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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.
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.
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.
"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.
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.
It's like in most Hollywood movies when they write "Beijing, China", or "Paris, France", but then write "San Francisco, California".
What do you want them to do? Write "San Francisco, the United States of America"? That is about as practical as "Skopje, the former Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia".
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.
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....
To be fair, the way the US is SUPPOSED to work (it doesn't, really, anymore) is that the individual states are sovereign and the feds provide an overarching protection on a global scale as well as help to regulate interstate commerce. San Francisco, United States wouldn't fit that depiction. For example, there are 24 locations known as "Washington" in the United States, not just DC or the State. There are 22 Springfields, not just Illinois. There are 21 Salems, not just Massachusetts. Considering the states are usually as large as some nations referenced, it makes geographical sense to write it that way as well. Back when the USSR was a thing, I wouldn't write "Lenninsk, USRR," I'd write "Lenninsk, Kazakhstan." (Now that it's its own sovereign country, I'm aware that it's Baikonur, but we're talking pre-fall here.)
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.
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.
"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.
I do not consider myself to be US-centric nor uneducated, but prior to the incident at the Winter Olympics in 2010 where a luge athlete from Georgia was killed during a training run, and here in Vancouver, the host city for the Olympics that year, this incident was pretty major news. I had no idea previously that there was evidently a country that was also called Georgia, although I had certainly heard of the US state by the same name. I'm aware of the country now, obviously, and even learned where it was on a map, because I hadn't heard of it before then. My point being that based on my own personal experience, there can be some legitimate concern that not everyone who reads this may necessarily know immediately that the Georgia being referred to is a country, and not the state.
Although I'd still agree that talking down to your audience as if they may not already know this is probably bad form, because really, it's something that anyone can look up.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
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?
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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"?
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.
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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.
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.
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
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.
I will never buy anything in the EU until they stop their 1 USD equals 1 EUR scam.
It's not a scam.
OK, lets take a specific example.
In the US, a new AAA game is generally $60 pre-tax... which is 48.6€ using current exchange rates.
With me so far? OK, so the US price is ready to list on Steam because US price listings don't include taxes. However, the EU version isn't, because EU requires that VAT be included in the price.
So... lets take Italy for example. VAT in Italy* is 22%. So... the same price that lists for $60 USD would list for... 59.292€. Suddenly the 1:1 ratio makes sense.
Now, here's the thing: VAT varies wildly across Europe... anywhere from 15% (Luxembourg) to 27% (Hungary). From what I've heard, there are only two mainland Europe pricing regions on Steam. Which means the prices are going to be affected by the VAT rates of the other countries in said pricing region.
* Italy was chosen for two reasons: 1. Most countries are in the 20-25% range... 22% is about in the middle; and 2. I know someone who lives in Italy.
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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.
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I do not consider myself to be US-centric nor uneducated, but prior to the incident at the Winter Olympics in 2010 where a luge athlete from Georgia was killed during a training run [wikipedia.org], and here in Vancouver, the host city for the Olympics that year, this incident was pretty major news. I had no idea previously that there was evidently a country that was also called Georgia, although I had certainly heard of the US state by the same name.
Sorry, but you sound pretty uneducated.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
I wonder if it depends on your age. I'm in the age range where I was in grade school during the breakup of the USSR, so it was a big deal to learn all of the former USSR states. People older than me might not have learned about the individual states within the USSR.
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.
Because you never tried to gift it?
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.)
Can *YOU* name every country in the world, without looking at a map?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Indeed... I had not considered that as a possibility. The USSR dissolved in late 1991, which was already more than 8 years after I had finished high school.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
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
Because you purchased it while geographically located in Russia, using a Russian Steam account, a Russian billing address and a Russian credit cart (or Russian PayPal account or whatever)?
You can't easily accomplish these things by just "buying it from a Russian site".
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
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
I was in grade school during that period and I don't remember them covering the former USSR states much. It might have been a regional thing.
I don't read AC A human right
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.
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.
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.
Name? No. Recognise as a country? Yes.
Well, it it makes any difference, I graduated from high school over 8 years before Georgia became independent of the USSR, so in retrospect, I don't think it's surprising that I wasn't taught about the country in school.
Anyways, I learned that it was a country upon hearing the aforementioned news of the athlete who died in the Olympics that year, and honestly, I was only able to tell it was a country from the context. Only the logical incongruity of mentioning a specific US state for an athlete was sufficient to make me recognize they must have been referring to a country that happened to have the same name as a US state that I *had* heard of.. My point being that I hadn't heard of it before then, I can empathize completely with someone else who might not have heard of it until some news article shows up which mentions it, and depending on the context in which the name is used, it may not be obvious what is being talked about. It is, of course, fairly clear here... and even if a person had not heard of the country before seeing this article, explicitly adding a clarification between it and the US state of the same name in the article is unnecessarily speaking down to the readers of the article, and does not belong there. At the most, it should be only a footnote.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
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.
Yes. San Franscisco, USA.
What, California's now a country? The size of fucking China?
When developers in Russia stop accepting work for companies in the UK then I'll consider giving a fuck about them getting to buy the same fucking products at half the price that they're available to me.
Globalisation has to work both ways.
So you never outsource your artwork or modelling or packaging or any other part of your development process?
Because other independent developers that I know do. And they outsource to Eastern Europe because the people there speak English and are very very cheap. Which means less work available locally, which means more competition for jobs, which means lower ages. Yet I still have to pay 8 times the fucking price of people in the country that helped write the software?
Sorry but pick option B. It's a global fucking world and I'm fed up with my quality of life being compromised so that people in other countries can get the same benefits for less.
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...