-
Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
-
We have made minor adjustments to how the search bar works on ResetEra. You can read about the changes here.
Some games on Epic Store can cost up to 300% more compared to Steam for dozens of millions of users (regional pricing issues)
- Thread starter texhnolyze
- Start date
Great, well I guess they better fix it.
Difference is I actually do want them to fix it and everything else, rather than bow out.
With due respect, those are just excuses. If you were aware of how steam counters regional price abusers you wouldn't be saying this. For starters you cannot buy from a foreign store on steam just by using VPN, you NEED a payment option from that country. That means you need a credit/debit card from that country with a billing address registered to that country to even be able to make a purchase. There is also no way to gift a game purchased in a lower priced region to a higher priced region.
There is indeed a way to buy from another region and benefit from lower price but only AFTER you've made a purchase in the region (which I'm not going to explain for obvious reasons). But the mere fact that it requires a local payment method in the first place to even be able to do that prevents almost all abusers. What few abusers remain are small enough to ignore considering the benefit it brings to local users. Origin had region appropriate pricing too, until people from high income regions started abusing it. What did Origin do? Just remove regional pricing altogether rather than counter the abusers.
This fuck you got mine attitude is not good as it's important to consider the impact on these countries. We've seen that regional pricing has nothing but benefit for Devs/pubs. These non EU/US countries have seen a huge rise in gamers actually buying games in past 10 years. I'm from India and I remember a time when buying games was an idea people laughed at, now? Almost everyone I know buys games legit thanks to regional pricing. That benefits customers and developers both.
Also on steam Devs/pubs are free to price however they want. They can choose to price the games same as US stores (Capcom/Square), they can choose to make them slightly cheaper (Ubisoft), or they can choose to make them 50-60% cheaper (most other publishers). The key thing is that the platform allows this. Sure maybe Epic may allow it in the future but right now it doesn't and consumers from these countries are the ones getting affected while Epic is building their "Rome" and if this causes a surge in piracy for these games or low sales (regardless of region) then these publishers are to be blamed themselves.
Last edited:
Huh. TIL. That seems like a lot of work, especially since most Denuvo games get cracked eventually.
This. Does the Epic store have a way to seamlessly make my DS4 work on all games that were designed for 360 controllers?
This is exactly why all this Epic store business scares me. As other posters have pointed out, here in Canada we're not as completely screwed over by this issue as other countries, but buying things in USD is not something I want to do all that often. I wouldn't buy things on Steam, GOG, and other digital storefronts nearly as often if they did not implement regional pricing or at the very least a way to pay in my own currency.
One of those counties listed was used in the OPs calculations.
Epics 'regional pricing' is just USD prices converted to rubles, which for the average Russian citizen makes much less then a US person even minimum wage.
It's been up for only a few days, give them time to get more countries supported. I'm sure there is more involved in adding support for another currency than just adding the currency symbol, and Epic wanted the store up in time for the Game Awards to give it a good boost to start, so they wouldn't have delayed its launch.
I mean, they obviously are doing exactly what you want, they just don't support every country in the world yet.
I mean, they obviously are doing exactly what you want, they just don't support every country in the world yet.
You mean the developer who chose that pricing is just choosing to price their game at USD prices converted to Rubles; Epic supports "regional pricing" which means the developer can choose the price of their game on a per-region basis, not Epic.
It's basically one of the main reasons Steam will continue to grow and other stores will stagnate if they don't change. I'd love to pay for games in many other stores, such as Kartridge, Itch.io, Epic Store, Discord Store and so on, but most of them do not accept local payment methods nor do they have regional prices, which means games are usually 3 to 4 times more expensive there than on Steam.
Yet another reason supporting the notion that the Epic Store is half baked and not worth your time or money.
Now, this is just my talking out of my ass, but afaik Steam has suggested regional prices based on what the dev decided to charge in USD and I would be willing to be all the free games I plan on getting from Epic that the Epic Store has no such feature and the devs don't know or care about all the world's socioeconomical issues; which is why you get shit like what the OP posted.
So a handful of shady idiots do it, so Steam should do away with regional pricing altogether?
You can't really blame your customers when the only option you give them is pay way more, or wait 12 months.
In 12 month no one will be playing the game with you, and the whole excitement has worn off.
I mean, the Microsoft store is still shit. This being shit too doesn't change that.
Honestly, just because it took steam years doesn't mean Epic can't have launched with features that the platform that they want to compete against has had for years. They had the advantage of coming out after steam implemented these features so they could have launched with it from get go, including basic things like cloud saves.
Mate, UWP has a circle of hell reserved for itself all on its own.
I'm wondering if a lot of Epic's moves with the store, like this, are in response to what developers like those have been saying for a while. Like how store pages for games don't show recommendations of similar games, which they tout as a positive because customers can't see any competition for your game.
