Dead Cells price hike in Argentina & Turkey due to cross-region purchases

> "this is impacting us so heavily"

ok, but what if people who go to such extreme measures are from other poor countries that *don't* have regional pricing and instead are paying "regular" prices in usd or euro? and it's their only realistic alternative to just pirating the game?


Last edited by pb on 19 August 2022 at 11:02 am UTC

Let's not forget that stupid time when the EU sued Valve and other game companies because they were trying to protect the viability of regional pricing by geo-blocking games:

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/geo-blocking-in-the-games-industry-a-closer-look-at-valves-ec-fine

Without the regional pricing, games in my country are getting ridiculously expensive (like almost a third of a monthly minimum wage), so it's painful to watch nearly every major AAA publisher dropping the support for regional pricing. Now even some indies are starting to do it too. I wouldn't be surprised to see a significant resurgence of piracy in developing nations like mine, which Steam had helped to ease a lot when regional pricing was almost universally adopted.

I think it'll lead to more pirating, still sad for the people trying to purchase a legal copy. I'd prefer they had a legal copy than find a way to pirate a copy. More people might turn to (possibly illegal) key selling sites to get it cheaper too.

Any kind of DRM is bad in roots, but I used to call Regional Restrictions: "Robin Hood Strategy". It is an strategy to maximize income, but also to help poor people. We maximize income, cause more players buy our products (of course by price they want/be able to pay), but players (as I said) could be able to buy license/right to play game.

I'm Brazilian, a third world country. We are living hard times, it's becoming harder and harder to get games as new releases are almost 1:1 to us dollar, but we have a healthier economy in comparison to Argentina.

I understand that I can't buy new games, I just have priorities, but they hardly have money to buy basic things.

So I agree that isn't time to games follow the argentinian coin, this creates a huge exploits.

Look, sadly I will reach to politics. They have a "fat state", too much populism and less freedom, which increases taxes and inflation.

Thanks to Linux now I praise the freedom much more than anything, and to be free we need LESS state. Less bandits stealing our money.

I saw a lot of people here wanting intervention from government to control pricing, anti trust measures or whatever. All against freedom, just likes the "free" part.

Again, I'm a 3rd world guy which lives in a populist country.

> "this is impacting us so heavily"

ok, but what if people who go to such extreme measures are from other poor countries that *don't* have regional pricing and instead are paying "regular" prices in usd or euro? and it's their only realistic alternative to just pirating the game?

Let's be honest here, it's not what's happening : if only people that wouldn't be able to afford them in their own region pricing did that, devs wouldn't do that. They wouldn't see a ×3 or ×4 the playerbase of that region.

Mesh that with sales, and I'm even starting to doubt we would see much higher than a ×2 (like ×2.something, OK I guess).

Another thing to note, is that, an history of devs' comments would point out that pirating the game ends up a lesser evil of just blatantly ripping off the devs, be it that way or worst the G2A way.

But knowing this history and people I know that aren't as much gameheads as I am, they will do that to pay less over paying what they can. Sure, there is a tiny bit less rip off here as it's not going G2A way. But the whole thing mostly sit on the terrible fucking shitty idea that people want games dirt cheap.

At least piracy may get you to buy it full price later, buying it 90% off by region abuse is just shitting in the cook pot of vidya. Because it's not just the dev that's getting screwed.

Games are already underpriced as hell (considering the amount of manhours put into those), and the market saturation doesn't help in anyway, but lowballing the price in everyway possible by all the people that can afford them (already underpriced) only push a cheaper price to grab more attention, to do so costs are cut and the whole quality suffer, so people want to pay less and so fucking on.

Truth to the matter is : broke people aren't the issue here.

> "this is impacting us so heavily"

ok, but what if people who go to such extreme measures are from other poor countries that *don't* have regional pricing and instead are paying "regular" prices in usd or euro? and it's their only realistic alternative to just pirating the game?

