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To Fight Currency Mismatches, Steam Adding Region Locking to PC Games
will_die writes Because of recent currency devaluation Steam has now added region locking for games sold in Russia and CIS. Brazil and local area and Indonesia and local area are also being locked. If you purchase a game from one of those regions you cannot gift it to somone outside of the area. So someone from Russia can gift a game to someone to Georgia [Note: This Georgia, rather than this one, that is.] but not to someone in the USA. You want to see the prices in the Russia store and compare them to the Steam Christmas Sale which should be starting in a few hours.
You have a DRM system that is the least hated (and actually liked in some cases) by the users of any. (And the Linux support is appreciated by a LOT of folks, including me.) Doing this will only fan the flames of hate for a very small increase in revenue. Because people will move or travel, and all there games will stop working, and they will post it all over the net. And you will get zero sympathy for this crap.
Meanwhile, Nintendo, the king of region locking, has expressed that they might consider removing it for their next consoles: http://www.ign.com/articles/20...
So does this mean I can't gift a game to my friends living in Russia?
Didn't the rouble lose like a million percent of its value against the dollar in a day or something? They don't want you to take advantage of that, but they also don't want to alienate the Russians by raising their prices to compensate for the currency crash. I guess the middle ground should be: if you buy from the US store you can use it everywhere. If you buy from the Russian store you're stuck in Russia until you purchase the worldwide upgrade.
Come on, give us some credit. Maybe it's just because I don't live in the US that I'm aware that there's a country called Georgia.
It's like in most Hollywood movies when they write "Beijing, China", or "Paris, France", but then write "San Francisco, California".
Summation 2
Let's say the game costs 10 times less in Russia. You ask Russian friend to buy it for you but you send him twice the amount required. That means you both got the game for 1/5th of the U.S.A. price. The game creators and Steam lose.
Let's say Steam increases the price in Russia so that it matches the U.S. dollar value. Your Russian friend can no longer afford games. Your friend, the game creators and Steam lose.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
Millions of Russian hardcore gamers are now pissed off, where they didn't give a shit about politics previously.
He is doomed!!!
When his defense asked, "Which computer has Jon Johansen trespassed upon?" the answer was: "His own."
You have a DRM system that is the least hated (and actually liked in some cases) by the users of any. (And the Linux support is appreciated by a LOT of folks, including me.) Doing this will only fan the flames of hate for a very small increase in revenue. Because people will move or travel, and all there games will stop working, and they will post it all over the net. And you will get zero sympathy for this crap.
I don't see ANYTHING about games ceasing to work. This only prevents you from gifting a game (purchasing on another user's behalf).
You can still buy a game in one location and play it in another, you just can't gift it to someone else's account in another region.
I'm okay with that; despite what some people here will argue (free market blah blah) I'd sooner see purchase restrictions like this than expect people in poor countries to pay a week's wages for a game or movie or album.
As long as they don't start making content only available in certain regions, they're making the best of a bad situation.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
Well, they were simply waiting for a pretext to start boiling the frog. There is no real competition to Steam in digital, they managed to completely kill off PC game retail, so now they will start implementing draconian measures. Region locks. Always-connected. Limited activations. In-game adds.
US owns Russia. Google is worth more by itself than all of Russian companies. Russia could not even beat Europe in a conventional war much less China much less Texas much less the United States.
Vladdy is impotent.
"Because people will move or travel, and all there games will stop working" -- This has nothing to do with the games not working, it's only about being able to buy games or gift games in those cheap areas. If you have bought the game it'll still continue to work, regardless of where you bought it or where you're playing it in.
Because the Ruble just tanked to the ground of the ocean due to what if I recall correctly is oil prices, and because there are sites that, traditionally, have taken advantage of this thing by re-selling keys from different regions. This has, thus far, been tolerated, but with one currency from a large region with a big PC gaming market losing value like it current is, there simply is no way Valve could reasonably continue to do so.
Just check out a store that deals in international codes like this one (no it's not a referral link). You can see where the keys are redeemable, I've had good luck with them so far although they have a very shady Chinese gold seller feel to them.
ASIDE: I'm logged in on the main page but it will not let me post under my name here. WTF?
Well, at least Russians won't freeze to death this winter. They can use wheelbarrows full of rubles to insulate their homes. ;)
I am a proud traitor to my species in alliance with my mother the Earth in opposition to those who would destroy her.
