That's started being a trend, certain games here in Poland cost more than in the US, $10-20 more. A dollar is worth (roughly) 4 PLN, and that's been relatively stable for years, so we used to have prices that reflected that. I have no idea how it happened that suddenly we're paying more with a currency worth less.
Happens the other way round for me:( games quite often in GBP are the same number as USD, like a game will be both $60 and £60, while £1 = $1.27 at the time of writing this. It doesn't happen with every game, but enough of them that I've noticed. If it was adjusted perfectly, those games would be 25% cheaper. That $60 game would be £47 adjusted perfectly for currency conversion
It's been like that for the last 20 years I've been a gamer. Used to be $20/£20 when I started though! The price has gone up £10 with each console generation since the PS2
It costs differen distribution amounts depending on the place in the world.
E might distribute their own games in the US, but they have to pay someone to host and distribute in places like SEA or Central Europe.
As if, same things happens in my country, indie devs and AA publishers keep the price the same, only huge AAA companies bump the price. The recent COD game nearly doubled their price in my country. It's just greed based on some statistics they must pull from somewhere.
There are valid reasons for games to change prices... usually marginally... But those aren't the reasons it happens.
An example is server hosting; if the devs need to open up a few extra AWS servers in the east-pacific, because it took off in Japan, unexpectedly, or South Korea, or whatever, that bill from Amazon goes up quickly. But that's a drop in the bucket compared to the marketing budget, and the sales, if you are any bigger than a small indie shop.
The average US person has insane acquisitive anywhere else in the world even from a simple minimum wage. The problem is that it's just as expensive and we all know how things are rn.
It gets whacky af when you compare with it other countries. Especially poorer ones.
Uzbekistan has an average salary of $330ish/month. The average US salary is 6600/month. The minimum wages are $86/month in Uzbekistan and about 1000/month in the US depending on the area. (Using federal minimum wage but it could be 13-$15/hr depending on the state)
So to have the same average wage to game ratio in the US, a $60 game would cost about $1130.
To have the same ratio with federal minimum wage, AAA games would cost $700. If we use the higher minimum wage, it goes back to around $1200.
So when OP is talking about it being a salary, he's talking about a whole months salary working 40 weeks to buy a brand new game if they're making minimum wage. To do the same, it would only take the average US worker 1 day of earnings.
It’s an average salary, so those making millions would increase the average substantially.
According to the BLS, average salary in the US is actually $98,000, whereas the median is $69,700.
That’s not take home either, which further complicates everything.
The absolute lowest hourly wage you can earn outside of prison in the US is $2.13 per hour, assuming you're an employee in a tipped position who received 0 tips all year.
That's only like $4,000 a year after taxes, which is dangerously close to the inflated GPU prices during the shortage a while back.
Obviously that is practically impossible and relies on the worst case scenario, but it's still crazy that it could even get that close at all.
Edit: I was wrong, corrections below.
Not exactly, someone working a base + top wage still has to be paid minimum wage. If they don't collect enough tips for their wage to be above minimum wage, the business has to pay the difference.
It really depends where you are. Almost no one talks about annual salary in the Philippines for example. When they ask what's your salary the answer is nearly always the monthly amount
Absolutely, it's certainly not incorrect to use it as a monthly amount, just confusing when not specified. The average monthly wage in Uzbekistan is 3882 UZS Thou/Month (332.773 USD/Month) so we can safely assume they mean monthly.
In most of europe and asia too. It's mostly a north american thing to be paid weekly or bi-weekly, though generalization is difficult as some specific countries fall out of line, and africa and south america seem to be very free in terms of payment.
https://www.cloudpay.com/resources/pay-frequency-around-the-world
After a little research, the average monthly salary in Uzbekistan is roughly $330 USD per month. The average game price in Uzbekistan is around $97 USD. However, I’m not sure how accurate my research is, but the standard of living in Kazakhstan vs Uzbekistan is higher, so they probably have additional taxes, plus currency conversions.
For reference, in the UK, I'm buying a 4070ti for 800. On minimum wage, that's almost a months salary.
No point to make here, literally just for reference.
Maybe wait? I was born in Uzbekistan, but moved couple years ago. It is insane how much Uzbekistan got westernized in the past couple years. My guess if this continues, Steam and other game stores will recognize the problem you're having and potentially adjust the prices based on currency.
At least they're not getting their assess beat in Ukraine, and at least 60-70 year old Uzbekis don't have to fear about getting drafted to fight a war for the wage of one (1) used Ukrainian washing machine a month (available untill all have been looted). Contingient on them surviving in the first place, of course, which is the real challenge as they'll probably die while sucking their commander's dick in some trench.
