this post was submitted on 25 Oct 2023
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Oh I think they are making more revenue by charging the first world more, but I also think they shouldn't be able to get away with it.
"Making more revenue with negligible cost of distribution" and "we're subsidizing poor countries" are not compatible.
Yeah they are.
The game is being sold to the third world only exist because the first world is paying as much money as they are.
It's literally a scheme to extract more money out of people. It should be illegal to prevent people from the ability to use things like VPNs to get those cheaper prices opening up the market and ensuring the prices actually match supply and demand.
No, they are not.
The fact that they're making more net money from those regions than they otherwise would, by definition, makes it literally impossible for you to be subsidizing them. The alternative is not listing in those regions, not lowering prices for you. There is no theoretical world where you get a cheaper price in developed countries without regional pricing in lower income regions.
The alternative is marginally lower prices for the first world and higher prices for the third world as the prices become global instead of a massive grift which charges you based on how much money you're able to spend.
No, there's not even a theoretical possibility for that to happen. Lower priced regions are lower priced because there aren't a meaningful number of people in those regions able to pay first world prices.
Lowering the global revenue by whatever small amount those regions bring doesn't somehow incentivize publishers to lower revenue further by lowering prices in the first world. It makes no sense to think it does.
Forcing global prices will mean that the revenue maximizing price for the first world will do down.
Publishers will not just ignore the global markets. They will just be forced to sell their games for actual value instead of "how much you can pay"
No, it won't. There's no point on the curve where low income regions have any possibility whatsoever of enough volume to affect it in any way. It's not a matter of "affording" anything, because adjusting to satisfy those regions is lower revenue than ignoring them.
It won't have a negligible impact on pricing. It will be literally zero.
Literally just open up a few games in steam DB. It's a smooth gradient of nations with differing prices. It would absolutely not be negligible.
I said it wouldn't be negligible. It would be literally zero.
The increased volume in lower income regions is massively less than the lowered revenue in the first world in every case. Regional pricing is "bonus" revenue from low income regions. It does not offset the first world in any way.