Horizon Zero Dawn gets a price hike in Argentina because we can't have nice things

[Hikari_Ryu]

I know there's a thread about HZD coming to steam, but this is more about regional pricing and how people from rich countries can screw over poor counties by taking advantages of it.

So, when steam open up preorders on HZD, the price of the game in Argentina was 539 pesos (about 7 dollars). Overnight, that price went up 2100 pesos. This is because of the amount of people buying the game using a vpn to get game cheap Sony decided to up the price.

For everyone that doesn't know, here in Argentina we have high inflation numbers every year. Due to customs, buying hardware here (consoles,
PC parts, etc) can cost 2 or 3 times more than in the US. Gaming is an expensive hobby and here even more so. The only good thing we had in the last couple of years is having some stores on pc with competent regional prices, but if people in other countries keep abusing this, we won't even have that.

In the end, I just wanted to vent a little and bring awareness that if you're in a first world country and abuse regional pricing to get games cheap you're actively hunting people that most likely have a lot less income than you.

 

[Flaurehn]

7 dollars? Damn and I thought Mexico at $20 USD (because of the same regional pricing) was already a steal

 

[rare]

it went up in russia as well, 2800 rubles now on steam(around 40 USD). on epic it's still 1099 rubles, but it's more tedious to use a VPN with epic so I can see why they haven't changed that yet.
it was 13 USD just yesterday.
this happens all the time whenever a game comes out on steam, it'll be automatically done by valves system as first and a developer can go in and change it at any time.

 

[Cels]

wait, i thought using VPN or other means to spoof your region to buy from cheaper regional steam stores was bannable.

 

[dom]

it went up in russia as well, 2800 rubles now on steam(around 40 USD). on epic it's still 1099 rubles, but it's more tedious to use a VPN with epic so I can see why they haven't changed that yet.
it was 13 USD just yesterday.
this happens all the time whenever a game comes out on steam, it'll be automatically done by valves system as first and a developer can go in and change it at any time.

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I thought certain regions couldn't be taken advantage of anymore. With the disabling of certain cross region gifting and not being able to buy on certain regions with your main account.

 

[Killthee]

Is it that easy to buy games from other regions? Saw several people mention in the HZD PC thread that there's higher scrutiny now when trying to do so and that you need a payment method that matches the region you're trying to purchase from.

 

[Haklen]

From 94R$ to 200R$ in Brazil too.

 

[sirap]

If the price seems too good to be true in your region, buy immediately. Not only do you have to worry about assholes that abuse this system, devs will inevitably say fuck you to the recommended regional prices too.

 

[SmartWaffles]

￥138 to ￥198 in China as well.

 

[texhnolyze]

Not just Argentina. This happens too often and it's shitty.

 

[Madao]

is it possible to block VPNs to prevent people from doing that?

 

[Einherjer]

is it possible to block VPNs to prevent people from doing that?

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Nah not rly.

 

[Z6E1Z9O]

It seems that they increased the price in all countries, i knew i should have bought at those prices, oh well.....

 

[Arthands]

Steam Subscriber Agreement

store.steampowered.com

You agree that you will not use IP proxying or other methods to disguise the place of your residence, whether to circumvent geographical restrictions on game content, to purchase at pricing not applicable to your geography, or for any other purpose. If you do this, Valve may terminate your access to your Account.

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It seems that they increased the price in all countries, i knew i should have bought at those prices, oh well.....

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Not all countries

 

[Plidex]

I think Steam's regional pricing system is incredibly generous. Too bad people are trash.

 

[Carlius]

Thank god i bought it yesterday. I knew this was gonna happen, in argentina on top of the price in dollars and not in pesos, we have a 30% tax on top of it. If dollar goes up, we get screwed on the price.

 

[JDSN]

Yeah, they hicked up the price of Minecraft dungeon on the Switch eshop. I'm glad I got international cards Cos i'm not dropping 30% plus for the "Nice guy" tax

 

[martincrimson87]

I'm argentinean and bought the game yesterday. But it was pretty obvious that there was an error with the pricing. That was WAY too cheap for an AAA game on release. The price it has now makes more sense. I don't think anyone would have complained if it was at that price from the start.

Now RE3 Remake... CAPCOM must be on Crystal meth asking for ARS 4200 (after VAT and banana republic additional taxes Is more like 5500 ARS)

That being said, folks don't seem to care that much for game prices here, otherwise the PlayStation would not be a religion like it is given it's lack of regional prices and Ps Now. Gamers here should switch to PC and Xbox if they value their money.