Assuming some level of reason here, but if they consider thier analysis complete, the fact the can tell the point of sale vs the point of play would seem to indicate they can do that globally. They can likely infer what populations are buying the game by altering the region (look for the inverse, higher rates of play with lower rates of sales).

Wether they did this, we don't know, and if they did, we don't know the results or what discussions they had internally about the change. All we know is what they say, it's significant enough to be hurting thier income.

> "this is impacting us so heavily"

ok, but what if people who go to such extreme measures are from other poor countries that *don't* have regional pricing and instead are paying "regular" prices in usd or euro? and it's their only realistic alternative to just pirating the game?

No such thing. Humble Bundle registered illegal copies of their one Dollar/one Euro bundles. There might be some "in need" using this "workaround", but I am absolutely convinced that the vast majority are people just feeling good, that they could rip off someone else.

Valve and only Valve is THE guilty of this situation.

Valve must eliminate right now the online availability of Steam wallet codes in Argentinian and Turkish currencies.
To require credit cards from the country you are is the only way to sort this.

> "this is impacting us so heavily"

ok, but what if people who go to such extreme measures are from other poor countries that *don't* have regional pricing and instead are paying "regular" prices in usd or euro? and it's their only realistic alternative to just pirating the game?

No such thing. Humble Bundle registered illegal copies of their one Dollar/one Euro bundles. There might be some "in need" using this "workaround", but I am absolutely convinced that the vast majority are people just feeling good, that they could rip off someone else.

I highly doubt mal-intent, I look at it from the optimistic viewpoint, if people don't get the game for the price they want (by changing regions), they likely wouldn't buy it at all and just pirate it (or use G2A which results in the same amount of money for the developers, 0) in which case rather than the developer getting some money, they get nothing, although I do agree devs deserve a lot more money for those games, if they need to choose between 10% of revenue vs 0% of revenue from their recent sales, they'd probably like the 10%, they should get 100% of the revenue from the region but unfortunately this isn't the world we live in, people are going to pay what they feel the game is worth or not pay for it at all, who knows, now that gas prices are going down to under $4, people might have more spending potential.


Last edited by JordanPlayz158 on 19 August 2022 at 4:14 pm UTC

Look, sadly I will reach to politics. They have a "fat state", too much populism and less freedom, which increases taxes and inflation.

Sadly, your politics is inaccurate. So, first, lots of the most successful states in the world are "fatter" than Argentina's. But in terms of proximate causes--Argentina's economy is in trouble largely because of debt issues, both the sheer size of the repayments and the conditions imposed by the IMF. Doubtless the government is doing imperfect things, but not unusually so--the big problem is the debt payments and the conditions attached.

And the debts in question were run up in the first place by governments that were totally into a "thin state"--right wing neoliberals, who cut taxes (mainly on the rich), reduced revenue, and also dumped the fairly successful manufacturing base established in Argentina by import substitution strategies, in favour of free trade. I expect that loss of a manufacturing base due to cheap free-trade imports also had something to do with revenue loss. When you reduce revenue, you end up with deficits, which unlike deficits from spending the money on things like infrastructure or education, do not generate economic growth, so your debt to GDP goes up and up.
So. Right wing free-trader governments ran up debts, which Argentina could not pay. This caused the crisis of 2000; the centre-left governments that resulted stopped paying those debts, and Argentina recovered some. More recently, weird court shenanigans in the US, combined with new right wing president Macri who went along with them, blocked Argentina's attempt to come up with a compromise that gave creditors a haircut, reinstating the whole unsupportable debt (plus tons of interest, of course); Macri went to the IMF for a "relief" package which, again, Argentina would not be able to pay, and which came with the usual IMF conditionalities which the IMF itself has admitted are wrongheaded and ruin economies, but which they have continued to insist on as if they never said it.


Last edited by Purple Library Guy on 19 August 2022 at 5:27 pm UTC

So. Right wing free-trader governments ran up debts, which Argentina could not pay. This caused the crisis of 2000; the centre-left governments that resulted stopped paying those debts, and Argentina recovered some.

