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Capcom increased their regional pricing on Steam for some "low-income" regions

Chairmanchuck (另一个我)

Chairmanchuck (另一个我)

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Oct 25, 2017
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For Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Turkey raised the prices.

For Colombia, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Peru, Uruguay they did some mix where they raised a few prices, but not for others.

Here is an example about the new Argentinian prices:

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It is almost impossible to even change regions without any local payment method since years now on Steam. While in the Shin-Chan thread they showed how easy it is to get that game on the Colombian E-Shop for 4 cents.
 
Lashley

Lashley

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Oct 25, 2017
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For PC being their "main platform going forward" they've made some dogshit decisions so far
 
Mocha Joe

Mocha Joe

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Jun 2, 2021
9,311
Capcom was pretty good with regional pricing before I believe? So this is super disappointing to see. Hell, I think Argentina even had a good chunk of their overall sales one year? Good reminder AAA publishers are all greed, even Capcom.

Chairmanchuck said:
It is almost impossible to even change regions without any local payment method since years now on Steam. While in the Shin-Chan thread they showed how easy it is to get that game on the Colombian E-Shop for 4 cents.
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Its hilarious how people (even on Era too) still think its possible to region hop on Steam anytime you want. When infact, the first google search result for "Steam regional pricing" is an article stating that you can't do it anymore.

So yeah, AAA pubs and developers are increasing prices out of greed and not to combat piracy. If anything, its going to INCREASE piracy.
 
OtakuCoder

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Chairmanchuck said:
It is almost impossible to even change regions without any local payment method since years now on Steam. While in the Shin-Chan thread they showed how easy it is to get that game on the Colombian E-Shop for 4 cents.
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I was gonna say, I saw that same thread and was wondering if that kind of thing *cough*abuse*cough* was the cause of this. Sounds like that can't really happen here though, unless some third-party key-seller's being exploited?
 
Bigkrev

Bigkrev

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Oct 25, 2017
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I do find it mildly interesting that these are all 2x-6x price increases, except for Resident Evil 3, Devil May Cry 5, and Megaman ZX Collection- the "newest" games on this list- they only got 50%ish increases. Seems like a strategy to jack up the price of their back catalog? Maybe because they have data that shows no one buys them when they aren't on sale, and this allows them to do bigger sales?
 
Lant_War

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OtakuCoder said:
I was gonna say, I saw that same thread and was wondering if that kind of thing *cough*abuse*cough* was the cause of this. Sounds like that can't really happen here though, unless some third-party key-seller's being exploited?
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Yeah Steam is basically unabusable for that stuff.
 
keku

keku

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Apr 23, 2019
333
300 pesos are about a dollar ... surprised it wasn't done before
But yeah, average income there is less than 100k I believe (argentinean but left a couple of years ago so not super up to date with salaries)
 
ramoisdead

ramoisdead

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Oct 25, 2017
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Mocha Joe said:
So yeah, AAA pubs and developers are increasing prices out of greed and not to combat piracy. If anything, its going to INCREASE piracy.
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Bingo, right on the mark. Even some indie developers have been doing this also because they believe since sales of their games are mostly coming from Argentina, it must mean everyone is region hopping, which is ridiculous given the extreme measures Valve put in place in their store over the years.
 
OP
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Chairmanchuck (另一个我)

Chairmanchuck (另一个我)

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Tuco Benedicto Pacifico

Tuco Benedicto Pacifico

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Oooof.
These are some hefty increases.

If nothing else, as an italian I take solace on the fact that euro-prices were already irrationally beefy here, so additional harm coming this way.
 
--R

--R

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Igniz12 said:
But how? You need a way to pay in that countries available payment methods on Steam.
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Buy Argentinian Steam cards online. There are thousands of tutorials online on how to do it, and it works because that's how my brother and his friends buy their games.
 
Mark It Zero!

Mark It Zero!

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Apr 24, 2020
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Bamco increased the price of Elden Ring by more than 50% for argentina, 6 months after the game came out. Publishers straight up don't give a fuck about low income regions.
 