This "region locking" applies ONLY to gifting through Steam.
You can still buy games anywhere and play them anywhere.
What you can't do any more is to run a re-selling business of buying games with Roubles and other toy-moneys (at a much lower real price) and then selling them to people in US, Europe etc. where prices are higher.
Yes, the fact that prices are different between regions is annoying. Because cost of living and wages are different between regions. Only way to sell any games in places like Russia is to price them according to the level locals are able to pay. $50 games are too expensive and everything would be just pirated instead.
Anyway, I can totally understand Steam blocking this re-sell route once it started to really hurt the pockets of Steam and publishers/developers.
Ugh...
Region locks are vile practice. It's infuriating to see them creeping into PC gaming (historically a region-free platform) at a time when two of the three console developers have ditched them and the third (Nintendo) is considering dropping them. That said, it's worth reflecting on why they exist. There are, historically, two reason behind this.
The first is plain old-fashioned cultural stereotyping (which somebody being less diplomatic might call "racism"). This is the classic Nintendo reason. Big paternalist companies like Nintendo (they're not alone in this, but are the worst offenders) have this weird outlook that says that they should function as some kind of moral arbiter of what should and should not be available in each territory. Hence certain games are "not a good cultural fit for some regions" (usually a view based on offensive broad-brush stereotypes... or racism, if you prefer the more honest term) or "require alterations to be culturally appropriate" (meaning "we're going to cut the game to hell on release in some territories, because REASONS"). Happily, this particular driver behind region locking is on the decline. Sony used to buy into it every bit as much as Nintendo, but have completely washed their hands of it. Even Nintendo are considering getting out of this game. I should add that a few territories (a handful of religious-wacko countries, plus Germany and Australia - what good company they find themselves in) set up their own barriers that require these kind of locks on occasion. In those cases, the blame rests with the Governments of those countries, not the platform owners/publishers.
The second reason is more complex and is down to differential pricing. Not every currency is of the same strength or stability. The last few days have made that pretty clear, if it wasn't already. And by and large, a lot of those countries which have weak and/or unstable currencies also tend to have very high piracy rates. A lot of companies (Microsoft used to be particularly bad in this respect, but have been stepping back lately) operate under the delusion that if they sell their products really really cheap in those territories, they can get people to buy legitimately, rather than pirating their products (all the evidence to date shows this doesn't work). Problem is, when you do that, you create a huge reverse-import problem; why would a US or European consumer pay the going rate in their territory for a locally-bought copy, when they could import a Brazillian or Russian or Vietnamese copy for a fraction of the price (which probably has English-language support anyway)?
Now, in a pure free market, one of two things would happen. Either the company selling the product would have to drop its price globally, or else it would have to accept that customers in those marginal economies just couldn't, for the most part, afford its products. But we live in a world where they're allowed to circumvent the free-market at will - via region locks. So first-world consumers get to subsidise producers (usually fruitless) speculation in developing-world markets.
There's a curious mirror image of this around one particular market; Japan. See, Japanese consumers are willing to pay massively over the odds for media (movies, games, TV series both live action and animated), particularly when said media is domestically produced. Seriously, you think UK or Australian consumers pay over the odds? It's nothing to what they'll pay in Japan. And because Japan has a large media industry which has grown accustomed to being able to milk this unquestioningly loyal (and seemingly happy to be exploited) domestic market, a good chunk of it is desperate to keep said market behind a walled garden, with reverse importing from the rest of the world locked off.
So yeah... region locking... a few reasons for it, none of them good for the consumer. Truly sad to see it come to Steam (though it's been creeping in at the margins for a while now). The only alternative? Fix all regions' price to the dollar (allowing for differences in local sales taxes, which is the major difference, for instance, between US and UK prices). But then a good chunk of the world wouldn't be able to afford to buy anything like as many games.
Didn't the rouble lose like a million percent of its value...but they also don't want to alienate the Russians by raising their prices to compensate for the currency crash
Economically speaking, this would mean that valve is selling games at 1 millionth of the usual price, but still profiting off them. Profiting so much, that they are willing to make custom software changes rather than just change the price. That's surprising math to me. Sometimes I wonder why companies, especially companies selling digital goods, don't just set the price in one particular currency then let it somewhat auto-fluctuate in the other currencies according to the market. Wouldn't that be simpler for them?
