Steam payment HUGE price increase!

The question is how this business goes. When FFXIV was not in steam- there was not a problem. I know for what I'm pay. Then they decide to go in Steam and use regional price policy- and they sold the game ONCE MORE FOR STEAM. I buy once more game to pay regional price, buy once more all exsepcions. But now they said we set all subs the same, without any warning. If all subs are the same- there must be 1 client for PC platform (steam or not). And this is fraud to sold 1 game two times if there are no differences in them.

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Originally Posted by Envell

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.

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[Sarcasm] Let's reduce prices to 1 USD for north american subscribers because USA and Canada is larger than Japan. [/Sarcasm]
or
[Sarcasm] Let's increase prices to 20,000 JPY because because final fantasy makes better sales in japan. [/Sarcasm]

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Originally Posted by Envell

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.

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There is a difference between making the prices in line with japan, north america & europe and increasing or decreasing the price "just 'cause".

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Originally Posted by Esrain

There is a difference between making the prices in line with japan, north america & europe-

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The UK playerbase currently pays less than everyone else, including Brazil.

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Originally Posted by Texa

The UK playerbase currently pays less than everyone else, including Brazil.

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For now... Brexit <3.

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Originally Posted by Esrain

For now... Brexit <3.

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Brexit will probably make the disparity worse and worse as time goes.

Currency value prospecting aside, it's fishy they didn't adjust the UK's prices at the same time as Russia and Brazil's. I can only guess that they do not care since it's not as big of a difference, or they're going to announce that one beforehand which will help rub-in how little SE cares about Russia and Brazil's players. Many people would have been okay with the adjustment if they had just said something first. It's been a week since this has come to notice and they still have not made any official, easy to view and link, statements on the mater.

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Originally Posted by Texa

Brexit will probably make the disparity worse and worse as time goes.

Currency value prospecting aside, it's fishy they didn't adjust the UK's prices at the same time as Russia and Brazil's. I can only guess that they do not care since it's not as big of a difference, or they're going to announce that one beforehand which will help rub-in how little SE cares about Russia and Brazil's players. Many people would have been okay with the adjustment if they had just said something first. It's been a week since this has come to notice and they still have not made any official, easy to view and link, statements on the mater.

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Doesn't england get lower prices in almost all games due to some national regulations?

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Originally Posted by Esrain

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Sure, let's just joke about serious matters. You can't just make price big or low, you need to find a middle ground. No one would care if they just adjusted it to WoW level or something, but 300% increase is overkill.
As many already said current price is simple unaffordable for russian player, thats why we got 100 pages full of rage and tears. Russian community will be forced to leave this game, and even most devoted players will do so eventually because their friends left.
Thats what we are trying to tell and hope that SE and western community will understand us.
But if paying the same price is more important than so be it. They should just give their official response already and close this thread.

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Originally Posted by Esrain

For now... Brexit <3.

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So wait, UK low prices are OK, but not russian\brazils??? wow.

Well SE can do whatever they want but if this is a good financial decision or not remains to be seen. If these prices would be changed in countries with a high amount of income then the changes would probably turn into more profit because you will have more people that are able to pay the higher price. Yet if you do this in countries that are poorer then I am not sure if this will not just be a loss, especially if your direct competitor is way cheaper. Also if you lose a bigger amount of people you might lose more people that would have spent a bit in the mog station or other stuff next to the sub.

But the biggest hit is probably the reputation and this is really valuable because this goes beyond just one game. A bad reputation can really ruin a company so it would normally be in the companys best interest to have barely any bad press. I might just be one person but I can already say that this news hit me too because I was already not impressed by SE lately and this decision was a major turning point for future purchasing. I will keep my sub (for now) but thats all that I will do for the company. No more other stuff and games from them. So even if the financial loss itself is not that great, I am not sure if they truly calculated the loss of trust and reputation for staying silent on this. (Which is the main problem)

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Originally Posted by Sinistral

Doesn't england get lower prices in almost all games due to some national regulations?

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The UK is paying less because their currency has devalued since the Brexit announcement, it's at a unprecedented low. Here's an article from a year ago about it https://www.theguardian.com/business...the-uk-economy .

Currency devaluation in developed countries is a mixed bag. It makes things more expensive to import and hurts domestic earning, but it can also increase tourism and exports. Japan for example makes an effort to keep the yen low to help tourism. The pound being weak is not recent though and you 'd think SE would have been aware of that when they had their "exchange rate adjustment" ducks lined up.

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Originally Posted by Enkrateia

Greetings, everyone!

...

LGM Enkrateia

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Oh yeah! Be pleased and greatful that at least this thread is still open! Blow off some steam, say thank you and forget about this issue.

Hahaha. Oh man. That's so funny (situation as a whole and GM's/SE's reaction to it).

