Steam payment HUGE price increase!

[Moragen]

BTW Me personally don't care about ToS or pre-announce(wouldnt buy SB though). I just want sub price back or refund of SB. Because I can't pay 15 euro. I guess I can, but I don't won't and will not pay it. I have 20+ days remain. And as for now I uninstalled ff14 for further notice.

But there is nothing for me out there. I don't want to go back to WoW.

[Holygriever]

Hey everyone. Seeing as how her ban is still in effect, I bring word from Doppelshifter yet again:

"Doppelshifter here. Well, it seems that the ToS argument is up again. No, I won't contest that the NA ToS do seem to refer to automatic-renewal-only when it comes to early warning (...the [unpleasantry] of that attitude aside).

I will however ask that you also open up the English version of the EU terms of service and look for the same clause, then compare the wording used in both.

You'll probably see some interesting punctual differences that suggest that while the EU terms do treat all subs the same, and requiring an early warning in all situations... the NA terms have different wording here and there to isolate it to the automatic renewal, but then they ambiguously just fall back to the same wording in the EU terms.

So... even if the NA ToS 'aren't necessarily being breached', they're... suspiciously (or [unwisely]) poorly phrased. And whichever is the case, both configure a [displeasant] behavior from Square Enix's side.

Just my two cents.

---

PS:

Oh and for the ones saying that "the GBP tanked because of Brexit", well... I don't know if you folks watch international news, but our economy was already in a crisis, and then a few weeks after the vote for Brexit passed, there was a political crisis in Brazil folowed by what's been seen as a coup. And then our currency tanked.

Familiar?

As for Russia, ask them how the ramifications of the Crimean conflicts and international attrition are going."

Also, I would like to add that, while I haven't been keeping up with this thread myself, I am very much invested in this situation. Me, Doppelshifter, and another russian player from the Chaos server have been in discussions, and we have some idea on actions to be taken, one of them here on the forums, one of them involving a possibly more direct contact with SE. We'll let you all know.

Also, it's been brought to my attention (by that same russian Chaos player) that there have been some few people arguing that "if GBP prices are lower, then UK prices should be higher!" and "So, are you gonna ask for an increase in the UK now too?" I want to clarify that, at least from the Brazilian side, this mostly seem to be a language barrier thing in the sentence structure, and it shouldn't be taken as a call for "GBP price tb be increased so that we don't feel as lighted" or the like; it's more of an attempt to point out the inconsistency. I want to make it EXTRA clear that we do NOT want GBP prices to increase, as we are fighting to be heard so that our own prices don't get increased as well. Please, have this in mind if you see people speaking like this, or if you are going to post on this matter.


- A stoic nod from Midnight Marvin.

[AngelyLowell]

Remember.

The main problem here is the price adjustments without any notice and 30 days after SB released, giving no chance for people ask for refound in steam if they don't agree with new price.

This is not what big companies with minimum respect for your clients do.

[albertopin]

Proof? If I may ask? I only hear about preparing for legal process. But then Steam said OK to refund because of insane negative steam downvotes.

From the Wikipedia page:
"...screenshots to be reasonable representative of the average player's experience with a procedurally-generated game, and dismissed the submitted complaints; the ASA further ruled that as Valve has no control over what Hello Games included on the store page, they were not liable for the material either"

Valve was ruled out bcz they refunded. A negative review doesnt end a game. Just prevent people from buying but steam has a very big library.

[Princess_Momoka]

Looks like the prices on steam for non NA players had a HUGE increase in price with no previous announcement.
To put things in perspective: here in Brazil I used to pay 28,99 BRL for a month worth of gametime, this price was just adjusted to 41,99 BRL, which is a 45% increase!! 1 month after the expansion launch and with no announces.

Prices in Russia have also increased, according to some it was an increase of above 200%!

EDIT: the prices got adjusted right after the servers came back up after the 4.05 patch update.

