scalpers bought copies on Steam priced cheaper in certain regions. If you release a game on Valve’s store and don’t set the price in each region individually, universal pricing creates discrepancies where this can happen. These were then being sold on less regulated marketplaces.
This could be prevented by not doing regional price discrimination.
Regional Pricing is fundamental if steam wants to have a proper presence in less affluent markets. Before regional Pricing, people from outside developed countries would just pirate games, because the price was just insane. To give you a perspective, an AAA game priced at 60 dollars without regional Pricing costs 1/5 of a monthly minimum wage salary in Brazil. A 100 dollar deluxe edition costs about a third of minimum wage here. And okay, if you move past minimum wage earners to people of middle class income, usually from 3 to 5 minimum wage salaries of monthly income, a full priced game still is a fairly steep purchase, roughly equivalent to how much a 4-person family would pay in utility bills if they don’t use their AC often
The idea is to offer the game at a lower price in regions with poorer purchasing power, so the price is more proportionate and people there can also afford the game.
Not doing that means poor regions likely won’t be able to afford the game. Not sure if that’s better.
This could be prevented by not doing regional price discrimination.
Regional Pricing is fundamental if steam wants to have a proper presence in less affluent markets. Before regional Pricing, people from outside developed countries would just pirate games, because the price was just insane. To give you a perspective, an AAA game priced at 60 dollars without regional Pricing costs 1/5 of a monthly minimum wage salary in Brazil. A 100 dollar deluxe edition costs about a third of minimum wage here. And okay, if you move past minimum wage earners to people of middle class income, usually from 3 to 5 minimum wage salaries of monthly income, a full priced game still is a fairly steep purchase, roughly equivalent to how much a 4-person family would pay in utility bills if they don’t use their AC often
The idea is to offer the game at a lower price in regions with poorer purchasing power, so the price is more proportionate and people there can also afford the game.
Not doing that means poor regions likely won’t be able to afford the game. Not sure if that’s better.