Mocha Joe

Mocha Joe

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--R said:
Buy Argentinian Steam cards online. There are thousands of tutorials online on how to do it, and it works because that's how my brother and his friends buy their games.
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the fuck, seriously? Steam really doesn't check for a valid Argentina payment method even if you only use Steam cards? If not, seems like a massive oversight.
 
--R

--R

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Mocha Joe said:
the fuck, seriously? Steam really doesn't check for a valid Argentina payment method even if you only use Steam cards? If not, seems like a massive oversight.
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They don't. Steam cards just go through and because you're using Steam Wallet to buy stuff, they don't check for anything.
 
Lunatious

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Dec 18, 2018
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Disappointing to see, Capcom had some really good prices for the region. At least there's still a big difference between Steam and physical/console games.
 
Kurt Russell

Kurt Russell

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Chairmanchuck said:
The payment method needs to also be from that, so either a Paypal account connected to Argentinian debit card, CC issued in that country etc.
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You can't pay with PayPal in argentina. And to all the people justifying this bull with "oh, but some a-holes make new Argentinian accounts to play their games" good going! Thanks! I don't know why I always expect better, considering it's always the same.
 
Madjoki

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Mocha Joe said:
the fuck, seriously? Steam really doesn't check for a valid Argentina payment method even if you only use Steam cards? If not, seems like a massive oversight.
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They get converted to wallet currency. So if you activate Argentina card in EU, it gets coverted to euros. Doesn't bypass region locks.
 
Rosebud

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--R said:
Buy Argentinian Steam cards online. There are thousands of tutorials online on how to do it, and it works because that's how my brother and his friends buy their games.
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That's why prices get increased in the first place

Valve should find a way to shut this down
 
cw_sasuke

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Oct 27, 2017
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I really feel sorry for gamers in these regions suffering because players from other regions are going crazy by exploiting keys/prices from over there.
 
cvbas

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Fuck the publishers for doing this, but honestly, also fuck everyone from privileged countries ruining it for us in lower-income regions. Boils my fucking blood when I see American people on ERA being like "omg you can get this really cheap with an Argentinian/Brazilian/Russian account".
 
Yeona

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Lant_War said:
Yeah Steam is basically unabusable for that stuff.
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I work as a GM for an MMO and somewhat frequently there'll be a case where some player found that they no longer can buy things anymore using their payment methods and they're asking why. Mostly it's because risk has already identified they're abusing regional pricing, and we can clearly see that. It's pretty obvious when someone's using a VPN too. But it's mostly up to us if we really wanna get into it with the player or escalate it. I never have personally, but some of my colleagues will only do that if the player's been actioned before for whatever.

I dunno if that's how they do it on Steam but yeah, no account closures or anything like that. Mostly "you can't buy more stuff from here on out" and a tap on the wrist and that's that.
 
Kurt Russell

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Rosebud said:
That's why prices get increased in the first place

Valve should find a way to shut this down
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They have. It's actually pretty hard to do it in a way that makes sense, and even that is not as widespread as people make it look like. Big pubs just use it as an excuse, and indie devs are either influenced by that, or by the classic discourse that always props up, making them think it will help, and doing the opposite instead.
 
JoanneAlley

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Bigkrev said:
I do find it mildly interesting that these are all 2x-6x price increases, except for Resident Evil 3, Devil May Cry 5, and Megaman ZX Collection- the "newest" games on this list- they only got 50%ish increases. Seems like a strategy to jack up the price of their back catalog? Maybe because they have data that shows no one buys them when they aren't on sale, and this allows them to do bigger sales?
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those three already had inflated prices compared to the usual in the region so that's probably why.
 

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People who use whatever means to bypass regional pricing should be banned.
 
Not Spaceghost

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Why even do this?
From what I gather even if you VPN'd to argentina it's basically impossible to complete an online transaction unless you're using a payment service that's tied to a bank in the country or using some sort of Argentine ID.
 
Bonfires Down

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Inflation has been running rampant in Argentina. A total of 360% over the last four years if I got it right. Clearly, some of those prices have risen even more than that but maybe they hadn't been updated for even longer.
 
