Being forced to pay the correct rate for the country you live in? What a massive disaster.
We all want stuff cheap, but you're killing local suppliers. Local websites start getting ignored and sooner or later they fold. Then you're only option is importing, meaning one supplier has the monopoly and controls EVERYTHING. Watch what happens to prices then.
Or what about an extreme example? A foreign developer looks at the figures and realises they're not selling any copies of their games in the US or Europe. No point localising for a market that isn't interested, that's money that can be spent elsewhere. So they don't bother making an English version. You buy your import and it's in Cyrillic or Arabic or something. Well done.
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imagine that in russia they sold that ferrari for 10k euro but in your country they sold it for 100k euro and in the USA they make the price 100k USD and for brasil they make 30k euro. Now imagine that ferrari has a GPS that know whether it is being shipped outside their country and if it is outside of their country i won't start, along side this if you try to start the ferrari on russia then bring it to your country , the engine destroyes itself.
My analogy might not be great but my point is that valve has "unjust" prices for some countries for some unkown (and unlogical) reason, "many" people used trading to circumvent that problem.
People get mad at valve for showing favouritism to russia and not giving a fuck about countries with "similar" lifestyle.
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So you'd say 40-50€/game in a country with 100€ minimum wage and 200€ medium wage is a correct price? Now i don't give a flying fuck about people bitching that they can't game the system for profit anymore but don't tell me valve's prices are fair and people are wrong for trying to get games cheaper.
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I enjoy the minimum wage excuses. You are saying that rich individuals should pay more money for the same game and that several arbitrary tiers of income determine if some company owner should pay something obscene like $500 or $1000, because they make millions more than people from other countries. Every time minimum wages are increased, people should pay another $5-10.
That also ignores places where there are no minimum wages.
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I'm saying that if Valve is doing Region Locks under the pretense of giving people fair prices they should actually implement those fair prices. Instead they give RU/CIS/some parts of Asia low prices and ignore every other place (like eastern europe where i live) where wages are just as small. But we should pay the same because fuck us right? If not then don't bitch about piracy or people trying to get the games cheaper where ever they can.
You're basically saying that it's better to sell very few copies of something than to sell thousands of cheap copies? Because when it comes to digital games it's a no brainer, you're losing nothing by selling cheaper, there's no further production costs. You are however losing thousands upon thousands of potential customers by keeping prices high in countries where people can't pay said prices.
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And what does that have to do with Valve claiming Region Locks are there to help give us fair prices? Or anything else that i said? And yes, to some degree Valve does set prices, it suggests price ranges and for some parts of the world, like RU/CIS it suggests low prices and the prices are low.
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first valve does indeed "sets" the prices, whenever they a dev pust their game on steam they "advise" on the price of games.
second, most if not all retailers here (in portugal) have stupid games, only those AAA from major publishers. Do you want an epic strategy title like Crusader kings II? nope, not here. Do you want a friendly lego game? nope no retailer would sell that for PC.
The truth is: if valve blocks all new games as a portuguese either i win the euromillions or i have to quit legal gamming. here is site so that you can check out the lack of PC gaming
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Yes they fucking do. They could create a new regional setting for those countries with proper pricing TODAY if they wanted.
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You do realize that this holds true for (almost) every commodity you purchase in a store.
The store prices of an item in UK is obviously different from the same item in Russia.
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And why it shouldn't be cheaper? They don't have to ship it here, they don't have to build a warehouse here, it's already programmed, they don't have to worry about the size of the local market. It's just like click here, click there for them. And yet, AAA games from a regular store are 40% cheaper than on Steam. ("then buy it there!" ... yeah, that's not the point) How come? It's the same game, isn't it? Is it really necessary to price Steam games the same way as gold or diamonds?
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Your arguments are moot, we already have regions with special prices. And again it's not about people with 100€/month having gaming rigs or not, i provided both medium wages and minimum wages as a counter argument to the guy who said the prices we have are fair for the countries we live in and that people should not try to get games cheaper.