Politically speaking, Russia's currency lost value because they invaded a nearby nation and they are under sanctions. It is interesting that Valve is willing to go through effort to continue to offer them games at a price they can afford.
I will never buy anything in the EU until they stop their 1 USD equals 1 EUR scam.
This is to prevent arbitrage.
Russian gamers could buy the latest titles in roubles, and then sell their Steam account on ebay at a big profit. It had probably started to happen already.
It's nothing but an embargo.
It's not about revenue, it's about shady resellers. Steam was cheerfully ignoring your Russian buddy gifting you games for ages until a few high profile cases of shady resellers selling bad keys. As has been pointed out in the rest of this thread you can still buy a game in Russia and play it in the US. You just can't gift them anymore. Steam is killing of the key resellers so that ppl knew to Steam and computers don't get ripped off by them.
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Game pricing is great mystery. I tend to buy my games in the UK. Even with shipping they are 30% below the German prices.
Buying games here locally feels like being ripped off. And the price difference to other countries is even bigger....
It's an anti-embargo. Russians can continue to afford their games despite drastic currency devaluation. Considering the other option is to raise Russian prices drastically, seems this is a gamer friendly decision.
Which planet? Because on Earth, every region is more expensive than the US.
What's fair about letting which side of an imaginary line you live on dictate the price? If I want to convert my dollars to rubels and take a chance on how volatile the currency is, why can't I?
Maybe you don't want to, but this is the reality. Maybe not on Steam, but with all other software, videos, movies, etc.
Microsoft Windows costs the same in Eastern-Europe than in the USA. Wages are about 1/5th of USA.
Lets say Steam goes through with this region locking to prevent them only getting 10% per sale of the intended payment. Now, my Russian friend and I both download the cracked game from a torrent. The game creators and Steam lose even more. We still use Steam and pay "full" price for the very small subset of games worth playing that use paranoid game servers, but everything else is gained through other channels out of spite rather than affordability.
As a disclaimer, I do not know of any of my friends being Russian, and I just wait for the monthly 75% off sale before even considering spending my money at Steam. I prefer GOG and am willing to buy at a bit less of a discount there for the same things (usually don't have to make that decision, GOG does pretty well at matching Steam's pricing for games they both have).
Price discrimination is only made possible by deliberately keeping the consumer in the dark about how much a game has to cost before the "game creators" (publishers aren't game creators, man) lose.
No, a simple disc check is least hated. This is exactly the problem with Steam, they control all of your games and can deny access any time they want. GOG.com is the way to do game distribution correctly. No artificially required, resource using, spyware client and no DRM in the games.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
"Didn't the rouble lose like a million percent of its value against the dollar in a day or something?"
Ummmm not quite. The rouble has lost roughly 50% of its value against the US dollar over the last two years.
And, none of those reasons are why region locking was added to Steam.
Further, it's not region locking like you described and railed against. All Steam did is wall off a handful of regions where the local currencies are extremely volatile, and even then ONLY for accounts gifting games to one another between the rest of the world and these tiny regions.
Your butthurt is misguided here. Let the strawman go.
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I can't check until tonight when I get home from work but are account regions locked? I know mine currently shows the US but when I travel to Japan next month, will it update?
The reason I ask is if VPN could get around this. For example, getting the NHL (ice hockey) package cost $150 in the US. My friend noticed that the cost through a European IP was only $100. He saved $50 just by masking his IP and there is no need to mask his IP when streaming the games live.
I am curious if something similar could get around the Steam issue.
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
Which is assuming that the people who would of bought the game full price instead went out of their way, and dealt with shady Russian mobsters to get a discount. A large amount of revenue would not of been funneled through Russia, and there is no evidence than any money would of been lost by Steam or Developers, indeed some might say that it would of increased sales.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
If you can afford to sell a game developed in America to Russians at a high enough price to make a profit, then you can sell the same game at the same price outside Russia and make the same profit. Or will the games companies sell at a loss to Russia, essentially meaning that non-Russians have to subsidize Russian sales?
----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
So if a game is $50 in the US, and it costs "10 times less" in Russia, does it mean that it's 10x$50=$500 less than the US price and that Valve will pay me $450 to take it off their hands?
Or did you mean "one tenth"?
So what I hear you proposing is that the price in the USA should be 10x higher to subsidize Russian gamers. Sorry but no, Communism was done away with a long time ago. This is absurdity.