Icarian

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As always, this is the result of a bunch of people ruining things for everyone else. If companies didn't care at all about regional pricing why would they even implement it in the first place? They would just charge the same everywhere and be done with it.

There are multiple ways to bypass buying directly from the Steam storefront, either by third party key resellers or prepaid cards. Also in the case of Argentina, they have a stupidly insane inflation so prices are bound to go up significantly in short amounts of time.
 
Gespenst MKIV

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cvbas said:
Fuck the publishers for doing this, but honestly, also fuck everyone from privileged countries ruining it for us in lower-income regions. Boils my fucking blood when I see American people on ERA being like "omg you can get this really cheap with an Argentinian/Brazilian/Russian account".
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This, yeah I know the it's ultimately the publisher decision but the normalization of this kind of stuff doesn't help at all. I remember as a kid it was literally imposible to get official games both for PC (burned CDs) or consoles (bootleg) and this is what is going to end up happening with this games no parent is going to spend AR$5000+TAX in one game for sure.
 
JoanneAlley

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Icarian said:
As always, this is the result of a bunch of people ruining things for everyone else. If companies didn't care at all about regional pricing why would they even implement it in the first place? They would just charge the same everywhere and be done with it.

There are multiple ways to bypass buying directly from the Steam storefront, either by third party key resellers or prepaid cards. Also in the case of Argentina, they have an stupidly insane inflation so prices are bound to go up significantly in short amounts of time.
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It doesn't make any sense to buy prepaid cards for Argentina, they literally cost double of the actual currency they give you. This is 100% on their greed, and they mostly didn't implement regional pricing before, they were just leaving Steam's default settings alone.

Also, you can't bypass anything with "key resellers".
 
Adnor

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I guess there's even less of a chance of me buying Street Fighter 6, and I was excited for that game.
 
gabyb

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In Argentina there is also a mandatory tax on foreign purchases, so all of these prices are +75% when they appear in the credit card statement. These games are REALLY pricey in a country where the average monthly salary is around 120k pesos before taxes.

If you grab Raccoon City Edition the final price is around 8.5k, 7% of a month's salary (before taxes on the salary). I guess Argentina is going to become a pirate haven again, sigh.

There are different exchange rates depending on industry I believe, I don't really know which one Steam gets access to. For example it could be the "official rate" 1 dollar -> 140 pesos, the stocks rate (MEP/CCL) 1 dollar -> 250-280 pesos, or the black market rate 1 dollar -> 300 pesos. No one gets access to the official rate so I guess it would be exchange via stock market, it would make sense they are upping prices then, as it went up a lot the last month.
 
Starlatine

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publisher *triples the price in a poor income region*
also publisher "wow why arent we selling well in this region, better to increase prices even more to make at least some profit"
still publisher "damn this region isnt buying our games at all, guess we should just pull out, theres just no interest in our games there"
 
Gamesadict

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Oct 25, 2017
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Not gonna lie, even with this, Capcom is still really good here in Colombia. The more recent RE games are now at the same price and even then it meant lowering it very slightly for R3R and Village. RE2 had a pretty good price and they pushed it back up (they discounted it over the years), sadly.

The Argentina increase on REHD is brutal.
 
Ogawa-san

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Checking my wishlist for changes, RE2 almost doubled in price.

Gaming is already so damn expensive around here considering purchasing power, all it does is make me spend less.
 
Mocha Joe

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Jun 2, 2021
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I wish gaming outlets picked up on this shit. It's such bullshit. Pure fucking corporate greed.
 
Madjoki

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Mocha Joe said:
Thats really messed up. Vales should make these cards be region locked. Not fair for those who actually live in said countries
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You're thinking it wrong.

What would be benefit of region locking? Zero benefit of using ARS cards to get EUR/USD. (You have to pay extra for ARS cards, since those aren't commonly available).

What you need to block (and is blocked) is using EUR/USD to get ARS. (So even if you have Argentinian account, you can't top up it as easily)
 
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