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I love Steam regional pricing now.
(hexbear.net)
https://steamdb.info/app/2161700/
Why is the game more expensive in Kazakhstan than in Norway? Why is it 25% cheaper in Singapore? Why is Brazil more expensive than Japan? Why is Pakistan/South Asia the same price as the U.S?
Atleast before, Turks and Argentine people got the cheapest price (and that made sense with hyperinflation and low purchasing power) but now they nerfed that shit.
I think the answer is that the actual calculus is 'how much is this market-demographic willing to pay for our game'. Which is something that developers have to do on their own with multiple concerns in mind.
Some indie devs quickly turn countries like Brazil from their largest piracy market to their largest actual market just by giving them a bigger discount. Other devs don't have to care about that sort of thing, and assume that their niche / mainstream product will be bought regardless and that the gains from further discounts do not outweigh the discount themselves.
Hyperinflation accelerates the latter logic. Whatever turkish people or argentineans have the money to buy games at this point will pay the full exchange rate - or get an EU/US friend to buy the game for them. Especially if multiplayer. With the full erosion of purchasing power in a country your market shrinks to that country's elite. And the well connected few.
Russia is another great example of that. Steam prices were historically very low due to ubiquitous software piracy. It was so widespread that even large computer stores would sell pirated games. AAA game publishers had to put their games on Steam with region locking at up to 10x discounts for people to actually buy them. Then prices steadily creeped up as more and more people started to purchase games
Speak for yourself mate, I miss my 10yo tripleA games for a 1/400 th of my salary
And I mean it fuck dammit, 500 USdollars is a GOOD salary here
This is what pisses me off the most. Why are 10 year-old games basically full price? I remember when old games where sold for a few bucks...
Also 10 year old games usually have their multiplayer servers shut down so there is literally no point in buying them anymore
I remember when community servers were a thing.
thats the problem innit, we live off our labor. i shouldn't have picked hard mode
I remember vividly this rich family talking about how they could buy whatever version of Playstation was out back in the early 2010s. Meaning that they paid the full speculative price of thousands of dollars.
It's a big world out there and games only sell a few million globally.
Going by the cost of a new game in the US, the standard should be "median cost of three large pizzas with tax from non-chain pizzeria".