Steam payment HUGE price increase!

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Originally Posted by gustavray

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It's alright! I feel pretty triggered by some of the stuff I read too, but try to focus on the people willing to help. It's hard, but it's better than getting angry, because that can also give people reason to discredit our complaints.
Thank you for understanding though!

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Originally Posted by Aramina

And what about people from other countries that can't afford XXX amount? Why should some receive a discount solely based on where they live while others are denied based solely on where they live?

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Maybe they were basing it on the number of ppl who actively play MMOs or games in general in those countries? Politics? (as stated previously, the EU agreement wont allow regional pricings) some countries might have similar laws or something. And they also don't have to implement it in the WHOLE world at the same time. "No one" would do that. I'm certain there is someone who would try, but it's much easier if you run a test in a few places first

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Originally Posted by Vizu00

Recurring subscription fee in the EU ToS doesn't make any distinction between the payment method, it is defined solely as what you pay to play, there is no difference between manual payment and automatic payment of game time written in the EU ToS.

The NA ToS makes a difference between the manual payment and the automatic payment and don't require a 30 days notice for price changes for the manual payment

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Totally agree with that, i was refering to the NA description.

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Originally Posted by tetsuo666

How does this not affect me if you demand a better treatment then me or everyone else in the world for no reason at all.

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For your money you are having:
- server in your region;
- game on your language;
- support in your region and on your language.

For our money we have:
- well... acess to the game. With high latency, no localisation and no support.

And now SE want us to pay the same amount as you, but without all your bonuses.

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Originally Posted by Silingfasi

For your money you are having:
- server in your region;
- game on your language;
- support in your region and on your language.

For our money we have:
- well... acess to the game. With high latency, no localisation and no support.

And now SE want us to pay the same amount as you, but without all your bonuses.

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I live in Chile, pay the full price with the current exchange rate at the time. Speaking english solve all your problems except for the server one, maybe i just lucky here we start to learn english as soon as we enter school.

Localization of games is a huge sink of money and need a considerable player base to be viable and with continuous development the cost is even higher. That's why most of mmo's just are in english, french and german (France and Germany have a requirement to be localized to even sell the game there).
Before someone start WoW is a really special case in the aspect of localization (Localization is really one of their key features), but Latam server are still in the US.

Blizzard support, moderation and store teams are all in-house departments of blizzard, meanwhile here is almost all outsourced.

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Originally Posted by Sinistral

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Originally Posted by Silingfasi

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I'll have to agree with that. Localization or translation isn't something we can really argue because there are games in Portuguese, but we chose and agreed on playing one that doesnt. The server move to the West Coast was a bad choice, though, and people still complain and post on the forum about it. They said 'they will look into the discussions' Most games won't have servers physically in Brazil due to taxes. i.e. WoW and Black Desert Online (Redfox version)

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Originally Posted by Aramina

And what about people from other countries that can't afford XXX amount? Why should some receive a discount solely based on where they live while others are denied based solely on where they live?

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This isn't the topic, I bet that everyone here would agree that a poor country should have a "discount", and I can relate very much with people that don't have this privilege, but what is being discussed is that they took away this "discount" from us without warning or a proper explanation, and from the most people that I play they indeed need this "discount".

Again, I think that every poor country should have this "discount", but you can not complain about people that are asking this "discount" back just because not everyone have it.

I expect a lot of angry comments and controversy from this post, but it's what's on the mind of many non Russian and Brazilian players.
"Why should Russia and Brazil pay less compared to the rest of the world?" I do NOT think that poor countries deserve a discount, business is business, either you can afford it or not. Square Enix doesn't operate for free or intentionally sabotages themselves to lose money.
SE sets ffxiv servers in regions and languages that it's most profitable to them. I get ripped off over currency conversion when I pay my sub because I don't live in north america, europe or japan, but its fair game, my region apparently isn't profitable for them.
While i'd love the idea of a ffxiv fillipino language server for the phillipines, only an idiot businessperson would set up their business at a loss on purpose.

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Originally Posted by Esrain

I expect a lot of angry comments and controversy from this post, but it's what's on the mind of many non Russian and Brazilian players.
"Why should Russia and Brazil pay less compared to the rest of the world?".

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Because Russia and Brazil are two of the largest countries in the entire world (Brazil is #5 and Russia is #9) with enough of a middle class to engage in gaming and cultures tolerant enough to not demand censorship in order for them to be marketed in those regions. Offering subs to their regions at a fair price based on their own earned monthly income has the potential to tremendously expand the playerbase. When offering a global product to a fiscally diverse population it's not very smart business to demand them to pay the exact same price as America.

Ignoring that, the main issue at hand is that they didn't warn anyone about the change beforehand and made the move at a super bad time.

I don't think companies like Blizzard and EA loose money because of regional prices. They actually profit from them, because large playerbase is very important for every mmo. There may be some rich russian guy spending a lot of money on glamour every month, but if his not so rich friends will leave the game he will eventually leave too. Just making price bigger doesn't guarantee you more money in the end.
The hit from russian and brazillian players leaving may not be this big, but it will be noticeble when game will stop being new and shiny because of new addon release.
It's not like Square was spending a lot of money on localization and local servers, they just used default steam tools, so i doubt they had any losses because of regional price.