Simple solution: Don't buy Steam games. Easy peasy and they lose out all over the place. Any vendor who tries this junk should go down in flames.
Politically speaking, Russia's currency lost value because they invaded a nearby nation and they are under sanctions.
That was more like the catalyst. The real blow came from the ~50% decline in oil prices since the beginning of the year. The Russian economy is 40%+ oil and gas and their export economy is almost entirely based on exports of same. The decline in oil prices did far more damage than sanctions or political talk alone could ever hope to.
Germany, Austria... Some AAA game are not available, and other are censored. Welcome to our world.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
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visit randi.org
It's not that it should be, it's that the Ruble is collapsing. It's a problem for any company doing business in Russia. Many have halted sales. That would be Steam's other option.
Sometimes I wonder why companies, especially companies selling digital goods, don't just set the price in one particular currency then let it somewhat auto-fluctuate in the other currencies according to the market. Wouldn't that be simpler for them?
Sorry, that's illegal in many countries with fucked currencies.
Most seller of luxury goods in Russia aren't selling at all. The ruble is toilet paper now, and you can't legally sell in dollars (though there's a very long tradition of doing so anyhow). You'll get 2x as many rubles for a dollar on the street as the official exchange rate, as people with limited access to the international market are paying a premium to GTFO. The only other choice Steam has is to stop selling to Russia at all.
Google's market cap is higher that then Russian stock market right now.
Politically speaking, Russia's currency lost value because they invaded a nearby nation and they are under sanctions.
Not at all. Not eve a little. I doubt sanctions have ever accomplished anything. This is entirely OPEC: Saudi Arabia is destroying Iran. Iran can't survive at these oil prices, and the Saudi rulers want the current Iranian leadership gone. It's not quite so simple as an extension of the Shia-Sunni conflict, but that's the heart of it. Had this happened 5 years ago, it's likely ISIS wouldn't have happened, but sadly they can survive now without Iranian funding.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
So if a game is $50 in the US, and it costs "10 times less" in Russia, does it mean that it's 10x$50=$500 less than the US price and that Valve will pay me $450 to take it off their hands?
Or did you mean "one tenth"?
"times less" moves the x10 to the other side of the equation.
Such as $50=10x$5
Which is the same as $50/10=$5
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
Note: This Georgia, rather than this one, that is.
You could have actually said which Georgias you were talking about, instead of requiring someone to visit (or at least hover over) the links. Hyperlinks are great and all, but using them to disambiguate plain text when better-written text would have solved the problem is a bit silly. For example:
"Note: that's Georgia the Eastern European country, rather than Georgia the US state."
If nothing else, it would probably make it a lot less confusing for anyone relying on a screen reader.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
...more likely the drop in oil prices hurt MUCH more as it didn't really drop until recently when oil prices fell through the floor...
TIP: if yer browser is being stupid and still directing you to the russian version after this, just change the cc=ru part to whatever the country code for you country is, e.g. cc=us for the US, etc.
The one title that I looked at was ~$3.09(Russian price converted to USD equivalent) v. $7.99(US) not on sale price. This was at currency exchange rates as of ~11:10a EST delayed by whatever delay that was applied. It was also whatever the title was at the top of the default list on the front page of the steam store.
Had this happened 5 years ago, it's likely ISIS wouldn't have happened, but sadly they can survive now without Iranian funding.
Oh, dear, you were doing so well with your amateur economics lesson, then you stray into international affairs and fuck up bad.
Iran has never funded, and could never conceivably fund, ISIS.
ISIS is a bunch of Sunni islamic loons. Iran is a bunch of Shia islamic loons. ISIS kill Shia more or less on sight.
Iran is an ally of ISIS's enemies, Iraq and Syria. Iran is currently bombing ISIS.
If ISIS received outside funding it came from the Gulf, possibly including Saudi Arabia.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
if that lock is the reason for you download the cracked game, you would not buy even without lock if price in russia was the same from usa... but for you friend, that cant aford buy with usa price, the locked lower priced game is a way to buy without getting it in torrent.
It is only to help russians and not to hurt americans
Economically speaking, this would mean that valve is selling games at 1 millionth of the usual price, but still profiting off them. Profiting so much, that they are willing to make custom software changes rather than just change the price.
