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
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