Basically, several features seem to be made for developers that hold contempt for their consumers.
Eh it's close. UWP is hell of a negative. It would be nice if it worked most of the time.
Pretty much.
Piracy is always an alternative, but gamers in general dont like it, unless you make them pay more (relative to their income), then some will choose that path.
In Brazil Steam made piracy almost irrelevant, leta hope these new stores dont bring it back.
But make no mistake: the piracy alternative will always be there.
Yeah, I don't mind having to use their store, but with those prices I don't see myself getting anything there unless they moneyhat something like Sekiro, which I would get even if it was super expensive.
I don't know exactly how that works but here in Brazil it took a long time for Steam to start accepting local currency and it does it by partnering up with some local payment services. So, judging by the time they took in other regions, I'm guessing it's not that simple and there's some bureaucracy involved in using different currencies in your store. There are probably taxes to be paid to the local government and stuff like that.
Steam has a suggested price, but the dev can put whatever he wants. If you want to charge $50 for your game in the US and $2 for it in Russia, they won't stop you.
That's a shame, hopefully they fix this sooner then later. People will go for the best deal, that's just how it works.
Sidenote: but ma completion statements bother me. What you don't want competition? It just seems like a weird group of people you feel the need to dumb down.
Edit: okay I've gotten more context disregard my sidenote. I was originally thinking we we're just making fun of people interested in epic but i now get the context for the people that have been acting silly. Carry on
Sidenote: but ma completion statements bother me. What you don't want competition? It just seems like a weird group of people you feel the need to dumb down.
Edit: okay I've gotten more context disregard my sidenote. I was originally thinking we we're just making fun of people interested in epic but i now get the context for the people that have been acting silly. Carry on
Last edited:
People do want competition.
What Epic is doing isn't competition.
Well, i cherished when steam decided to keep the regional pricing at the cost of some region lock. Till i got a discount cupon where some of the game that applied where not redemeable in my account. So there is that.
I will not say that i benefit from it, but will also not say that is the only way to go is and that anyone doing different is doing wrong.
For now, lets make noise so epic add payment options for other countries too.
I will not say that i benefit from it, but will also not say that is the only way to go is and that anyone doing different is doing wrong.
For now, lets make noise so epic add payment options for other countries too.
But the Epic Luancher has been a thing for years and took money for years.
If they were preparing for something like this, they could easily get currency exchanges done ahead of time.
But it looks like properly doing it was not a prioity.
Especially when you see Devs with games on Steam have proper regional pricing and then when they moved to Epic have double to triple that for their next game. As shown in the OP.
I don't understand how this is a problem with the Epic storefront specifically if Epic allows regional pricing and makes their suggestions but the developer decides to do something different.
Does Steam force developers into specific regional pricing or something?
Does Steam force developers into specific regional pricing or something?
I know that, I was saying that if you had no clue about the income levels in Siberia you would probably fuck that up yourself and that Epic not offering such a suggestion might have been what caused the devs just going with a simple exchange rate. But as proved by Dreamwriter I was really, really off base.
So I dunno what happened here, I guess we know now who the anonymous devs complaining about
Yes, absolutely that sucks for players in those countries.
But is it really anti-consumer? I mean, if "anti-consumer" means that consumers don't always get what they want, then yeah I guess it is. But companies can charge whatever they want for their products, and offer it through whatever channels they wish. That's the ways it's always been. People will vote with their wallets, and the market will sort itself out. Competition works both ways.
But is it really anti-consumer? I mean, if "anti-consumer" means that consumers don't always get what they want, then yeah I guess it is. But companies can charge whatever they want for their products, and offer it through whatever channels they wish. That's the ways it's always been. People will vote with their wallets, and the market will sort itself out. Competition works both ways.
But it could be someday competition. I'm not saying epic has a good store here im just saying I don't get why we should make fun of those who want them to do better.
I'm actually worried Epic will start buying exclusivity from big publishers. I mean, they clearly believe exclusives are the only way to compete with Steam. And they have a lot of money to throw around. Why stop at indie games?
Honestly, if they did start doing that, I'd guess the first one they buy is Sekiro. Sergey, who now works for Epic, has said in the past Dark Souls has a huge loyal following on Steam. I could see Epic using that to leverage steam users to their platform.
You must have missed all the steam/valve related threads where people come and just scream "Steam needs real competition" and shit on Valve for no reason related to the thread. The first Epic Store thread was really peak era in how they dismissed what Steam has added over a decade+ while blindly saying things such as "This is real competition" and Valve is "resting on it's laurels". Quite frankly, it's impossible to talk about Steam/Valve in a constructive manner on gaming side.
I might someday win the national lottery and game prices could cease to be an issue.
To be fair I'm pretty out of the loop so this might be missing context.