The GP was exaggerating, It's actually lost about half it's value. Also steam already has code to enforce region locking on games sold through other channels and already has code to set different prices for different countries. So I would assume this was a fairly minor tweak from a technical perspective.
Sometimes I wonder why companies, especially companies selling digital goods, don't just set the price in one particular currency then let it somewhat auto-fluctuate in the other currencies according to the market. Wouldn't that be simpler for them?
Simpler? yes, more profitable? no.
The ammount people are prepared to pay for goods varies with how rich they are and with existing norms in their country. Therefore the pricepoint that balances number of sales against profit from each sale is different in different countries. This is especially true for digital goods which have negligable marginal cost to the seller.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
The rouble has lost roughly 50% of its value against the US dollar over the last two years.
For values of two years that are rather closer to six months.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
No, a simple disc check is least hated.
Since when? I thought Mac computers were shipping without an optical drive now, as were many Windows laptops. Or is a USB SuperDrive optical drive something every Mac owner is supposed to buy?
Let's say the game costs 10 times less in Russia.
Whoa, there. The game costs 1000% less? They're paying me 10x the cost of the game to take it off their hands? Where do I sign up?
I was under the impression that some region coding exists because of different copyright laws. It might be legal to sell a game in Europe but not in the United States if it's based on a work whose copyright has expired in the European Union (70 years after publication for works made for hire) but not in the United States (95 years after publication for works made for hire), or vice versa (US: 95 years after publication for 1923-1977 individual works; EU: 70 years after death of last surviving author for all individual works).
My goodness, what has Archer done this time?! Wait, no that ISIS?
Sales tax and the cost of complying with the #VATMESS are included in the price in EUR countries but not in the USD country. That alone makes up for an exchange rate on the order of 1 USD = 0.8 EUR.
How much of that 30% is the cost of dubbing the voice acting into German? In Great Britain, they can get away with selling the US version, as American is still mutually intelligible with British English.
You are totally right about shia extremists versus sunni extremists.
But... Don't forget that sunni extremists fucking hate sunni moderates too. ISIS will say that shias aren't muslims, but they will also say that regular sunnis aren't muslim enough (for example, most kurds are sunni and we all know how much ISIS loves the kurds) . Sooner or later there is going to be some of that "the enemy of my enemy" stuff going on there, if it hasn't already.
I would expect the sales will have a positive marginal profit, that is the costs directly associated with the sale will be less than the income directly associated with the sale.
Of course having a positive marginal profit on every sale does not mean you will make a profit overall (and thus be able to stay in buisness). To do that you need to cover all your fixed costs too. It's perfectly possible that selling to everyone at the russian price would not cover the fixed costs but selling to russians at that price is neverthless the way to maximise overall profit.
Trying to allocate "profit" to individual sales in a buisness dominated by upfront fixed costs is fairly meaningless.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
So that is the reason Macs don't have any games in them?-)
Not if you've ever bought from a russian seller. Use the enhanced steam plugin and you can instantly compare your US price to other countries and 99% of the time russia will be more than 50% cheaper. So you buy your games from a russian seller while the game is on sale and you can get many titles for 80-90% off the US price.
There are tons of people doing this and as long as you find a reputable seller who wont sell region and play locked games so you dont have to deal with vpn shadiness it all works out great. I cant count the number of games Ive gotten from them
I am a Russian and I buy a Steam game and I travel to the USA.
How will the system work out that I'm a Russian in the USA and not an American who bought off a Russian site?
I mean, if this has nothing to do with stopping games working, what happens?
Complete lack of DRM is the least hated DRM, them a simple disk check, and then Steam.
If I want to convert my dollars to rubels and take a chance on how volatile the currency is, why can't I?
You can. Money markets are available for you to invest in.
What's fair about letting which side of an imaginary line you live on dictate the price?
Maybe the law in Russia that says you can't sell things in US Dollars? Otherwise Steam could just set a US Dollar price and let the exchanges sort it out.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
Russia has a large nuclear arsenal and submarine fleet, the only heavy lift rockets on Earth worth a damn, a LOT of land and a LOT of coast.
Economic problems won't break an established super power - they'll lash out and attack others and steal their shit before they collapse. (See the actions of the USofA.)
Pray tell, how ?
If I'm assuming that not even steam will sell its produce below what it cost to make it, than any sale to the Russian will still show a profit.