SE been dissapointing for quite some time now. So it was kinda expected. Tbf SE is not the only 'evil' corporation that does this kind of stuff to their customers. In our modern world you either get used to it and learn how to deal with it or you just don't have any relationships with those kind of corporations. Cheers.

God, people, stop it. The topic is already 104 pages, and almost nothing is written on the merits. You just lick one and the same question and are uselessly cursing again and again. Between you even there is no mutual understanding. Everything that is written here can be accommodated in 3-4 pages of the dialogue. It's annoying already.

Out of curiosity How much is the expansion in BR and RU? Does it convert to the same price EU and NA paid?

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Originally Posted by Halivel

God, people, stop it. The topic is already 104 pages, and almost nothing is written on the merits. You just lick one and the same question and are uselessly cursing again and again. Between you even there is no mutual understanding. Everything that is written here can be accommodated in 3-4 pages of the dialogue. It's annoying already.

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Oh, stop doing what exactly? Giving dissatisfaction about shady and semi-legal billing moves from SE? Also since this thread has reached over 100 pages already and all we got was 1 moderator post, SE clearly isn't interested in quelling the situation so i don't think people should stop

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Originally Posted by Masekase_Hurricane

Out of curiosity How much is the expansion in BR and RU? Does it convert to the same price EU and NA paid?

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https://steamdb.info/sub/149483/

Keep in mind that before July 5, when a lot of people preordered the expansion and a bit after its launch, the price in rubles was a bit higher and corresponded to exactly 35 euros.

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Originally Posted by Masekase_Hurricane

Out of curiosity How much is the expansion in BR and RU? Does it convert to the same price EU and NA paid?

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I bought Stormblood in May for 2382 roubles = 35 euros = 40 USD. The price of Stormblood slightly decreased in Steam for Russians (for 4 euros/5 USD) after the "adjustments to how prices in Brazilian Real and Russian Rubles are calculated for Steam users" being made, i. e. 3-4 days ago.

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Originally Posted by Gouto-douji

https://steamdb.info/sub/149483/

Keep in mind that before July 5, when a lot of people preordered the expansion and a bit after its launch, the price in rubles was a bit higher and corresponded to exactly 35 euros.

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So if price of the expansion was close in price Why should the monthly fee be a lot lower?

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Originally Posted by Masekase_Hurricane

So if price of the expansion was close in price Why should the monthly fee be a lot lower?

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And yet you are another person who doesnt't get the point. The issue is not them rising the price, the problem is they did it in shady and a stealthy manner without saying a word or giving a warning, also a rather shifty timing of the event (an exact month after SB release) makes a lot of people think they used false advertising to sell more SB copies so people will not be able to refund them

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Originally Posted by Masekase_Hurricane

So if price of the expansion was close in price Why should the monthly fee be a lot lower?

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read the thread before asking the question.

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Originally Posted by AsmodeusML

And yet you are another person who doesnt't get the point. The issue is not them rising the price, the problem is they did it in shady and a stealthy manner without saying a word or giving a warning, also a rather shifty timing of the event (an exact month after SB release) makes a lot of people think they used false advertising to sell more SB copies so people will not be able to refund them

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I agree they should of posted to say there prices would be corrected before implementation. But I can't agree that the price increase shouldn't of happened.

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Originally Posted by Masekase_Hurricane

I agree they should of posted to say there prices would be corrected before implementation. But I can't agree that the price increase shouldn't of happened.

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In that case you are free to hold grudges and accuse brits of the exact same thing. They are paying less than you are and SE didn't "adjust" that

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Originally Posted by AsmodeusML

In that case you are free to hold grudges and accuse brits of the exact same thing. They are paying less than you are and SE didn't "adjust" that

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Funnily enough, I do think us Brits should be paying a lot more. Unlike BR/RU, we are a rich country. We could realistically afford to pay £25/mth for the Entry level subscription and £37.50/mth for the Standard subscription, and make it £12.50/mth per extra retainer. Plus, with Brexit looming and how it seems to be affecting our currency, it would put us more closely matched to the dollar I believe.

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Originally Posted by Masekase_Hurricane

I agree they should of posted to say there prices would be corrected before implementation. But I can't agree that the price increase shouldn't of happened.

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Once more, we are not complaining about the price increase, but the way they did it, with no warning.
They have their rights to increase it at anytime, but we DESERVE to know when it will happen, so we can adjust to the situation.

Imagine if you save your money to pay your bills and when you see the price 2~3x more than what you saved and you're like "Holy fish molly, what the .... just happen?". That's how we feel.

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Originally Posted by Montt

Once more, we are not complaining about the price increase, but the way they did it, with no warning.
They have their rights to increase it at anytime, but we DESERVE to know when it will happen, so we can adjust to the situation.