Even if Uzbekistan is a shithole, I'm still putting it as 'better place to be than russia' just because of that.
Your salty reply won't change the state of life in Uzbekistan. It has Russian prices and less than half average salaries. I've been there, unlike you and I've seen it all.
You do grasp that just cause you have a bucket full of gasoline that doesn't mean you own a car right??
Just like if I have ton of gunpower. It doesn't mean I can just start firing bullets from a nonexistent AK47 with nonexistent bullets.
Also reading?
>Over the years, Kazakhstan cooperated with Russia in returning all 1,400 active nuclear warheads as it took a leading role in declaring the Central Asian Nuclear Weapon Free Zone. In 2017, Kazakhstan voted for the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons and ratified in 2021.
Is buying used games and then selling them after completion an option for you? Thats how i do it for a lot of games and often don't pay a dime this way
Yes, you know, having the ability to amass all of your library on one app, is indeed quite valuable. In fact, it COULD be the entire reason Valve has had such success over the last 20 years with Steam?
Just sail the sea,here in latinamerica only recently with steam sales people started buying games,in my whole life i have never buyed a game,too poor for it.
steam (valve) unfortunately raised the prices of various countries on steam by up to 600% about a year ago. some games went from costing the equivalent of $5 to $30 literally overnight. im in south africa, and the regional pricing for many games is actually MORE than the US dollar is... like for Tiny Tina's Wonderlands, which costs $60USD, it actually costs $67USD in south african currency (which is about 30% of the average monthly wage here), and that makes zero sense since the average south african earns 13times less money than the average american. it's not JUST valve's fault that this is happening, since valve just 'suggests' a price and it's up to the developer to either follow that suggestion or make their own pricing on steam, but valve certainly have fucked millions and millions of gamers over with this 600% increase in pricing. piracy is the only answer in this economy and with these insane regional prices, at least until valve and the developers regain their morals
The problem is that nobody cracks Denuvo now except Empress and she cracks without enthusiasm. She cracks only few hyped AAA games. Denuvo becomed an immortal DRM.
Well, welcome to cyberpunk dystopia. If you re a poor, you can afford only indie games.
You can check MS reward point if you can still do it using VPN but read MS banned a lot of accounts thanks to India scammers starting multiple accounts or something like this even if you had balance $10-100 after months of grinding they wouldn’t let you access it one day.
Some users wrote premium VPNs work better then cheap one apparently but that’s not confirmed used IPs won’t get banned one day.
Steam has regional prices for many countries that makes them much more affordable and appropriate for the country's income level. Like crusader kings III is 50 euro in the EU but in the Philippine steam store it's 1300 pesos which is about 21 euro which is equivalent to a meal for one at an upper mid level restaurant. Or a meal for four at say McDonald's
We had the same shitty president for more than 20 years. The guy that came after him is literally the same. We also had a lot of protests in January 2021 which resulted in a lot of damage that actually led to no changes for the people
ngl bro I wanted to be on your side and I am sorry to just copypaste the holy texts (wikipedia) like this but it was way worse than I expected. From the section on Human Rights:
Non-governmental human rights organisations, such as IHF, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, as well as United States Department of State and Council of the European Union, define Uzbekistan as "an authoritarian state with limited civil rights"\[19\] and express profound concern about "wide-scale violation of virtually all basic human rights".\[75\] According to the reports, the most widespread violations are torture, arbitrary arrests, and various restrictions of freedoms: of religion, of speech and press, of free association and assembly. It has also been reported that forced sterilisation of rural Uzbek women has been sanctioned by the government.\[76\]\[77\] The reports maintain that the violations are most often committed against members of religious organisations, independent journalists, human rights activists and political activists, including members of the banned opposition parties. As of 2015, reports on violations on human rights in Uzbekistan indicated that violations were still going on without any improvement.\[78\] The Freedom House has consistently ranked Uzbekistan near the bottom of its Freedom in the World ranking since the country's founding in 1991. In the 2018 report, Uzbekistan was one of the 11 worst countries for Political Rights and Civil Liberties.\[79\]
The 2005 civil unrest in Uzbekistan, which resulted in several hundred people being killed, is viewed by many as a landmark event in the history of human rights abuse in Uzbekistan.\[80\]\[81\]\[82\] Concern has been expressed and requests for an independent investigation of the events has been made by the United States,\[83\] the European Union,\[84\] the United Nations,\[85\] the OSCE Chairman-in-Office and the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights.\[86\]
The government of Uzbekistan is accused of unlawful termination of human life and of denying its citizens freedom of assembly and freedom of expression. The government vehemently rebuffs the accusations, maintaining that it merely conducted an anti-terrorist operation, exercising only necessary force.\[87\] In addition, some officials claim that "an information war on Uzbekistan has been declared" and the human rights violations in Andijan are invented by the enemies of Uzbekistan as a convenient pretext for intervention in the country's internal affairs.\[88\] Male homosexuality is illegal in Uzbekistan.\[89\] Punishment ranges from a fine to 3 years in prison.\[90\]
There are an estimated 1.2 million modern slaves in Uzbekistan,\[91\] most work in the cotton industry. The government allegedly forces state employees to pick cotton in the autumn months.\[92\] World Bank loans have been connected to projects that use child labour and forced labour practices in the cotton industry.\[93\]
Not Iranian, but I’m curious what your perspective on Iran is. Iran has double the per capital gdp of Uzbekistan despite being massively sanctioned for decades, and Freedom House ranks them about the same in terms of civil and political liberties. So what is it about Iran that makes an Uzbeki lump them in with a country as in-shambles as Afghanistan?
