Re:Pirate our games, don't buy them from key resellers, say ...
by asdff on Tuesday July 09, 2019 @03:11PM
(#20395482)
It's a pretty clumsy system because it's putting a physical constraint on a digital product that's otherwise possible to get everywhere on earth, provided some asshole in a boardroom doesn't throw a fit (which is evidently what happened when region locking games became common). It's a physical constraint that doesn't even work as intended, in fact it probably harms the brand and the product more than anything.
Not everyone in Thailand is broke. There might be a lot more broke people in Thailand than in the U.S., and on average the sprawling land area of Thailand has less wealth than the land area of the U.S., but I bet there are a lot of people in the U.S. who, like their Thai working class counterparts, also can't afford a $60 game. Now the working class of Thailand gets a game that's right in their price bracket while the working class of the U.S. does not.
Averaging an entire countries wealth to set a price worked pretty nice for the people of Thailand in this example, but obviously burnt the poor in the U.S. pretty bad. If your goal is to get your game into the hands of the most customers, consider offering 'regional' pricing for all the homeless in central park who might live within a couple dozen feet of the most expensive apartments in the world. It turns out regional pricing kinda sucks because wealth isn't distributed evenly across any region.
The economy is global, not regional, there are rich and poor people everywhere in differing and ever changing proportions independent of how borders might be drawn on the map. If you want to make it affordable to an economic bracket, go ahead and lower your price or offer low income credit or something, don't make it so you can't buy your digital game while connected to the internet in an arbitrary country.
Not everyone in Thailand is broke. There might be a lot more broke people in Thailand than in the U.S., and on average the sprawling land area of Thailand has less wealth than the land area of the U.S., but I bet there are a lot of people in the U.S. who, like their Thai working class counterparts, also can't afford a $60 game. Now the working class of Thailand gets a game that's right in their price bracket while the working class of the U.S. does not.
Averaging an entire countries wealth to set a price worked pretty nice for the people of Thailand in this example, but obviously burnt the poor in the U.S. pretty bad. If your goal is to get your game into the hands of the most customers, consider offering 'regional' pricing for all the homeless in central park who might live within a couple dozen feet of the most expensive apartments in the world. It turns out regional pricing kinda sucks because wealth isn't distributed evenly across any region.
The economy is global, not regional, there are rich and poor people everywhere in differing and ever changing proportions independent of how borders might be drawn on the map. If you want to make it affordable to an economic bracket, go ahead and lower your price or offer low income credit or something, don't make it so you can't buy your digital game while connected to the internet in an arbitrary country.