The only problem is that selling the same-costing product to a non-Russian creates a much larger profit.
And that is what zoning is all about: creating an artificial shortage of cheaper goods, so whomever still wants it has to pay the higher price.
And for the record: How does steam lose when I refuse to buy their goods at the price they ask here, but will with the price they ask over there ? To me that sounds like a case of either no profit, or a small one.
The only one I see loosing here is the buyer in a high-profit country, as Steam either can live on the lower margins, or uses them to effectivily subsidize the Russian ones.
The zoning is nothing else than a measure to make sure that the buyers in high-profit countries will have no choice than to keep those subsidies flowing.
If you're seriously considering pirating the game over this, you probably weren't a customer to begin with.
Valve makes more money with the region lock. It's called price discrimination. There's no price which clears all markets at once, so they can either...
1. Charge a price which clears the market in Russia, they lose out on the consumer surplus from US gamers
2. Charge a price which clears the market in the US, they lose out on all sales in Russia
3. Charge different prices in each market, using technical restraints to make each region's games non-fungible, ensuring they get the maximum possible sales for their game
There's no additional enjoyment that you can gain from playing a DRM-crippled game available on $team than something libre like bzflag.
Just be happy with bzflag. Don't you have real work to get done anyway? Leave the games to the kids.
As a Steam developer (Someone who has a game released on Steam) this is a good move imho.
Selling to Russia (and most of the second world) is mainly an anti-piracy measure. In order for that to work you must discount the product to the point where they can pay for it. My project is released in Russian language, yet they make up a mere 2% of sales. Total Non-western/EU sales are around 7%. When you consider their currency discounts, it's a blip in revenues.
The main problem is this: The majority of people taking advantage of the old system wasn't the "gifting" people, but the "unauthorized resellers." These folks would take a 75% off sale combined with the 50% off exchange prices and buy in bulk. They'd then wait until prices return to normal, and sell them off to western users.
This is all nice and good capitalistic practice, but it kills profitability as the majority of revenues are generated from the same target audience. Considering "unauthorized resellers" can undercut our normal prices by 85% and still make a 20% margin, or even worse, if we put our game on a 75% off sale, they can under cut us by 40% while making a 20% margin...
So what turns out as a good gesture: "Hey underdeveloped world, I'll let you buy my game cheaper than everyone else." Turns into, "Hey underdeveloped world, here is a way you can put us out of business and make money your self."
So when it comes down to it, there are 4 solutions:
A) Don't Sell the game to 2nd world, and eat piracy losses. (Worst Choice)
B) Sell the game the same price world wide and eat piracy losses. (Bad Choice)
C) Region lock discounted games.
D) Status quo.
On the subject of status quo:
Most of you guys will be the "stick it to the man" types, but remember, the majority of games aren't made by AAA studios. Those guys can eat the loss. It's people/teams like ours who hang around the top 30-70% of Steam sales that get the short end of the stick. We pull down about 60k/year in revenues IF sales remain stagnate. Considering a real game (With self made engines, not shit like Unity) takes around 5 years to make... It's not very profitable for the middle people. That's why Status Quo is a bad option.
That's my two nut hairs on the subject. Enjoy.
Simpler? yes, more profitable? no.
You sure? I will not buy region locked crap. And in spite of what my mother told me, I am not that special. When you can get a better quality product for free with a little more trouble, some people choose that route.
It is not one thing, but an ongoing and never ending collection of things making more and more people decide to pirate entertainment. One (fairly good) argument for it is that if the industry is going to steal our rights and privacy, stealing entertainment is fair game.
So are they selling at a loss in Russia? Then why sell at all? Or are they selling as at an unreasonable profit everywhere else?
Most likely this is just to make the highest profits possible and has nothing to do with being "gamer friendly". It nicely shows that the lowest price is not the result, but the highest price possible is.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
and you can buy a simulation of this on steam!
"Sometimes I wonder why companies, especially companies selling digital goods, don't just set the price in one particular currency then let it somewhat auto-fluctuate in the other currencies according to the market."
The concept you are looking for is "reservation price". Strictly speaking, ever buyer has a different maximum price they are willing to spend and the seller would like to charge them each that different price. In some situations that's easy (negotiated sales contracts) and some situations that's hard. Barring that, the seller would like to divide buyers into broad categories somehow to keep people willing to pay a higher prices from getting a lower price, e.g.: the various trim packages on a new new car, fare buckets for airline tickets.