My country has a piracy rate of about 80% due to the price of games, lowering prices ala CIS/RU would deffinetly help lower that rate and make more money for the devs/steam so again i don't see what your problem is with my statement.
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To be fair, we get to pay US prices instead of crazy European prices. You'd probably have heard far more complaining if SEA had to pay 23% more than USA.
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Guess what? I have to pay almost 25% more than you just because i pay in euro instead of $$. So gimme a break with how much you're suffering because you have to pay US prices. Most people in the EU zone would be more than happy to have US prices. Especially the brits who are getting screwed even harder lately with the new prices they're getting.
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I've read through a lot of these comments and some of them are justified. You just have to bear in mind that the economic model is always changing - too quickly to have a "one rule fits all" policy. Splitting it down country lines isn't going to work immediately because they need to weigh everything against GDP and whatever. But long-term this will be the better way for everyone.
Assuming they do it right, at least.
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well if you have to stack copy of game(sale), you don;t know what is the demand. Maybe you waste money and have useless copys in your inventory. Because sale is only limited time and you don't know the demand. Blindly buying copys..
"Or you can just buy the game from your own region." WTF are you talking about?
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Valve does not force you to "stack copies of games" or "blindly buy copies". That is your choice and your responsibility if you choose to trade games. Valve is simply doing what they can to make the trade system more safe. That is what's important here.
Believe it or not, but you can actually buy games from your own region instead of looking for cheaper games from another market. That's what I'm talking about, so please don't make me repeat it again.
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Can someone explain this to me so I understand?Valve region locks people so basically a russian cannot buy a game and give it to a european..but europeans can still trade with one another even if there are 3 ''regions'' within it?UK,EU1 and EU2.
Or are they blocking every single ''region'' from trading with one another?
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Nope, only RU/CIS,SEA,SA are locked. All copies bought are free from trade restrictions.
This new lock affects only trading/activating, activated copies will be effectively region free. So it's actually better for non-traders.
(Assuming it doesn't use other region locks, like some games do)
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i'm pretty sure that the reason that makes valve not change the high EU prices is because we still buy, a lot! but the real question is would RU/CIS still buy with EU prices?
in my opinion it would decrease, but they would still buy, a lot as well! and valve would not change it again for the same reason as they dont change eu prices, because it still sells, a lot...
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I don't mind too much about trading locks, as long as I can still buy and play the games i'm ok, I mean i am not a reseller. But at the same time it feels kinda bad that I am paying the exact same price as US, they get RoW and I get a region locked, I would understand if my country had cheaper prices, but is not the case.
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I remeber him saying this Valve's Gabe Newell Says Piracy Is a Service Problem Didn't take him long to forget
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but the european "service" sucks and kept me pirating back in the day. only trading convinced me that i want to invest a big portion of my money for games every month. trading is still working to this day, but if at any point valve decides to kill it completely, i might go back to pirating. i simply can't afford to buy too many games for 60€.
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It was a gray area that Valve didn't want to deal with anymore. Probably more trouble then it was worth, also it only affects a small % of the community.
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+1
Valve already know that when they "give finger, people will take whole arm"... Like holiday sale few years back when you could win games and everybody was cheating with alternate accounts and so on. So what Valve did? No more free games. Fair. Now many people found hole in trading where people actually made profit from it, and again. Fair enough
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Ill fight. WHOS WITH ME?! WAAAAAAAAAGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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i do not care.
if i want a game i set a price i am willing to pay and if price drops to that level i buy.
so i just have to wait a little longer - who cares?
and sometimes i loose interest and do not buy that game at all - more money saved.
games are getting more expensive because of people who pay that much....if they cannot sell it for 60€ they will consider a lower price soon. so just do not buy it, if its too expensive..
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go and use other service if you want to fight valve, i'm sure you Uplay and Origin will make an awesomely non-restrictive trade system now...
or GOG, go use GOG, they are actually awesome.
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many many traders are gone and less people trade overall :(. many who traded have now region locks. it wasn't illegal was it?
so now valve wants to earn more money and the publishers i guess, they saw that gifting is mostly cheaper and now gifting was limited + newarly all new releases are locked!
just accept it?
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