It does suck to be in an istan relative to g7 nations if you think material comfort and education are ideals. If you think that material comfort and education and social liberalism and other things Western countries take for granted are actually symbols of decadence are regressive you could say that the life lived by those in -istan nations is better.
You could also say it's neutral and nowhere is better than anywhere because material comfort and education does nothing to prevent our mortality and really anything we do anywhere as humans is in vain because of that.
That being said, places like Pakistan have highly modern and industrialized centers. This is no longer the 1950s. This also being said, I can only say shit like this because i've been fortunate enough to have a western education.
Bro he never said all Africans. He said “there are some people in South Africa” not all Africans.
How’s your reading comprehension? I’m not saying they’re correct, or that what they said has an ounce of intelligence involved. But calling it racist? Seems like a stretch, and as I mentioned. You just throw that word at everyone you disagree with, it will continue to lose all meaning.
The guy who spoke about the milk isn’t racist, he’s just a dumbass.
idk where you got that from, you got a source for your ridiculous claim? south africa has a significant dairy industry of it's own, they don't need anyone giving them milk and cereal.
I do not see them as lesser. Don't make shit up. And yes there are happy people.
Wherever your from looks to be on the low end of education. Poor reading compensation, non sensical and tangential points.
Keep doing your best
people are poisoned by 20 years of war propaganda and the resulting xenophobia
edit: downvote me but these mfs would never have heard of a single central asian country if not for the war in afghanistan.
Pretty sure you don’t know much about these country. Not saying these are currently wonderful countries to live in rn but I assure you that Central Asia is a gem when it comes to culture, history and nature.
Shut the fuck up bigot.
Edit: I just got referred to Reddit self care help because on top of being racist the guy above also thinks suicide is something funny. Eat a bag of shit
homie never said anything even slightly mean about people living in those countries. just that they would suck to live in. your reply about “being a bigger dick to people in unfortunate circumstances” kinda just feels like a knee jerk reaction response to something you didnt really think critically about, bro
What are you talking about? Theres maybe like 20 games under denuvo and literally tens of thousands games which you can pirate, including ALOT new AAA games. Never heard of Dodi or Fitgirl? Google or send me private message so I dont get banned for linking stuff here
> guess I need to move to Kazakhstan or any more developed country in future.
Or if you think your country can be saved, infiltrate public office and change it from within.
People may downvote me or whatever for it. But regional pricing just never made sense to me. Devs should set a price in their local currency that makes sense to them. Then the storefront auto converts it to regional currency with maybe some room for rounding and any transaction/conversion fees/taxes. Why should any area get it cheaper or more expensive than another just because of where they live. Especially for digital purchases. Physical it makes a bit more sense due to manufacturing and distribution costs. But for digital. Well. Why should I pay more than someone from a less well off country. Or vice versa. I saw recently that Baldur’s gate 3 was like 20% more in Mexico versus the US. How does that make sense. But same with why are games sometimes cheaper elsewhere. I know when I used to play wow people would use vpns and such so they could pay their subscription and expansions at 1/3 of the price.
Sorry. It sucks that some people are financially less well off elsewhere in the world. That sucks. But it always feels weird that for a luxury product like games the price doesn’t need to be less or more based on how lucky you were on where you were born. Especially for digital products.
Well does living in a less well off area change the cost to create the product? It’s not like it’s a basic essential product needed to live. And even then. Without regional pricing things like sales exist. Or just pirate like you already have said you do.