The region locking allows Steam to adjust pricing to different demand curves without losing any surplus they can capture in other regions. Remember, the marginal cost of a bit approaches zero so they can make up a lot though demand increase (or by preventing a demand decrease)
Let's say the game costs 10 times less in Russia. You ask Russian friend to buy it for you but you send him twice the amount required. That means you both got the game for 1/5th of the U.S.A. price. The game creators and Steam lose.
Which is exactly what's supposed to happen. If it's economically feasible for the game creators and Steam to sell games at 10% of the price in Russia, there's one of either two things happening:
1) The price they're selling for in Russa is sufficient to recoup their costs, and they're gouging Americans
2) They're forcing US customers to subsidise low Russian prices
"Region Locking" is really just digital protectionism. It's a way to let companies reap the benefits of globalism, while locking consumers out from doing the same. Companies are allowed to source widget/labour from countries overseas with smaller economies, but as soon as consumers do the same, it's time to start playing legal/technical games to keep them out.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
The Mac userbase is so minuscule as to be utterly irrelevant. You also shouldn't be surprised that Apple computers come with all sorts of strings attached and require additional high cost purchases to have a usable system. It's been Apple's business model for decades.
FYI: My high end laptop, which was purchased this year, has a slot loading Blu-Ray burner.
Wait, oil price has declined by 50%? why hasn't my fuel price done the same?
You have a DRM system that is the least hated (and actually liked in some cases) by the users of any.
The fact they have DRM at all speaks volumes of what they think of gamers, the fact that people like you think corporations give a damn when they've been steadily taking your rights away is proof most of mankind is hopeless.
Usual reasons:
1. The cost of the raw oil is actually a small component of the cost of getting refined fuel into your tank. There's shipping, refining, distributer, retail, and tax expenses to consider.
2. There's a lag period.
3. Despite this gasoline prices have dropped enough that it's been on the national news multiple times.
I don't read AC A human right
This isn't a new thing at all.
The real answer is that the oil companies want more profit. But don't worry, when oil prices go back up again, or even look like they might go back up again, the gas prices will rise. No Lag. No "cost of oil is a small factor" nonsense. And you are right, while gasoline prices have gone down, they have not gone down as much as they should have or as quickly as they should based on the oil prices.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
If you're seriously considering pirating the game over this, you probably weren't a customer to begin with.
Not necessarily, I've seen price used as a reason for piracy before. Specifically, if something is considered to be greatly overpriced, there's a better chance it will be pirated rather than normally bought.
they have.. 2.40/gal for unleaded... half price in CA
Uh, it has? Gas less than 2 dollars here in Michigan.
What do you imagine "selling at a loss" even means, when your marginal-cost-per-sale is as near zero as makes no difference?
Of course publishers will set the price of a game as high as they think they can, for the volume of sales they want to achieve. What else would you expect them to do? What would you do?
If you think a game is overpriced, here's an idea: don't buy it.
Because... DRM.
It's Digital *Restrictions* Management. I really appreciate Steam's efforts to get linux gaming up and running properly, but DRM is why I stopped buying from them and now I only buy DRM-free games from places like Desura, Humble and GOG. If Steam went DRM-free (which will never happen) I'd probably start buying from them again, too.
The simple solution that many companies do is use their own, or some arbitrary such as US$, currency and everything else floats to that. If the ruble collapses then it is not a big issue for the vendor because the Russian customer is paying in US$s. Easy Peasy.
Is it an obsolete move? Russia Central Bank decided to fight back against speculators yesterday. Rouble is up again, and Russia Central Bank USD reserves are huge enough (480 billion IIRC) for them to cause losses to speculators for a while.
If they insist, then profit is not their motivation, that would suggest they are state-backed.
FYI: My high end laptop, which was purchased this year, has a slot loading Blu-Ray burner.
And there's a pattern to this. Among laptops that ship with Windows, only the larger ones tend to come with optical drives. For example, Ultrabook laptops tend to omit one.
Steam (and users) should adopt Bitcoin and forget about different currencies from different countries. There's no reason to isolate users like this.
The problem is not as simple as it seems. Both Russia and Brazil (and Argentina) have laws involving currency "fleeing" their home markets. This is why Apple had to build a Brazil iPhone factory, because otherwise the import tariff would make it cost like a years wages or something.