And here is the official answer:



TL;DR: Square decided increasing the prices for players of some regions on steam, steam itself had nothing to do with it(as many are wrongly assuming), since steam is nothing but a portal for you to buy games, they don't set the prices, the game publisher does.

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Also, something extremely usefull:



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And youtuber SidAlpha made a very good video covering all of this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXXjJE0kQtY

Thanks for the edit and updates. I am a bit shocked they are not commenting on the disagreement going on for that as an answer. It is not fair to do that with the timing, making people feel tricked

[GTBB]

i'm not sure if I should share this... whatever
requested a refund since the game is now not worth it now and I bought it exactly before ppl noticed this "price adjustment"
this is their answer
http://imgur.com/a/1BMcL
is it me or is it really funny?
upd: is there any other way to group everyone affected except this topic? like discord server or smth? just in case
upd2: official post on this matter hidden somewhere on the forum among the topic just deal with it guys

[Ronivan]

The main issue was the lack of information from Square Enix, not the price itself. For me the new value asked is not really an issue, although I could say I would be more inclined to buy another steam game than pay subscription at this value. If SE had informe us before Stormblood, this would not have been a problem. I would just not have brought it and probably not even posted anything about it, neither changed my steam review which was Positive, and also would have recommended the game to my friends which had the intention to play it, warning them though about the value and letting them choose if its worth or not. No big deal, two parties happy with their decision. Now this, got insulted by SE which after Stormblood Release with a sudden price increase which most discovered by having the unpleasant experience while paying for it, had no information about the it and many thought that it was even a bug.

Took some time before we got some very shady bland answer from a moderator. The result was rage from people that would not have if it would be just said before. Mind you that most people are not angry due to the value itself, like me, the problem was the lack of information and how low SE treated us. They deserve the downvotes on Steam and all the hate is receving, and when my friends and others ask me about FFXIV I would not say how good it is and the price value, I'll say how disgusting it's company treat it's clients and they should expected to be treated as beggars, I would show my sources and try my best to make the avoid this game. SE would have solved this problem before it even happened and everyone would be happy, but no, it choose this way so we shall choose ours and play it.

Sorry for the long post.

[Freyar]

That may be true in an ideal world but in all honesty there is no fairness in our current form of capitalism in the world and there never was.
If they did fair pricing they would need to adjust their prices exactly to the economy of every country in the world, that's just not possible and would loose them a huge amount of income.

I'm unhappy with those that don't consider income trends and instantly retreat to "now you're paying the same".

Adjusting for every currency and economic standpoint is not possible, but turning around and chamging after the sale of the game itself and it's expansions with no warning is absurd. Especiallu when the change is nearly double.

[ScaQueen]

What i really don't get is NA player, with NA servers, with NA forum, with NA support and game language come here and say it's not fair for SA players pay 10$ instead of 12$

it's almost like we "tag along" on NA servers, after all it's North America server, not All Americas server

We already pay a fair amount for subscription for the service they provide us, based on SA reality (and yes, our reality is much worse than yours)

And what's worse... we werent even complaining about that, all we wanted was a previous announcement of the sub increase BEFORE we buy Stormblood

Don't ToS me because that's just imoral

[Alleo]

So some still defend SE and cant understand why people feel really angry about this? How would you feel if you can only manage to play this game with the current price, bought the new expansion because there was no warning that there would be a price increase and suddenly you notice that you have to pay 3 times the current price?

I really believed that we would have at least one topic where the whole community stands together but even in something like that you will have people that will defend such a practice. That makes me sad and feel like companies can truly do whatever they want thanks to that.

The biggest problem is that they completely stayed silent about this. Even if this is not against their ToS its common courtesy to inform your customers about such changes especially if this is right after a expansion. Their biggest competitor WoW did not only inform people of the increase some time before it happened but gave them the chance to purchase play time for the old price for a whole year. That is how you do such a situation.

So if they had said this before SB this might have still meant the loss of the players but at least they would not feel like they are scammed by them. They would not have paid for a expansion that they now cant play anymore. Yet even after its finally "official" they made no true post about it so they are effectively staying silent about this.