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Rip Off Alert! International Game Pricing Sucks

Rip Off Alert! International Game Pricing Sucks

How would you like to buy Call of Duty: Black Ops III for $80? A Lego Dimensions starter kit for $110? Etrian Odyssey 2 Untold (a 3DS game , for crying out loud!) for $65? That’s exactly the pricing that’s going on here in Canada right now, with GameStop leading the way in price gouging and other major retailers following.  It’s all because our dollar has taken a dip in value versus the US dollar, but does that make it fair?  I’m going to argue that not only is international game pricing frequently unfair, it’s bad for the game industry because lowers sales and increases piracy.

Let’s look at Halo 5: Guardians .  You can pre-order it from GameStop for the usual $60 in the United States, but it costs $75 in Canada and a whopping $100 in Australia.  We Canadians might be getting the price shaft for the first time since 2007 or so, but our poor Aussie friends are consistently given the middle finger by game publishers and retailers. Why? The excuse is because Australia is far away, but the real reason is simply because they’ve been getting away with this outrageous pricing forever.  Pricing can also be bad in Europe, where some publishers just price games at the same number in dollars and Euros, even though that makes the games nearly twice as expensive in Euros – and don’t even get me started on Mexico and much of South America, where games are priced well beyond what most people can afford to pay in the local currency.

The big reason I can state that international game pricing is unfair is because price excuses are not applied fairly around the world.  If shipping is the main reason for outrageous Australian game prices, then why doesn’t shipping seem to be considered in game pricing for other countries?  If we can get $13-$15 amiibo shipped in their bulky packaging to North America from Japan, there’s no real shipping-related excuse for Aussies to be paying $40-$50 more for a console game in a teensy tiny package.  Currency flucations are a lame excuse, too. Did Japanese games skyrocket in price for Americans a few years ago when the Yen was super-high compared to the dollar?  Nope! Japanese companies just ate the loss.  So why do Canadian game prices go up every time our dollar even thinks about dropping below US dollar parity?

It’s not about better purchasing power in countries with higher minimum wages, either. Actual data shows that reasoning is bunk. The real reason that international gamers get screwed on pricing is simply because our markets are smaller than the US markets, and companies believe they can get away with it.  But do they, really?  They sure as heck try – most video game publishers won’t let people ship games to Canada if they buy them on Amazon.com, because they know that sometimes the price is lower there even with currency conversion and shipping costs.  They prefer to set Canadian prices high and keep them high long after games are selling for $20-$30 in the USA.

Rip Off Alert! International Game Pricing Sucks

Even with all that effort, though, gamers find ways to keep their hobby affordable.  We get around price-based region locking any way we can, whether it be by physically crossing a nearby border, buying a US console and spoofing our IP address, or getting friends in other countries to buy and ship games to us.  We cut down on game purchases or wait longer to buy new games, which means that only the huge must-have releases are profiting from price hikes.  And, of course, some of us pirate.

The game industry hates talking about its own policies could possibly contribute to piracy, and I personally think that “it costs too much” is a terrible excuse for theft.  My own morality has little to do with social and economic trends, however, and setting prices in a way that feels unfair to consumers is a great way to inspire them to pirate. Set prices fairly and treat international gamers with respect, and you might just start making better inroads against piracy than you will by price hikes, region locks, and invasive DRM.

What can we do about unfair international game pricing?  I’m not going to encourage piracy, but I am going to encourage international gamers to support publishers who attempt to offer fair prices to international consumers, consoles that don’t use region locking to keep us from finding more affordable games, and retailers who try to keep prices reasonable even when our currency swings around a bit.  If we give in to ridiculous high prices, companies will just keep shafting us.  It’s time to change our buying habits and fight back.

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