To be completely fair. Region locking has always been about price differentials, not just licencing. The Chinese, Russians, Brazil, and Argentina citizens can not afford to buy US products. Period. Import tariffs on physical goods ensures this. With digital goods, these foreigners can't buy goods in US dollars to begin with. So the only other option is piracy.
Region Locking is not fair to the person who wishes to use the content, but it's completely fair to ensure availability when the only other option is no-availability.
However we can improve on this. Steam should allow the software owners (as in the companies who put it on steam, not the customers) to upgrade from "local version" to "worldwide", and apply it across all software. Local versions of software only contain content licensed for that market, "worldwide" versions contains copyright clearance for all versions sold worldwide. In most cases the US or Japanese version of a software title is the "worldwide" version with language selection, where as a local version lacks that. Worldwide software can be gifted, but not local versions.
Nobody is going to expect to game on something that weak. The PC games market is for people with desktop rigs and high end laptops.
This is the bit that fucks me off.
IT industry wages are depressed because of competition in regions of the world with lower costs of living.
So I get paid less, but I still have to subsidise their fucking computer games? Sorry but that's just fucking inequitable.
This is why I only buy DRM free games, if any; preferably indie devs.
This isn't something new. Most Fortune 500 companies faced the same scenario back in the mid-1990s with the internet. I know because I was the guy facing it for a Fortune 20 company. What we did to address "price arbitrage" was NOT this. This is utterly non-resilient and will ultimately cost them more than they think they are saving/earning. This is Epic Fail.
What the Fortune 500 did is globalize and harmonize their world-wide pricing so there'd be no incentive to arbitrage the prices. Additionally when local customs or laws required a price differential, we would tie the services associated with the product to a particular country organization. In our case, if you wanted localized support and service in Japan which tends to expect one price bundling everything, you had to charge for that BUT you had get the service and support from the country you bought it in OR pay a premium price to uplift the differential costs between the two countries involved. The US, for instance, by custom and sometimes law, wants pricing broken out and separable - so people would arbitrage the price differential by buying hardware in the US for Japanese use. Then local Japanese support groups would be left holding the budget deficit of having to support without corresponding revenue to pay for it. The truth was the "product" was not actually the same plus local customs required different product offer quotes/presentations.
Charging for differential product value pretty much solved the problem. The infrastructure required to monitor and track these differentials generally made our company better overall for customers - basically we had to develop a world-wide system to track where particular serial # products were sold and if "transfer contracts" had been purchased per serial # between that country and any other. This provided a yes-no answer on pricing uplifts to post-sales service groups and pre-sales upgrade product data. Easy-peasy. My case was HW+Services, but it could trivially work for a software-only, cloud delivered product as well - just identify the factors that cause the per-country pricing to be different and understand how these tie to everything you are selling.
Only shallow thinkers won't realize the model. Apparently the people managing Steam are not very bright, not very customer savvy/focused and not real problem solvers. Balkanizing products with the globalizing internet is Epic Fail. The Internet is a stronger force that will overcome this and it will simply cost more money to fight this fight than to make far smaller adjustments to go with the flow.
Note I truly don't really care what Steam does - I don't play their games and have no interest to, but from my personal professional experience, this isn't going to end well for them. This is a step from 2014 back into 1980 past.
By that logic, why don't they sell games cheaper in the west to people on lower incomes?
Pirates will always have something to morally justify it to their own conscience, there's no point pandering to them.
Price lag on the decrease, but never on the increases. ..
XDInd
By that logic, why don't they sell games cheaper in the west to people on lower incomes?
They -do-. It's called "sales" or "old game special", or "Steam sale".
All of this happens already, for hundreds of years. I'm a Tech, but I still know that much business!
Besides, having the same price all over and at all times just means some people can't play the game. Why do that, when allowing a download is only $.02 extra in electricity?
And no, someone selling the game for $.02 somewhere does -not- mean that the value of your game becomes that. Value is not constant, and is what you want it to be. Value is entirely imaginary, until you either buy or sell the item. Then it is very real, until the deal is done. Then it becomes imaginary again.
Is that enough to "blow you mind"? 8-)
Pirates will always have something to morally justify it to their own conscience, there's no point pandering to them.
Supporting the 4th amendment is pandering to pirates now? Because the media industry wants it gone from the Internet, or any electronic devices...
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