Valve once again hit the poor guys hard.
Recently, Valve officially stated that in response to a large number of players buying games at low prices across regions, they will continue to speed up the update frequency of recommended prices to prevent players from getting excessive game discounts through transfer regions. To put it simply, V Club believes that if a large number of players go to the low-priced area for wool, the big data algorithm may default to the rich per capita in the low-priced area, which will affect the judgment of the purchasing power of the aborigines. Therefore, it is necessary to adjust the recommended price to deal with players. The phenomenon of wool.
In human words, “Master is going to increase the price”.
Coincidentally, not long ago, a large number of “Cloud Turkey” players’ Steam accounts were suddenly banned. For a long time, it is not uncommon for domestic players to smuggle to low-priced areas to buy games and get caught by V agency, but skipping the red letter, small black house, repatriation and other processes, and directly large-scale “decision” phenomenon is indeed true. rare.
On October 25, Valve, which has always been known as “lazy”, moved quickly. In just a few days, Steam developed an optimization tool for game developers to provide product pricing, and provided developers with more accurate information. Guidelines to make it easier for developers to “manage product pricing on Steam”.
Just when people were still speculating-whether V, which has been “rotten” for a long time, finally wants to create a schedule for “rectifying the behavior of cross-regional wool harvesting”, the big thing really came.
Yesterday afternoon, V agency announced the latest “regional pricing recommendations”. The suggested pricing of all regions has increased to varying degrees, while Turkey and Argentina, which are the “spiritual homeland” of domestic players, have increased their prices by a terrifying 450%+ .
Country is 21%
Everything seems to be showing – the iron fist of sanctions has been heavily smashed.
battle of wits
For G Fatty, who has been a connoisseur of multinational games for many years, how to deal with players illegally crossing regions has always been a headache.
First of all, this thing in the low-price area must not be disturbed.
After all, even if V Club is no longer a human being, it is really unreasonable for poor guys to pay for the original price of 60 3A.
Due to the vastly different income levels and spending power in different parts of the world, it is obviously unrealistic to force a group of third world brothers and sisters to be equal to all living beings in developed countries in Europe and the United States.
Therefore, in order to let the poor third world people have direct access to the sugar-coated cannonballs of developed countries at a low price, it is the best choice to set up a low-price area to cultivate consumption habits.
In fact, China is also a low-cost area
After long-term practice, Steam has proved that “the low price area is a feasible and fully profitable strategy”. It can not only drive a substantial increase in game sales, but also bring indelible achievements for game manufacturers to implement localization.
With the strategy of “small profits but quick turnover” in the low-price area, G Fat has successfully opened up the hell-level copy of Russia in the game industry, allowing Steam to survive in this “Matrix”, and established a mature genuine market, enabling the Russian game market to be able to Form a complete localization ecosystem.
This plot was later staged again in mainland China, which is also a big pirate. Manufacturers such as R Star brought a group of heavyweight works headed by a well-known game, and gradually knocked on the door of the domestic genuine game market at the friendly price of 180 soft sister coins.
On the other hand, directly arresting illegally entered accounts and “decapitation” does not apply here.
The original intention of the platform to set up a low-price zone is to use the low-price strategy to make a lot of money, and naturally it needs to win over a large number of users to increase profits. If the platform takes the arrogant attitude of “I am your father” to educate users, it will inevitably be boycotted by players, which will eventually lead to the loss of users. And this is obviously not the scene that the uncles who want to make money want.
Therefore, the vast majority of platforms are still “appeasement policies” for these “criminal” criminals.
Taking Steam as an example, V’s behavior of players’ cross-regional wool harvesting is often controlled by the Buddhist system. Except for the extraordinary behavior of black card krypton gold, which will be killed without pardon, the most severe punishment is only to be sentenced to exile-deportation of users. return home.
And Sony, which is not soft on wool, in order to let users stay in their respective countries honestly, it only divides regions according to language, so that speculators who want to make money in Brazil can only look at foreign codes.
But for players, the price advantage brought by stepping into the low-level area is obvious, and with the acquiescence of the platform, players will naturally choose to increase their efforts.
However, the players are happy, but the game makers are uncomfortable.
Compared with platforms, game manufacturers are very powerless in the face of illegal cross-regional behavior.
Industry giants such as Ubisoft and EA with their own sites may not care too much about V’s “rotten” attitude, but small and medium-sized manufacturers lacking publicity channels dare not be angry. In other words, I had to follow Steam’s suggestion to increase the price of games in the low-priced area to curb the increasingly serious Internet smuggling, but it was actually useless.
Gunfire Reborn DLC announces price increase
This state of being the seed of grievances with tears only got better until a “big grievance seed” appeared.
In 2020, Sony brought “Horizon: Zero Dawn” to the PC platform, trying to open up a new battlefield in the host war. Just when Sony just entered the fantasy time of drawing a beautiful blueprint for the console world, it found that “Horizon: Zero Dawn”, which was in the pre-sale stage, was smashed by players in a way that crossed the low-priced area.
Sony, who has been in the self-built ecology for many years, may have never dreamed that it would be a big wave of “freedom” of local residents when it first appeared on STEAM. As a result, the enraged Sony immediately launched a “reverse discount” for players, increasing the pre-order prices in many low-priced areas in turn.
The Argentine area has risen from 539 pesos to 2,100 pesos, a 400% increase, and the national area has raised the price twice, from 138 to 279 yuan.