 

[MegaSackman]

Well the PS4 version is $20, 540 pesos was way too low, cool for those who took advantage of it.

 

[Decarb]

Still $15 in India. You region hopping assholes better stay away from it.

 

[Gustaf]

7 dollars? Damn and I thought Mexico at $20 USD (because of the same regional pricing) was already a steal

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wow they really will launch it at 450 pesos?

what the fuck,

bandai namco should learn from sony.

 

[Classy Tomato]

For now the price on Steam is still the same as yesterday, but I just noticed that there's a price increase on Epic, from $15 to $19. They're gonna increase the price on Steam as well, aren't they...

 

[Rosenkrantz]

This is incredibly shitty of Sony. Right now they're selling the game for a bigger price than the PS4 version here in Russia. It's literally costs more than a brand new AAA from Microsoft (Gears 5) and RDR2. If things won't change I'll simply wait for an inevitable deep discount down the road.

 

[Z6E1Z9O]

Steam Subscriber Agreement

store.steampowered.com

Not all countries

Click to shrink...

Almost All of the "third world" countries*

Anyways, Publishers should learn from valves's own regional pricing

Half-Life: Alyx · AppID: 546560

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steamdb.info

And not do their own unfair pricing.

 

[Centzontotochtin]

not only in Argentina. In Russia it has x3 price than previous

 

[Flaurehn]

wow they really will launch it at 450 pesos?

what the fuck,

bandai namco should learn from sony.

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Yup, just bought it after reading this thread actually!

 

[texhnolyze]

For now the price on Steam is still the same as yesterday, but I just noticed that there's a price increase on Epic, from $15 to $19. They're gonna increase the price on Steam as well, aren't they...

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They definitely will.

The price has increased on my country too on EGS, but it's not yet on Steam. I bought it earlier today before they get into it.

 

[SteveWinwood]

So, when steam open up preorders on HZD, the price of the game in Argentina was 539 pesos (about 7 dollars). Overnight, that price went up 2100 pesos. This is because of the amount of people buying the game using a vpn to get game cheap Sony decided to up the price.

Click to shrink...

where did they say that's why they upped the price?

 

[HardRojo]

People do that Argentina pricing with VPN shit on Xbox too.
It's because of people abusing the system that we can't have nice things.

 

[RankFTW]

Up to £39.99 from £32.99 in UK. Glad I bought it when I did.

 

[sredgrin]

People are underestimating how difficult it is to abuse regional pricing on PC these days. It was a big problem 5+ years ago but these days it's just not worth the hassle.

The real reason is simply that Sony fucked up, and fixed it.

 

[Agni Kai]

Man, that's a huge price increase. It seems the price was raised in many other countries as well though, so I can't really see why you think it was caused by people from other countries buying this game in mass using a vpn. Maybe this is just Sony balancing the prices by region.

 

[Rosenkrantz]

People are underestimating how difficulty it is to abuse regional pricing on PC these days. It was a big problem 5+ years ago but these days it's just not worth the hassle.

The real reason is simply that Sony fucked up, and fixed it.

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The horror of putting more fair regional price tag, Hulst probably had nightmares thinking about the consequences of such a crime.

 

[Nabs]

I doubt it had anything to do with VPNs. It's not as easy to do nowadays.

 

[Elven_Star]

Now, try being a gamer in Iran where 220000 rial gets you 1 dollar, and the minimum wage is ~$150/month.

 

[ZeroNoir_]

Well i was dast enough and got it for 7 bux. Sucks for the rest tho

 

[Gamesadict]

The game is also going for a stupid high price to begin with. I get they want to "recoup" port costs, but it's a 3 year old game that has been on sale a lot, sells for $20 the Complete edition, and sold at just $10 retail on the 2018 black friday (I know because I was there in the US). $30 would be understandable, $40 is pushing quite hard, $50 is ridiculous. Setting a proper price to begin with would avoid fears of VPN or regional abuse in the first place.

They more than doubled the price in Colombia, should have simply bought it right away.

 

[Hentailover]

Here, they didn't even increase it to normal price. Regular price for new AAA games on steam is 1999. Game is 2800. Like, if you made a mistake, at least fix it correctly

 

[MerluzaSamus]

I hate it when that happens...
The games are cheaper here because our economy sucks, and when they increase it because some want to cheat the system, all of us gets screwed.