Imagine if you save your money to pay your bills and when you see the price 2~3x more than what you saved and you're like "Holy fish molly, what the .... just happen?". That's how we feel.

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hmmm I just said the same thing in the first line of the quote.

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Originally Posted by AsmodeusML

In that case you are free to hold grudges and accuse brits of the exact same thing. They are paying less than you are and SE didn't "adjust" that

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You are correct that is the case now. But I thought I had read in the past that UK actually paid more for the game and sub fees pre brexit announcement. I know there has been complaints on the conversion price of the game.

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Originally Posted by AsmodeusML

Oh, stop doing what exactly? Giving dissatisfaction about shady and semi-legal billing moves from SE? Also since this thread has reached over 100 pages already and all we got was 1 moderator post, SE clearly isn't interested in quelling the situation so i don't think people should stop

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The main problem of this thread is that it turned into a 100-page bickering between Russians, Brazilians, Europeans and Americans, where first two try to prove their right to a regional price and try to explain for what this regional price is exist, while the latter spit poison that we do not have this right and must pay the same amount how pay they are. I'm talking about this. Where in this topic appeal to the developers? To the moderator? On the first pages? Two or three messages between disputes? WHERE? I see here only absolutely stupidly dispute.

Honestly, this topic is a pain for Square, they are refusing to give a proper response, as was shown that there isn't a single global price.

Most of the dispute is caused by people not reading the previous posts and repeating the same arguments, even when some people already did some profound research to explain some arguments, and disprove others

Sadly this is a 100 page thread, unless you have been here for some time there is no way to know the full extent of the discussion.

I'm starting to consider linking some stuff in my signature to make things easier. Cheaper price in the UK, explanation on regional pricing, estimate of the upkeep costs, how steam makes the conversion, the EU ToS explanation of why Square should have notified before and what they are basing to remain silent etc etc...

The main reason that I think this topic should remain is that the other one doesn't get tainted with discussion

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Originally Posted by Halivel

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Well, we just wanted some attention from square enix oo to see that they care for their customers at least a little. and it's funny that after 100 pages we got none, even though must ppl are frustrated here and would probably be fine with just some explanation or trying to find to a middle ground.

And what the ppl against this thread don't see is that this will probably apply for anything, they just don't care and that is it. If you get any problem in the future (not just monthly fee) and you need their attention, it seems you're out of luck.

And for the ppl against this thread, well if you were just ignoring this thread it would probably be dead 30 pages ago, it almost feels that you're trying to help by fueling it and not letting it die.

I really consider that this thread should be closed. When the discussion becomes cyclical and erratic (we have talked about ToS and fairness of price).
I understand people have their concerns but there is a thread that is handling the problem with actions.
In my opinión as a community you have taken a retaliatory action kind of cynical by downvoting the game on steam solely based on this change of
Price, especially when its know that there people exploiting the steam wallet.
You showed no respect for a company that allowed to save an important amount of money by regional prices and for years! And in less than a week you deemed evil and shady.

Pls Moderator close the thread.

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Originally Posted by albertopin

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Most of the reviews contain "the game is good but the company is not", that is exactly what happened, the game is awesome but the company isn't giving a good support to us. So the reviews are right on point.

And how is paying the price that Square asked for is exploiting the steam wallet? Square have a control panel on steam where they set the price of each thing in the way that pleases than the most, the proof of that is that the jump potions had a higher value than all the others things cause they made it this way. (and i actually think they should do that for everything but the monthly fee, so we still could play and the things on mogshop would have normal price preventing ppl from selling it to others)

If you look on the other topic with signatures, it already have 28 pages, most of them Russians and Brazilians, square got all of this customers cause of the regional price we had. So Square shouldn't abandon them now.

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Originally Posted by albertopin

You showed no respect for a company that allowed to save an important amount of money by regional prices and for years! And in less than a week you deemed evil and shady.

Pls Moderator close the thread.

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They made no announcement, the price change is almost double, and it is 97% more than other games offered.

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Originally Posted by albertopin

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First thing, why this keep cyclical? Because SE still don't gave us all the answers, the only solid thing we got from them is "yes, we did it"

Second, its not a simples retaliatory action, its a legit reaction for the company action, also if you stop to read the reviews you will see that people are being really fair and saying that game its great and adressing the problem to the company.

Third, we show no respect for the company? It was the company who showed no respect to its playerbase, its unbelievable how someone can try to picture the company as the victim now...

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Originally Posted by Freyar

They made no announcement, the price change is almost double, and it is 97% more than other games offered.

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Price that your not gonna pay it, because yo u dont have a recurring fee. So no money has been taken from you yet.
If you do The math the saving from almost 2 years of subscription is more than you payed for stormblood.

