Steam payment HUGE price increase!

[SecretCrowds]

We should put in every page of this thread a message of "This is not about fairness", maybe people will see it.

I'll start: This discussion is not about fairness

Yeah right. I see lots of posts talking about fairness from the Brazilian and Russian players and how they should not be paying a higher price. They are highly upvoted too. Maybe you don't believe that it's unfair. However, based on the responses in this thread, that sentiment is not what the other Brazilian and Russian players share.

As I said in my earlier post, I can agree with the communications part but not how it's fair for people from 2 countries (Brazil and Russia) to pay a cheaper price than anyone else around the world.

[Boreowl]

As I said in my earlier post, I can agree with the communications part but not how it's fair for people from 2 countries (Brazil and Russia) to pay a cheaper price than anyone else around the world.

It's not exactly about paying a cheaper price. I guess it's more like a.... Localization? Of price. Whenever a company wishes to sell something outside of its own territory it needs to make several adjustments or the market it's going into just won't accept it.
The price BR and RUS paid was decided on accordingly to that "localization". Had they kept it fluctuating and depending on another currency in relation to those countries' own currency from the start, the game would never have reached as many customers as it did. This is business, this is marketing strategy. You do not give your customers a sense of instability if you want to keep them around.
But they should've been more well prepared to doing price adjustments. They should've done it more openly, perhaps explaining why they made their decision and still taking into account the economic situation of the countries affected. The way this has been done, SE really showed no care for the customers they previously made their service accessible to. They wanted to embrace those players at first, and now they're trying to get rid of them.

And people will mention how unfair it is because of those who enjoy going on about how we now "pay the same as everyone else". But 15 USD is not the same as 42 BRL. Every single post I've seen talking about how "unfair" it is has been triggered by the same argument of "stop whining because you pay the same as us now". And every person who has said that fails to understand that's not how currency conversion works, and that's not the best way to handle such thing.

I'll wrap this up by again saying that I agree with the need to make adjustments. But I disagree entirely with the way it has been done, the way SE is handling it and I specially disagree with people thinking USD has the same value for everyone all around the world and keep trying to make that an acceptable argument as to why we should not be upset.

[Adachi_Ame]

I mean from me, I see both sides of the argument. I mean technically wasn't the sub system exploiting a loophole through steam in a sense? But Yes the lack of communication and the timing of this was very bad.

[DoppelShifter]

People, ive read almost all
The posts and you seem very infuriated.
But i see mainly different viewpoints from the people who got affected. If you want a real change try to get
Out of your system the "fairness of the price" and focus on the ToS and the lack of communication.
Piece of advice, the official forums tend to contain the damage. You must take the conversation elsewere.

That's what we're trying to do. Lots of players took to the reviews on the Steam storefront (which is currently sitting at 50% [Mixed] and still falling -- it'll probably hit 39% [Mostly Negative] tomorrow). We also contacted multiple game journalists, media outlets, youtubers, influential players, gaming communities and others to try to build up a voice that Square Enix would listen to.

And I hope we can manage that. Would be nice to count with the help of as many people as possible, though.

I actually suspect they had a reason for that. My guess is that they were worried people would use the 30-days notice to stock up at the lower price, and people in those countries who have been paying full price all this time (because they're not on Steam) would be mad that they don't get the same chance. They probably can't change it only for new customers but keep a 30-day delay for current customers. I also think this may have been an emergency move to stop some shady dealings, and knowing this was happening in advance would create "advertising" and more business for them in the 30-day period.

But still... even if there were reasons they felt they had to do it quickly and without advanced notice, they should have been ready with a statement the moment it happened to apologize and fully explain why. So, at the end of it all, I think everyone still does have a valid point about the way it was handled.

You know who deliberately warned all players 30 days beforehand, suggested that they stocked up on subs in the lower prices while they could, and then waited until that campaign ended to finally increase the price to a higher but still not abusive tier?

Blizzard. When they increased the Russian WoW subscriptions to 550RUB, yet did their best to make the transition smooth and friendly to their player base.

[polyphonica]

You know who deliberately warned all players 30 days beforehand, suggested that they stocked up on subs in the lower prices while they could, and then waited until that campaign ended to finally increase the price to a higher but still not abusive tier?

Blizzard. When they increased the Russian WoW subscriptions to 550RUB, yet did their best to make the transition smooth and friendly to their player base.

