Regardless where one lives in Europe (including countries where salaries are lower than those living in France or Germany for example: such as Hungary, Romania, Latvia or Serbia to name a few) yet they’re confronted with 89,99€ at release considering EVERYONE in Europe as wealthy (further from the truth since there are nations in Europe where people aren’t paid 8000€ a month, some are paid x10 less than that).
Regional pricing is indifferent in this case no matter as to their actual income, it’s weird since they count countries where Euros aren’t used (Czech Republic, Romania, Serbia) whilst people there aren’t earning high salaries, like this: a Romanian earns 815€ a month but are treated no different: a 90€ game at launch (about 10% of their wage), for some reason they don’t bother adjusting it based on a specific country.
Steam actually developed an entire toolkit allowing developers to price their products fairly. Even as far as by purchasing power parity or market strength per country. This was done after Polish gamers complained about their games being the same price as in Germany.
https://partner.steamgames.com/pricing/explorer
But it is up to the sellers to use those tools, Steam does not compell pricing.
And I just looked it up, this might have been broken in the past, but they updated it recently: https://youtu.be/Nz4FOKZRX_8
Still, developers need to use this.
I live in NYC, where the median household income is about 40% higher than in Philadelphia. Rent is more expensive in NYC, which drives salaries up for what is otherwise the same job. When video games are sticky at certain price points, like $70 right now, that price feels cheaper to me here than it does just a few hours away in Philly. Money is weird like that, but when you’ve got digital distribution, they’ve got to make some calls about how to price things accordingly. If I buy a 20 oz bottle of Diet Coke in Brooklyn, it might be $2.50, but it could easily be $4.50 or $5 in Manhattan.
Because the value of 1 euro is always 1 euro no matter where in EU you live.
Games are priced the same in California as Florida despite California having a higher cost of living.
Same thing. Because 1 dollar is 1 dollar.
Not really an analogy. OP is asking about different countries, not states. That thing about the euro being the same currency for all those countries doesn’t track either. Prices in the Argentinian store are in USD but it still has regional pricing.
It’s a completely succinct analogy.
You’re comparing different states with different countries. So no, it’s not an accurate analogy. It is succint, but it’s still incredibky misguided. Maybe you should google words before using them?
I can just say, the games USED to be cheaper in Poland (the average person is less wealthy here and we don’t have euro). Finds out there is an EU law against it, so now all prices in Europe are flatlined no matter the currency or the country’s average income.
I think the law doesn’t say that prices have to be the same, it’s just that you can’t block people from other countries from buying stuff at the cheaper price.
With physical goods you either have to actually go to the country or get it shipped to you, which can make this not as easy or “profitable”. However, with digital goods you just go to a website and there’s not really anything to ship, except maybe an email, so those same hurdles don’t exist, which is why those lower income countries usually get the short end of the stick with prices for games and stuff.
Does Steam not require a billing address or Tax ID? Yeah, it’d be fairly easy to fake it to access the cheaper market, but if you’re gonna do that you might as well pretend you live in Argentina.
Directly in Steam it’s not that easy, you need a billing address and Steam checks the payment method to verify the country (although I don’t know if certain prepaid cards work for this as well).
You still have Steam keys, that can be sold anywhere though, and not everyone will care that this cheap key, intended for the Polish market is bought by someone in Germany.
Prepaid cards have to be loaded with a specific currency and usually are part of a pre-existing payment processor (VISA/Mastercard in the US).
Valve’s steam gift cards are sold in the same currency as well, and are usually usable for accounts in the same country of origin (read the back fine print)