You are informed about it, Do you live in Argentina?

So. Right wing free-trader governments ran up debts, which Argentina could not pay. This caused the crisis of 2000; the centre-left governments that resulted stopped paying those debts, and Argentina recovered some.

You are informed about it, Do you live in Argentina?

I pay a lot of attention to political economy. I tend to follow Latin America in particular because some of the most interesting politics, with the most potential for shifts from the rather putrid status quo, happens there.

I pay a lot of attention to political economy. I tend to follow Latin America in particular because some of the most interesting politics, with the most potential for shifts from the rather putrid status quo, happens there.

I agree, you can't get bored in Latin America, sadly I live here in Argentina. Stuck between the hyper corrupt left or the riged and incompetent right. The mid doesn't exist, or at least people can't see it.
Enough politics tho, this is not Twitter. lol

I pay a lot of attention to political economy. I tend to follow Latin America in particular because some of the most interesting politics, with the most potential for shifts from the rather putrid status quo, happens there.

I agree, you can't get bored in Latin America, sadly I live here in Argentina. Stuck between the hyper corrupt left or the riged and incompetent right. The mid doesn't exist, or at least people can't see it.
Enough politics tho, this is not Twitter. lol

I'm a leftist myself, but I can tell the left-ish government in Argentina can't be that great because there hasn't been a coup attempt.

So. Right wing free-trader governments ran up debts, which Argentina could not pay. This caused the crisis of 2000; the centre-left governments that resulted stopped paying those debts, and Argentina recovered some.

You are informed about it, Do you live in Argentina?

I pay a lot of attention to political economy. I tend to follow Latin America in particular because some of the most interesting politics, with the most potential for shifts from the rather putrid status quo, happens there.

Argentinian here. Sorry but you are wrong, and the previous poster was right. We have probably one of the fatest and dumbest states in the world.

Some examples of this freak show off the top of my head:

- We have about 11 different exchange rates for the USD. It depends on who is buying or selling, or for what, or how many taxes he has to pay on top.
- The cheapest rate to buy is the "official" one, but almost no one can buy at that rate. 99% of people are banned from buying dollars for one (made-up) reason or another. The few that can buy have a cap of 200 USD per month (minus what they spend using a credit card), and they have to pay a taxes of 30% + tax retention of 35% (not sure if this is the proper english term tho)
- The "official" rate is roughly 135 ARS, while the corporate and "illegal" rates are about 290 ARS (yes, we have a black market for US dollars)
- If you work as freelancer for foreign clients (like I do), you are legally forced to convert your USD to ARS. At the worst exchange rate, of course.
- We have a yearly inflation of 71% by now (august), private estimates put it in about 112% by the end of the year. But these are only averages, food products have already accumulated way over 100% increases. This is what happens when you spend more than you earn and "fix it" by printing money.
- If you buy things in USD using a credit card you have to pay 30% taxes + 45% tax witholdings. Depending on what you are paying there are slightly different taxes. You also have to pay municipal taxes, in my case that's an extra 2% (depends on your province, your legal conditions, etc)
- The Fernandez have been printing non-stop since they took office. At one point, we had companies printing the bills in Spain and Brazil and then bringing them here because the machines we had couldn't keep up.
- Macri hasn't been right wing since the late 2000s. He's center left. When he was in power, he mutliplied welfare plans by 2x (some analists argue by 5x), refused to do any deep cuts on public spending or actually open up the economy. He gradually opened up a few things, with barely any effect in the long run (which help bring us here).
- We have far more people working in the public sector, and receiving welfare plans than legally registered workers. And it's been this way for years, we haven't had any real growth since about 2011.
- Electric power, gas and water have been subsidized by the state for years. The current goverment has been avoiding any reductions on them for political reasons. So rather than removing them slowly over time, now that things are getting tight they are removing them fast fast (faster than what wages can keep up). This is going to add even more fuel to inflation and push even more people into poverty
- We received the biggest loan the IMF has ever given and we smoked it in two years. Then they gave us more money and some goals we've barely met. We also burned through that. We are also smoking through our gold reserves and a (I think?) the chinese swap. Now the govt is trying to get money from the saudis. In the end they will either push even further into debt (and into defaulting), or devaluate our currency into oblivion.
- I could go on for _days_, but I think it's pretty clear