Yes, but all players in that market had the chance and regional pricing was already in place officially by Blizzard. Here, only Steam customers could get the deal, so even a part of the players in those countries would not be eligible unless they buy the game again (as some did to get it in the first place).

I agree that it was handled much more smoothly in their case because it was an intended feature from the start. But that is the problem that caused this whole situation in the first place. If the price had been quoted on the website as official currencies from the very beginning, they would have given the notice. The problem for them is that Steam was an exception, and they let it fester for way, way too long.

[DoppelShifter]

Yes, but all players in that market had the chance and regional pricing was already in place officially by Blizzard. Here, only Steam customers could get the deal, so even a part of the players in those countries would not be eligible unless they buy the game again (as some did to get it in the first place).

I agree that it was handled much more smoothly in their case because it was an intended feature from the start. But that is the problem that caused this whole situation in the first place. If the price had been quoted on the website as official currencies from the very beginning, they would have given the notice. The problem for them is that Steam was an exception, and they let it fester for way, way too long.

Another, less obvious problem is that this is going in a counter current when compared to other examples in the industry.

This was mentioned countless times here in this thread, but other MMOs such as World of Warcraft, League of Legends, Warframe, storefronts like Steam and GoG, all of those switched to differential regional pricing as a means to attract more players from different markets and increase their revenue. Heck, when Steam introduced lower prices to the Russian region, Gaben himself mentioned that it would be foolish to ignore the Russian player base.

What's Square Enix doing? Sticking their heels on the floor and trying to enforce a payment & pricing model that Blizzard themselves started to move away from has been almost 10 years.

When was the last time that Squeenix tried to enforce practices that were 10 years old in an MMO while ignoring how their competitors were modernizing?

Oh, right. FFXIV 1.0...

[polyphonica]

What's Square Enix doing? Sticking their heels on the floor and trying to enforce a payment & pricing model that Blizzard themselves started to move away from has been almost 10 years.

I agree with you that regional pricing makes sense in general. But if that's the argument you're making, then it's back to being about "fairness" again. A lot of people want to say it's not about fairness (since Steam in RU/BR was an exception as it was), it's just about notification. But the argument about notification gets muddy for its own reasons.

There's no question that the situation is dire, but if you're trying to bring attention to "the cause" and get Square Enix to take action, what are your demands? Implementing regional pricing across all their systems and Platforms (and closing the Mogstation gifting loophole) would take months, and in the meantime they probably wouldn't let Steam continue to be a one-off exception in two countries. Realistically, the best you might get is an apology and a free month of playtime or something, but I don't see how they can really solve the problem over the short term, even if it were because they're behind the times.

No, it was not a loophole.

It basically was a loophole, because it only applied to Steam, and not direct Mogstation subscriptions or PS4, and only two countries (RU and BR) were way out of alignment with USD. It goes a bit beyond being half-assed, and looks more like an accident or mistake. "An unintentional good idea?" lol

[Ronivan]

Well lesson learned for on how much and long should we put trust (and money) in a company. Steam is getting tons of negative votes, and the damage caused by the company will not be soon forgotten. I shall remind this and all my friends every time they ask me about SE games and when I'm looking to buy one. They have all the right to change their currency balance and we have our right to repay with the same kindness not choose this company products anymore. I'll do my part here among my friends to not forget this.

[DoppelShifter]

but I personally just find it annoying when people bombard game/expansion reviews because of bad PR. Nothing wrong with the product itself.

Were non-Steam players from Russia and Brazil paying this updated subscription amount earlier?

Well, that's the thing... this is an MMO. A game that's also a service. So bad PR and bad management are also part of the service, and thus must be mentioned in the review. Do note that many reviews point out that the game itself is wonderful, but the customer service, PR, server stability and overall management are terrible and can ruin the experience of the product. It's only natural to be willing to know those things before you buy a game, otherwise you fall into the same traps as we did.

Also no, the prices outside the Steam storefront were based on USD directly and weren't adapted for region. The only prices where they implemented regional differences were inside Steam, both in subscriptions (which ended up in this debacle) and in the price of the base game (which is strangely unchanged, and it was even updated for Stormblood at much lower and friendlier price than Heavensward back in the day).
The inconsistencies just show how badly Square Enix is managing the whole situation, sadly.