Steam payment HUGE price increase!

[Shedon]

We should do what the community of GTA V did, do a mass downvote on steam, maybe we'll get them attention

The best anwser for them in this case is just everyone who got affected by this to stop paying the subscription, once they realize how many players they lost because of this, maybe they'll start considering turning the prices to Regional and not Globally Equal.
Getting a Regional payment would not only be good for Brazil/Russia, but also to other countries and even SE.
Game being affordable = more people playing = more subscriptions = more money

And of course there will be people saying "but now we are all paying the same amount", well, not every country has the same economy. While it takes someone from the US 2 hours of work to pay for 1 mounth of subscription, someone in Brazil needs to work almost 12 hours to pay for the same amount of gametime. Do you really think someone would spent that much?

[Nezia]

The best anwser for them in this case is just everyone who got affected by this to stop paying the subscription, once they realize how many players they lost because of this, maybe they'll start considering turning the prices to Regional and not Globally Equal.
Getting a Regional payment would not only be good for Brazil/Russia, but also to other countries and even SE.
Game being affordable = more people playing = more subscriptions = more money

Even better would be asking for a refund from Steam, or even SE itself.

[Ckrownz]

The best anwser for them in this case is just everyone who got affected by this to stop paying the subscription, once they realize how many players they lost because of this, maybe they'll start considering turning the prices to Regional and not Globally Equal.
Getting a Regional payment would not only be good for Brazil/Russia, but also to other countries and even SE.
Game being affordable = more people playing = more subscriptions = more money

Well, most people will stop paying the sub for sure, its a consequence, but to try to solve this situation faster we should give a faster response. Or for via mass downvote on steam or tell this for some jornalist (like jim sterling) that care for this.

[DoppelShifter]

The Steam store page for FFXIV is already being bombarded with negative reviews, and their score is indeed being affected (it dropped from an average 85% to a 72% "recent" average -- and then it dropped to 71% as I was writing this). Still could use some more momentum, though.

Some people already contacted journalists about this and the word is spreading.

Let's see who will react first: Square Enix to plug this potential PR nightmare, or the megaphones that are shouting about SE's poorly chosen business decisions.

[Ckrownz]

The Steam store page for FFXIV is already being bombarded with negative reviews, and their score is indeed being affected (it dropped from an average 85% to a 72% "recent" average -- and then it dropped to 71% as I was writing this). Still could use some more momentum, though.

Some people already contacted journalists about this and the word is spreading.

Let's see who will react first: Square Enix to plug this potential PR nightmare, or the megaphones that are shouting about SE's poorly chosen business decisions.

Any journalists have given an answer ?

[DoppelShifter]

Any journalists have given an answer ?

I've heard that some people contacted Kotaku, Jim Sterling, Sid Alpha and some others. Might as well keep contacting them, with more and more people, as the volume of people will basically prove it's a story worth mentioning (*politely*, please. We don't need a voiceless angry mob).

And an update on the Steam store page, the score dropped some more and now it's almost falling from "Mostly Positive" to "Mixed" (this might happen in the next few hours if the reviews keep comming).

[MelvinK]

While im sympathetize with the situation here, please also bear in mind there are russians site actually making profit off this region pricing adjustment thingy. This is probably an attempt to curb the russian website. What they do is use the gift function to deliver stuff at way cheaper price.

[DoppelShifter]

While im sympathetize with the situation here, please also bear in mind there are russians site actually making profit off this region pricing adjustment thingy. This is probably an attempt to curb the russian website. What they do is use the gift function to deliver stuff at way cheaper price.

Even if this issue is real, this "solution" was extremely harmful for *all* legitimate players from those regions, which makes it a terribly shortsighted decision. They're losing subscribers, getting lots of negative atention and negative press... over what? Poorly handled microtransactions?

There are multiple other games that also practice differential pricing (and in a much broader implementation than what Square Enix did for FFXIV) and do not suffer with issues like the one you mentioned (or when they do, it doesn't affect their bottom line enough to justify removing the differential prices, and all the benefits that come with it).

[Ayerinn]

Even if this issue is real, this "solution" was extremely harmful for *all* legitimate players from those regions, which makes it a terribly shortsighted decision. They're losing subscribers, getting lots of negative atention and negative press... over what? Poorly handled microtransactions?

It most likely is real. Heck, it was apparently a "well known" practice for individual NA WoW players to pay for their sub in BRL...Blizzard nipped it in the bud years ago though (that is how I even found out about people doing it.) I wouldn't be surprised if some FF14 players are doing just that as well through Steam...could be at least one of the reasons for the change.

[DoppelShifter]

It most likely is real. Heck, it was apparently a "well known" practice [...]

Actually, this wouldn't work through Steam. Valve has a very tight security when it comes to region locks and they're always updating their policies over that (sometimes to a very restrictive degree, such as banning game gifting from Brazil almost entirely).

Also, I'd look at this from a different perspective: in a hypothetical Russian website, how many people are using it? How much are they paying? Would they be paying for the original price in the first place? If the price was lowered globally, how much would it increase the sales volume? Would it increase profits?

See what I mean? Tackling the problem by offering a better service, not making it worse.