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Originally Posted by albertopin

Price that your not gonna pay it, because yo u dont have a recurring fee. So no money has been taken from you yet.
If you do The math the saving from almost 2 years of subscription is more than you payed for stormblood.

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Doesn't affect me directly. I pay in 6-month intervals in USD. This is a service, the price was changed for some regions without a word, the cost compared to income is crazily high for Brazil compared to the US. I did the math earlier km the thread.

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Originally Posted by albertopin

I really consider that this thread should be closed. When the discussion becomes cyclical and erratic (we have talked about ToS and fairness of price).
I understand people have their concerns but there is a thread that is handling the problem with actions.
In my opinión as a community you have taken a retaliatory action kind of cynical by downvoting the game on steam solely based on this change of
Price, especially when its know that there people exploiting the steam wallet.
You showed no respect for a company that allowed to save an important amount of money by regional prices and for years! And in less than a week you deemed evil and shady.

Pls Moderator close the thread.

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If you read the reviews you\\\\'ll see that the absolute majority praises the game, and condemns SE action. This is a mmo, the behavior of the publisher is of Paramount importance in a review.

The resellers can simply start buying from the UK mogstation since they still have cheaper pricing, only difference is that the profits will be smaller.

At least in Brazil SE had a nice reputation, they offered regional prices for all the games at steam, and the FFXIV playerbase was growing, you only had minor complains regarding the server move.
Now saying that it is right to punish 2 regions because a small group of people were doing shady stuff is at least unfair. If you want to point fingers and say, you guys did wrong so 2 countries have to pay, you should actually stop a think a little about who was buying the keys, I can assure you that you wouldn\\'t have a reseller site if people only bought from SE, so the fault in this case is actually from the NA/EU/JP/etc players that bought from the resellers.

However the method used to stop the resellers (that won\\'t succeed btw) is akin to dousing a whole room in poison to kill a single fly, square could have increased only the mogstation item prices and kept the subscription prices intact (jump potions already had the full value for example) or just blocking gifting with the steam wallet

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Originally Posted by Legewiel

Well, we just wanted some attention from square enix oo to see that they care for their customers at least a little. and it's funny that after 100 pages we got none, even though must ppl are frustrated here and would probably be fine with just some explanation or trying to find to a middle ground.
<...>

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I understand it, because I am Russian customer too. But for getting attention it is exist second thread already, where Russian and Brazilian wrote a good letter with asking to explanation and normal decision in this situation and it's none disputes there. Here - it is. Cycling, again, again, again. Even if moderator will write something important people will not notice it because people here are too concentrate on bittering other. :(

And btw we still don't have any SE(not moderator) official answer or news on site or client. Still nothing.

Guys, don't forget to sign here!

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...for-BR-and-RU/

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Originally Posted by Texa

The UK is paying less because their currency has devalued since the Brexit announcement, it's at a unprecedented low. Here's an article from a year ago about it https://www.theguardian.com/business...the-uk-economy .

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Russians got in the same situation - our currency was devalued due to some political garbage.
But now many people explained this as "russians is robbers and british is innocent victims"

Now that I think about it, I find it interesting that this topic is being threatened with closure if it doesn't remain "respectful" or repeats itself when we have dozens of different threads over the exact same issues with Ixion, job changes, the undercutting thread, hunts, novice network, and mogstation. So far this thread has done an excellent job of keeping in topic and directing all posts about the topic to itself.

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Originally Posted by albertopin

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It's not an ethical problem. Here I go again talking about business and not fairness--
What SE did was throw away customers. As me and several other people mentioned before, the MAIN reason why a company sets up regional prices lies in the company's efforts to either gain more customers or maintain the loyalty of old ones. In this case, it's mostly to keep the loyalty of brazilian and russian customers, because less profit is better than no profit at all.
And then, all of a sudden, the company decides to discard said customers by removing the regional price entirely and not saying a word about it. For the 100th time, I agree price adjustments were in order, but that's not what happened and it came with a terrible timing (just a month after SB launched) and silently. The company reputation will be stained by such actions because it speaks of immense disregard for its customers, hence the reviews saying the game is good, the company is not.

The discussion becomes cyclical because everyone wants to share their 2cents about how they feel, and thus the thread keeps growing, and people who don't have the time or patience to read it in full miss some points, which causes us to come back and explain the same thing over and over again.

As for the insults, you just told a guy his ethic is wrong and selfish. He replied in kind. You don't really have the right to call him out for "insulting" you. Plus your reactions and words make it seem like you really came here just to stir up some trouble, instead of trying to join a discussion and listen to what others have to say.
Or perhaps if you really want this thread to be closed and you're sick of it, just leave it be and it might as well soon be closed.

@everyone else, please refrain from further feeding discussions like these, as it's actually just bound to bait you into disrespecting someone and repeating yourselves. If anyone asks, just sum it up for them and leave them to their own conclusions.