I can’t speak for Russia, but games are not extremely cheap around here. Quite the contrary, even with regional pricing, because you have to consider purchasing power. A US$ 50 game is usually R$ 90 around here, which corresponds to 10% of the monthly minimum wage. Pricing is a somewhat complex thing - there are lots of variables.
As for piracy, I’m not sure what effect regional pricing has. In Brazil, piracy has a strong cultural element, alas - it has less to do with price and more to do with “why would I pay for something I can get for free”. I personally see regional pricing as a way to increase sales with people who didn’t want to pirate anything to start with, but didn’t purchase much because of cost.
They didn’t bring their prices inline with US. They increased the prices but not to that level. I don’t have the numbers and I’m unable to look them up, but they had more proper economical reasons to increase their prices 1 year ago than now, which is odd, don’t you think?
R$200 per those guys, or about double the cost of a game. Depending what your estimation of “decent” is (cuz that is assuming mid-range sit-down three-course dinner). Maybe more like R$80, depending how they define “inexpensive” versus your “decent” :)
I ask because in Iowa, if I took my family to a decent place to eat (like an Olive Garden) it would cost me around $40-60 US dollars, or the price of a game. I thought that might help determine how strong the R$ was in that region? I think about that almost every time the wife wants to take everyone out to like a steak place or something. If everyone gets a drink (and the missus and I get a beer or two) plus we order an appetizer for the table, it’s usually close to $60 after the tip.
Also, food is a tricky comparison parameter because food tends to be more abundant here than in most temperate countries. And if you mean three-course dinners, I can’t answer because I don’t think I’ve been to one of those.
I’ll tell you this though: the place I have lunch at everyday costs about R$ 25 for me alone, for about 400g of food and one beverage. It’s considered cheap for the region I work in, but food is pretty good.
See that’s a big number to me. If I went to lunch, like a Subway, it would cost me about $7-9 depending on if I splurged on a pop and some cookies. So me paying $60 for a new game and you paying R$90 seems kind of right, right?
sigh. A good steak and a beer will set you back £25 a person before tip here. Though to be fair there are some places you could do it for £15. But a really good steak with sides and a drink would be £50 a head.
. . . and I’m still leery of places where the average entree is more than $12 because “shit be fancy yo.” Inflation has not been kind to my estimation of casual dining places :)
US$ 60 games are usually priced in the R$ 105-120 range about here, and I don’t think it’s an unfair price. After all, it’s the “standard” price here, and it feels to me like it fits our reality.
The thing is, Paradox has decided to break that standard. Their games now (or at least some of them) are priced above the market standards, even though they’ve never done that before.
Here’s an example of what happened: Hearts of Iron IV. It’s a US$ 40 game. Before they raised their prices here, it was sold at the standard Brazilian price for that value - R$ 72. Then they raised it to R$ 90 - the value of a US$ 50 game here - and 2 days after they raised the price again to what it is now, R$ 105, which is what you’ll usually pay around here for the US$ 60 value games.
To be fair, the real did lose something like 8% of its value against the dollar (and the krona) in May, so some price change would be expected. But clearly that’s a big hike.
Real is actually recovering now. It was in a much worse place one year ago, and yet, the launch price for HoI4 was still the standard regional price. It’s not a matter of currency (alone), but something else. That was part of my point before.
In general, yes, especially food and fuel, but I’m not sure about game pricing as I haven’t bought anything full price for a while. Looking at Steam now, Dirt 4 is £45, and I feel like it would have been £40 at most in the past. But Prey is only £40
Brazil has also been in the news lately due to its economy not rebounding as fast as has been hoped, and it is still in a recession. Paradox could be forecasting for a weak real. Have the tax rates changed? Are they trying to bring their prices there in line with their major markets? (And judging by things like the Economist’s Big Mac index, that could be a real possibility.) Do they think they could bring in higher profits there and are testing the market? There could be a million reasons for it.
The Stockholm Syndrome of gamers is always incredible for me to believe.
They want more money. As much as they can get. Paradox and Fantasy Flight Games are two of the biggest examples of companies that are using every tactic they can find (fixed minimum pricing, chains of DLC, serial format) to get as much money as they can.
It’s fine, they can do whatever they want, but it’s sad to me when people try to justify it as being anything other than what it is - a cash grab.