Now onto the topic of steam games.
I recently bought Horizon Chase Turbo + DLC in one the sales. I paid about 117 ARS, which even with the mythical standard rate is about 0.8 USD. Axiom Verge 2 at full price is about 224 ARS, which is about 1.65 USD. Celeste is on sale now at 56 ARS, about 0.4 USD. The new spiderman game is about 5000 ARS (36.72 USD)

Price hikes suck for us, but this is extremely unfair to developers and they have every right to bump the price, even if it wasn't being abused by others. It's not the devs nor Steam's fault, it's our own fault for letting our country become the living example of Socrate's criticisms of democracy.

Sorry for the getting political here (and writing a wall of text!), but I think it helps paint the whole picture on this issue.

I don't have any sympathy for regional pricing of digital goods. That deserves to be circumvented for its very existence.

Data is infinitely copyable...

P.S. I'd like to elabourate a bit. I don't begrudge people in other countries getting their games for less money than we do. At the same time, I also don't begrudge people who exploit that, just like I don't begrudge people that decide to just download infinitely copyable data. Thinking that can be stopped on the Internet is what's wrong.

I'm happy to pay for games personally, I'll be there at 12:01 AM on release day saying "please, take my money" when it's a game I want. I typically don't mind, say, $100 for a Deluxe edition of a big commercial ("AAA") game for example. I've also got money for anyone else that impresses me too, it doesn't have to be big names.

There's also another side to this. Any Aussies here? I'll bet they have an opinion on regional pricing, they pay considerably more for digitally distributed games than North Americans and Europeans.


Last edited by Grogan on 19 August 2022 at 10:21 pm UTC

Not surprised. I know plenty of people who have Argentina steam accounts in order to get stuff dirt cheap.

I don't do it myself because I have a feeling eventually steam will put a IP lock in place..

I mean that is the only real way to solve the problem, but it does mean if you move outside of Argentina or disable your Argentina VPN then you loose access to your steam account.

It would suck. Which is why I've avoided it so far... I already had this problem in past when Russian copies of games would get removed from my account because it was detected I wasn't in Russia.

There's also another side to this. Any Aussies here? I'll bet they have an opinion on regional pricing, they pay considerably more for digitally distributed games than North Americans and Europeans.

PS. I'm South Australia.. who pays $100A for a game? I guess that's 70USD, I might pay that for Bulder's Gate 3 like quality game!

We have stuff like G2A and such, pick up odd cheap game from there. Prices aren't always that bad for us on Steam. Wanted to get The Forest the other night, but $28AUD.. I think its like $1 in ARG or whatever.


Last edited by TheRiddick on 20 August 2022 at 12:20 am UTC

Valve and only Valve is THE guilty of this situation.

Valve must eliminate right now the online availability of Steam wallet codes in Argentinian and Turkish currencies.
To require credit cards from the country you are is the only way to sort this.

It's very difficult to get a credit card here. Only prepaid debit cards are available for the middle class, and myself personally, a few digital banks that popped up because we don't want to use our coin anymore.
To put it in perspective, Argentina is the country with most dollars on the outside than in the local banks. Government taxes are like 70% the value of what you buy.
It's an old model that will change next year because elections and a right wing capitalist leader figure waiting to become president by the people.

But this will happen soon to 1st world countries too if inflation keeps rising, therefore, I have studied a lot different economic systems, and crypto seems to be the only and best solution for everyone. You can see there popped out many sites that sells Steam cards for USD or crypto.

if the IP lock happens, then Steam Deck will lost its meaning because mobility is the Steam Deck main purpose.