and rank among the top 10 in the world, so yeah sometimes is just bad luck or maybe even due to international policies that regular costumers are not aware of.
I respect that, even though I really don’t enjoy their games so I probably won’t 😆
See I hate that the game company’s lose out but some games I’d rather have a legitimate copy so I can get my achievements and shit so key resalers are the only cheap way of getting a legitimate copy of the game, Wish there was a way to differentiate between the stolen keys and non stolen keys.
What purpose do achievements serve even? Are there rewards you are after?
Achievements have only ever been annoying pop-up from my perspective.
What is the appeal?
Honestly they are just nice to have and pretty enjoyable to try and 100% a game.
A sense of achievement
Before I show myself out, I’ll just say some use them as a progression indicator without looking up a guide while others enjoy that sweet dopamine rush.
While you’re probably joking, sometimes it feels that way. (Referring to 1st sentence.)
It’s a joke in that it’s a pun but it’s still true, in my opinion.
It’s still criminal in my country, which means even if RWS does not complain, the ISP can still complain and the police will still arrest.
The law is incredibly stupid at times.
Germany?
I mean, by nature we didn’t need permission, but thanks I guess!
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at least you won’t go to hell for this one
Too late, see you there
Remember if you like the games and have the means to, you should still donate what you can to support both them having this attitude toward this, and further development of future games.
OTOH Running with Scissors sucks major ass
I don’t know how it is in the US, but in my country Steam regional pricing doesn’t apply and the game can be about 5-7% of my paycheck for a AAA game (before “microtransactions” that is) which doesn’t seem like a lot at first, but it still seems like a lot in my mind.
They should be like the devs of Hotline Miami and just straight up provide the torrent lol
Imagine EA providing the torrent and thanking Skidrow for the great work on removing Denuvo lol
Would you like to sign my petition?
So damn based. Makes me NOT wanna pirate their games. Hell, I’d even purchase even if I wouldn’t play it (if I could rn, but currently I’ve got hefty cat veterinary bills to pay).
Edit: OH MATE! THEY’RE THE POSTAL STUDIO! Goddamn I played it so damn much in my early teens. Goddamn I gotta pay my bills faster!
Alright so anyone have any recommendations? For me to buy their games of course
Postal 2 + all the DLC, unironically the most fun you’ll ever have with a game.
When I was in business school, one of our lecturers in our ethics class was one of the main consultants that worked the Steam project to create regional price differences and other geofencing. It was a very interesting class. The takeaway is that it can be seen as morally responsible to charge someone is a poorer country less for the same game. It is called price discrimination and it is done in many industries including air travel and pharmaceuticals. Otherwise, you would price an entire market out of a product. In many respects, the richer countries are subsidizing the poorer countries. The argument that the price should be the lowest one on the board anywhere is not realistic because a company needs to generate margins high enough to make the opportunity worthwhile otherwise it is not going to produce the product. In other words, Companies will not make a product if they are going to lose monkey selling it, but they will charge one market more to sell to another market at a loss if there is other intrinsic value like user adoption to create a community. They are selling digital content in this instance, but it still took money to make and money to distribute, so the argument that the product is easy to replicate over and over again is a moot point. Getting some money in a market versus no money is beneficial. If people pirate that games en masse by even just purchasing them VPN at a lower rate hurts the developers. I believe in some piracy under certain circumstances, such as when you truly can’t afford something when you are growing up. It is in the marketers best interest to let kids get hooked at a young age.
Wait, are you telling me that business ethics are actually a real thing? I thought somebody made that up as a meme. Every corporate executive I’ve ever worked for has been a borderline, if not full blown, sociopath obsessed with nothing more than getting richer at everyone else’s expense. Maybe they all skipped that class?
I’ll tell you that the teacher was an attorney who worked for a very reputable business consulting firm to help businesses make unsavory decisions. A key takeaway from the class is that you can do anything that you can get away with and if you don’t, your competitors will. They basically said that you need to get away with it in the eyes of the law, but also your customers. They may be the ones forcing you to do the right thing. You also have to do good in the eyes of your employee culture. If your employees don’t like the direction of the company’s values, then that can prove detrimental. So, in many respects, you can be forced by external factors to act an ethical manner.
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Bold of you to assume they even went to business school.
All the big wigs I’ve met were “self-made millionaires” -meaning assholes that used, manipulated and fucked over enough people to reach their current positions.Also, tax evasion.
I am finding that the people that are starting to rise to the top of my company are backstabbers. It wasn’t always like this, but the company keeps absorbing other companies and some of their cultures are toxic in a passive aggressive way.
The last thing I want them to do is lose monkey.
lol. I’m sticking with the typo.
Holly shit, this is pretty damn awesome!
