Steam payment HUGE price increase!

[Alleo]

It seems that people dont understand the difference between something being fair and it being equal. Here in Germany people that have a higher income will pay a higher income tax on it and people that only earn a certain amount of money per year (around max. 8800 € per year) wont have to pay any income tax. This is fair. If everyone needs to pay the same amount of taxes in percent than this would not be fair but equal to all. But something being equal is not always the good decision.

So this situation itself might make everyone equal but its far away from being fair.

Also most people are angry because there was simply no communication about this. This is the main problem. Even if it was not against the ToS (through some kind of loophole) its still a bad practice. The reputation and good will of a company is really important today and things like that can destroy a reputation which is not easily reclaimed. And a bad reputation can even ruin a company.

Like I already posted, this decision (even if I am not hit by it because I live in Germany) left me really disgusted about SE, so I will refrain from buying items from them again (Mog station, merchandise), I will not recommend this game to anyone anymore and I might not even buy any other games from SE again..dont want to finance a company that makes so many greedy decisions and that even after it is known, still chose to ignore it..

The player base in these two countries might be small but they are still paying customers..this and the horrible handling of the EU campaigns show that the company itself does not respect their customer, only their money.

[Paladinleeds]

But the thing that pretty much would make SE revert the prices all by itself would be Steam deciding to refund the game/addon. The money the company had for guaranteed would suddenly start to leak from their wallets, and this they cannot suffer.

I'm not sure even that would work. I mean if you look at all the "restrictions" they have in place, SE will continue to march to the beat of their own drum. What I do hope however is Steam do an automated refund for ALL BR/RU/other affected regions. Like, people don't even ask for the refund, they just get it. That would mean a huge chunk of change lost for SE as you say, and it wouldn't be a trickle if Steam refund them all at the same time, it would be a huge slash into their profits that would be harder to miss than the trickle.

So a question, how do you try to refund SB? Steam not allow it cuz i played "obviously" more then 2 hours and declined my reason, or its done by MogStation?

Use the reasoning of explaining how SE has made the game unplayable due to the price increases exactly one month after the release of SB with no official warning, used as a deceitful method to obtain money for the product without having to provide the continued service.

[DDkiki]

So a question, how do you try to refund SB? Steam not allow it cuz i played "obviously" more then 2 hours and declined my reason, or its done by MogStation?

Use the reasoning of explaining how SE has made the game unplayable due to the price increases exactly one month after the release of SB with no official warning, used as a deceitful method to obtain money for the product without having to provide the continued service.

i wrote that SE broke ToS, tripled sub time, scummed me and im unable to play cuz of it. Still got declined with typical "you played more then 2 hours"

[Texa]

It seems that people dont understand the difference between something being fair and it being equal.

Here's a simple visual explanation

[JunseiKei]

Well, this is an interesting topic, but something struck me while reading this post:

~snip~

Specifically on point 4b. I remember on Discord a month or so before Stormblood hit, a raid member linked something that directed you to an exact copy of the Mogstation with much lower pricing than SE's store. At the time, I told her not to link stuff like that again, it very much reeks of RMT and ToS violation and had reported the link to SE's customer service. Especially since the place claimed it was completely legit and even supported by SE. Now when you compare it to point 4b, we see the culprit.

I believe it's safe to say that these areas got screwed over for someone else's greed.

I want to sympathize for players stuck in this unfavorable outcome, but my original post kind of holds true here: who actually holds the finance in this situation? I don't think people got it what I was actually alluring to. Steam's Wallet is something under Steam, not Square Enix. If Steam sells something for a loss, then it's Steam that loses money. Not Square. If Square starts to lose money for it, they will adjust. They didn't adjust their subscription prices, so to speak; it's still $12.99 to $14.99 USD. All that changed was Steam's pricing through Steam Wallet. When looking on point 3, it really reads like while these currencies devalued, Steam Wallet failed to update appropriately, leading to this issue. This issue can happen on any currency that fluctuates a lot.

I really hope those requesting a refund do get it, but reading those two points alone, it really doesn't look favorable unless the ToS violation extends to Steam Wallet.

[MrUsername]

As a Russian player I can't understand why SQEX decide to drop off the regional pricing policy. Moreover, it was done silently, without any kind of notification. There are a lot of players, who bought SB knowing that monthly fee is acceptable and yet they were scammed. Why is there such a bad attitude towards us?
Pricing increase is very huge: now monthly fee is about 900 RUB. It's an outrageous price for a subscription. Median salary in Russia is about 23000 RUB (335 EUR) per month and in most cities it decreases by almost two times. But it does not mean that the market in Russia is poor. Russian players are quite similar to Chinese players and prepared to spend money on games. But not that much.
Will there be new Russian players after this move? Most likely no.
Has SQEX ruined its reputation by this move? Undoubtedly, yes.
I can pay a new monthly fee without problems, but I won't do so, because I simply do not want to pay for a game, whose publisher allows itself such terrible deeds without a twinge of conscience.

[Moragen]

Nice year with ff14, nice emotions from MSQ and music. But... That's all Folks! At least I am done with this price for sub.

[Rofel]

"If Steam sells something for a loss, then it's Steam that loses money."

It was said that SE determines the pricing over Steam, they were not making it cheaper for the sake of it.

[DoppelShifter]

Snip

Well, here's the thing... said prices are controlled by the game's publisher, not Valve. Square Enix dictates the prices for Brazil and Russia, and then ignored them for 5 years with no change. Might have been an oversight, but this oversight was what brought the Russian and Brazilian player base we have here.
Also do note that at least for the Brazilians, the previous price for FFXIV (around 29BRL) was already more expensive than the official prices for WoW in Brazil (23,90), and only a bit lower than the Russian price (550RUB), so it's not like it's unsustainable (...unless Square Enix screwed up beautifully in their infrastructure and are having to spend far more money per player).

Also other games also use this kind of regional pricing directly through Steam, Warframe being one of them. It's still an opt-in process though, since games like Elite Dangerous do not use regional pricing, and Warframe itself didn't support it at first, but later included regional pricing.

So yeah, despite this involving the Steam storefront, all prices were being regulated (or ignored) by Square Enix, and it was their decision to remove the regional pricing (one has only to look at the price of the base game: it still uses regional pricing in Brazil and Russia; the base game + Stormblood costs 105,99BRL, which is far less than the ~200BRL that would correspond to the pricetag of 60USD).

We hope that this overall shady behavior serves as a justification for Valve to weight in just like they did in NMS and Arkham Knight and allow for refunds; or at least poke Square Enix saying "Yo folks, you have an impending PR nightmare here on this side. Either authorize the refunds or do something about it".

[Katsuragi_]

I'm not sure what kind of contract they might have specifically with each other, but generally the way Steam works is that Valve just charges a percentage of what the developer makes.