Sure enough, Sony’s sudden price increase was denounced by a large number of players, but Sony, which “has committed a serious crime and made people complain about it”, has become a good big brother to help the weak and small in the eyes of countless small and medium-sized manufacturers. After taking the lead in the charge of the industry giants, some game developers have also made demands on Steam that have been in their hearts for many years:
“V Club, don’t mess around!”
Among them, due to the high quality of the game, the independent game “Dispute Terminator: Abandoned Children”, which has been repeatedly promoted and still cannot escape its fate, even bluntly pointed out that Valve should “strictly monitor its own network service loopholes”. .
In the face of the joint pressure of many developers, Valve is also embarrassed to continue to rot on the bright side. He put away the attitude of letting players go, updated the user’s policy of changing districts, and strictly restricted cross-regional behavior. However, the actual punishment for large-scale cross-regional users who have violated the rules has not been followed.
Argentina is crying
Let’s turn our attention to yesterday’s “big news”.
October 25 was a very dark day for players in Argentina and Turkey. The increase of up to 450%+ means that most AAA games here have become “electronic luxury goods” that only rich brothers can enjoy. As one Twitter user said, “the third world is crying now”.
Faced with such a situation, some angry aborigines will directly target those “electronic citizens” who have come from nowhere.
It is true that the behavior of a small number of players going to the low-priced area to scramble for wool does hinder the uncles from making money to a certain extent, and indirectly promotes the price increase of some games. But it is an exaggeration to say that this situation has damaged the core interests of game developers and Steam, resulting in a collective price increase in the Steam store.
You know, the pricing decisions for games on the Steam platform are in the hands of the publishers. V Society will only provide a suggested selling price for publishers based on the purchasing power, consumption level, and real-time exchange rate of local players collected by Steam. Whether or not the developer adheres to the suggested price is entirely a matter of personal preference.
For example, it is not uncommon for games such as “Elden’s Circle” and “Resident Evil 4re” to be priced higher than the suggested price due to the high development cost.
In the same way, it is also up to the publisher to decide whether the game will increase in price. For example, the price increase of “Nier: Automata” in the previous two years is a typical event of SE temporary price increase.
At present, in the eyes of developers, the suggested selling price of Steam is only a barometer reflecting the changes in the game market. As for whether to increase the price, manufacturers still need to consider their own factors such as development costs and product profits.
So the question is, who is the mastermind behind this game’s price increase?
In yesterday’s official Steam announcement, Valve clarified the core reason for changing prices – as purchasing power and foreign exchange rates continue to change, they need to make significant changes to these conversion recommendations to keep up with the latest situation. To put it simply, it is the exchange rate change that caused Valve to have to change the suggested selling price on a large scale.
What do you think, this is all the pot of the beautiful country!
In the past six months, the Federal Reserve’s multiple rounds of interest rate hikes have caused the dollar to rise in the foreign exchange market, causing huge losses to gamers, developers and publishers around the world.
In fact, as early as February of this year, some Turkish players were already complaining that they had to pay more labor to buy “Ayrdon Ring” because of Bandai’s sudden price increase. In August, the fall in the exchange rate of the Turkish lira against the U.S. dollar caused the price of the old man’s ring to skyrocket again, completely defeating the psychological defense of Turkish “locals”.
Similarly, some time ago, Argentina, the designated victim of the appreciation of the US dollar, chose to increase tariffs and expand the scope of collection in order to combat the increasingly serious domestic hyperinflation and the Fed’s interest rate hike. Unfortunately, video games from overseas are subject to a super high tax rate of 75%, which undoubtedly makes Argentine gamers the cannon fodder for the economic confrontation between countries.
Countless Argentine players have called on manufacturers not to raise prices in the gaming community, but the reality is cruel. Although the Argentine people who are now in hell are worthy of sympathy, there is really no way for game manufacturers to reduce the price of games because of their voices.
Because selling games in Argentina and Turkey, you will starve to death if you don’t increase the price.
In today’s highly globalized market, the U.S. dollar is the dominant international currency. For enterprises involved in cooperation between multinational companies and material procurement and product sales, the final settlement currency is US dollars.
And this is more vividly reflected in the game industry, which is highly dependent on international cooperation. For example, a game company registered in Europe, with its studio set up in Canada, hired a Chinese company to do outsourced animation, and then paid for American voice actors to do the dubbing. In the end, the game was sold for a lot of money. Possibly still in dollars.
Although both manufacturers and platforms use the US dollar as the settlement currency, game sales still need to rely on the local currency system, and the money received from players is local currency. In the context of the appreciation of the US dollar, the local currencies of many small countries are inevitably gradually approaching its material value – waste paper and metal powder.
For their own survival, manufacturers and platforms can only grab the rope called “price increase” and climb out of this bottomless quagmire.
From the perspective of the global economy, this tsunami that has swept the game circle and decided the life and death of Argentina, Turkey and other low-cost areas may just be a wave in the red wine glasses in the hands of Wall Street gentlemen.
at last
Admittedly, Valve’s measures to “keep up with the pace of economic change over time” have made the future of the low-price zone confusing. But it is foreseeable that after this incident, it will undoubtedly be more difficult for domestic players to spend a little money to buy their favorite games in the future.
For the Argentine and Turkish players who are now in dire straits, it seems that they can only pray that more warm manufacturers will emerge.
An indie game developer promised not to raise prices, saying: “Indie games should work in difficult times.”