 

[ChrisJSY]

I don't understand why the stores that allow this don't do anything about it other than hurt the people in those countries trying to buy it at their regional price.
Changing stores on steam requires you to have an address in that location and that's it - you can only change it once per month as well, so if people are bouncing around on different IP's they should be able to easily tell :/

 

[Rosenkrantz]

Let's not pretend that it's about gambling the system, it's much harder to do these days than a couple of years ago and you risk to get banned if Valve will find out about it. The main reason is pretty simple, Sony is quite greedy.

I still have a little hope that hike of this magnitude might be a mistake, but eh, its bordering on being nonexistent.

 

[texhnolyze]

Steam Subscriber Agreement

store.steampowered.com

Click to shrink...

Let's not pretend that it's about gambling the system, it's much harder to do these days than a couple of years ago and you risk to get banned if Valve will find out about it. The main reason is pretty simple, Sony is quite greedy.

I still have a little hope that hike of this magnitude might be a mistake, but eh, its bordering on being nonexistent.

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They never actually reinforce this rule. When there are people abusing the regional pricing, it's always the publisher/developer who take action by increasing the price.

Here's a recent example.

Steam :: TROUBLESHOOTER: Abandoned Children :: [Notice] The price changes caused by bypass purchases in some countries.

[Notice] The price changes caused by bypass purchases in some countries.

steamcommunity.com

 

[Finaika]

If the price seems too good to be true in your region, buy immediately. Not only do you have to worry about assholes that abuse this system, devs will inevitably say fuck you to the recommended regional prices too.

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Do you think we should buy it now?

 

[texhnolyze]

Do you think we should buy it now?

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Check the EGS page, is the price different from Steam or have they increased it?

If so, you'd better get the game on Steam now.

 

[dex3108]

It is not that easy to buy from other region on Steam. You need payment method from region you are changing to. And I am not sure if you can use your wallet funds immediately after change.

 

[AshenOne]

I know there's a thread about HZD coming to steam, but this is more about regional pricing and how people from rich countries can screw over poor counties by taking advantages of it.

So, when steam open up preorders on HZD, the price of the game in Argentina was 539 pesos (about 7 dollars). Overnight, that price went up 2100 pesos. This is because of the amount of people buying the game using a vpn to get game cheap Sony decided to up the price.

For everyone that doesn't know, here in Argentina we have high inflation numbers every year. Due to customs, buying hardware here (consoles,
PC parts, etc) can cost 2 or 3 times more than in the US. Gaming is an expensive hobby and here even more so. The only good thing we had in the last couple of years is having some stores on pc with competent regional prices, but if people in other countries keep abusing this, we won't even have that.

In the end, I just wanted to vent a little and bring awareness that if you're in a first world country and abuse regional pricing to get games cheap you're actively hunting people that most likely have a lot less income than you.

Click to shrink...

Let me tell you straight up that Valve can easily detect VPN buys off steam and they can not only remove the game you bought via abusing the region change thing but also ban your account also like others here have said that its a very technical process to change your store region on steam unlike on PSN or Xbox. I've seen several accounts of people getting their accounts banned. Also Valve don't ban people for unlocking games via VPN but they do ban you for buying stuff from other regions via VPN. You just need to do a quick google search to see it tbh. So don't really believe that sony upped the price just cause people were 'abusing it' lmao. Its the other way around. Sony caught their mistake and corrected it.

 

[krg]

It has nothing to do with Argentina though. Yesterday the game was going for 12.000 CLP and now is 18.500 CLP.

Fuck it though, I wasn't going to buy it at launch anyway.

 

[Classy Tomato]

They definitely will.

The price has increased on my country too on EGS, but it's not yet on Steam. I bought it earlier today before they get into it.

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I want to buy it, but my PC won't be able to run it, so I might as well wait until it's discounted as I'm planning to buy it when I buy a new GPU. But still, it sucks knowing that the next Sony games would be more expensive.

Btw, we live in the same country and city lol

 

[dex3108]

Also buying on Epic Store from other regions is easy and so far Epic didn't do anything about it.

 

[Pyros Eien]

It's quite possible they just haven't gotten to changing the EGS prices yet. Not sure if an automated process over there but if it's not, it'd make sense they can't change it over the weekend, so monday would be when the prices get "fixed" there too.

Not an uncommon thing to happen though. Steam has its own regional pricing that a lot of publishers change to something else if they forget to do it when they put the games up the first time. Something else being a lot more money, obviously.