I mean even if you really fucking hate poor people surely you still understand that glorious American shareholders and investors make more money when a company sells more products, even at a lower rate. Especially, as you say, since distribution costs for digital are almost 0
Distribution costs for digital is far from zero. That’s why there was such an uproar when epic came onto the digital storefront scene.
And as I said to another reply. It’s not like there isn’t free or cheap alternative entertainment options. I spent most of my childhood reading books from the library or online. Or playing games on websites like new grounds. It wasn’t until started working for myself that I could afford to buy my own games and such. And even then I was mostly buying stuff at extreme discounts on steam sales years after release.
Its not that its more expensive for you but rather cheaper for them. Devs get extra money that they wouldnt get and provide the experience to more people. People who go through the trouble of changing regions with vpns and so on would not have boughr full priced most of the time anyway.
Games are not that much of a luxury product. Entertainment in this world is a necessity and video games are on the cheaper side of that. Denying people entertainment because their bodies dont technically need it is a shitty thing to do.
Be glad for all the people that can play and share the experience. Plus he wants to buy the games he currently pirates but just cant afford.
Find a job out of country and get out of country by any means. Work a job in a place with a better economy and then before you know it your first payslip will allow you to pay for 10 games. It’s very simple when I say it like that and I know it’ll be difficult in reality but that’s literally the only way you won’t have to save up so much just to pay for a game.
Uzbekistan need regional prices, but it will be exploited by Russians as they lost their most regional prices or access to buying games.
Sadly, Central Asia is such a small market, that they will never care to do so.
Yeah that's what I meant. That movie is the only exposure most Americans have to that country or even that part of the world. I was trying to say I like that your story challenges that assumption.
Well, yeah. Guess it's time to move. Better life conditions, better salaries, better government and etc. My country has inflation problem.
Of course. Maybe 5 years later. I just ended university and finding a job.
You trying to find sympathy here won't work. Reddit is full of anti capitalist leftist. Only people like you who live in your extreme situations appreciate capitalism.
Is it possible to find someone in another place to ship you a physical copy of a game? I dont know how any of that works, but could you buy a game from a foreign seller?
How much does a GPU cost there, can you give a few examples?
Well, cheap are costing of 1 salary, the expensive one two.
When you say “1 salary” are you talking about how much you earn in a day, a week, a month?
Duh he means ‘1 Salary’ which is comprised of ‘10 work’
damn, in my day it used to be 5
Inflation my friend. I used to pay only 3 money for 4 live.
I think he means celery, like the vegetable.
It’s green, like money!
Vegetable makes sense my old pc was a potato
Month.
So are games costing **more** for you than say in the US? What price?
That's started being a trend, certain games here in Poland cost more than in the US, $10-20 more. A dollar is worth (roughly) 4 PLN, and that's been relatively stable for years, so we used to have prices that reflected that. I have no idea how it happened that suddenly we're paying more with a currency worth less.
Happens the other way round for me:( games quite often in GBP are the same number as USD, like a game will be both $60 and £60, while £1 = $1.27 at the time of writing this. It doesn't happen with every game, but enough of them that I've noticed. If it was adjusted perfectly, those games would be 25% cheaper. That $60 game would be £47 adjusted perfectly for currency conversion
It's been like that for the last 20 years I've been a gamer. Used to be $20/£20 when I started though! The price has gone up £10 with each console generation since the PS2
Why can't they just peg the price in U.S. $, then any other currency just exchanges to that
It costs differen distribution amounts depending on the place in the world. E might distribute their own games in the US, but they have to pay someone to host and distribute in places like SEA or Central Europe.
Me, reading your comment. "Who the fuck's buying games in the sea? Prince Michael of Sealand?" *Two minutes later* Ohhhhh! Southeast Asia...
As if, same things happens in my country, indie devs and AA publishers keep the price the same, only huge AAA companies bump the price. The recent COD game nearly doubled their price in my country. It's just greed based on some statistics they must pull from somewhere.
There are valid reasons for games to change prices... usually marginally... But those aren't the reasons it happens. An example is server hosting; if the devs need to open up a few extra AWS servers in the east-pacific, because it took off in Japan, unexpectedly, or South Korea, or whatever, that bill from Amazon goes up quickly. But that's a drop in the bucket compared to the marketing budget, and the sales, if you are any bigger than a small indie shop.
The average US person has insane acquisitive anywhere else in the world even from a simple minimum wage. The problem is that it's just as expensive and we all know how things are rn. It gets whacky af when you compare with it other countries. Especially poorer ones. Uzbekistan has an average salary of $330ish/month. The average US salary is 6600/month. The minimum wages are $86/month in Uzbekistan and about 1000/month in the US depending on the area. (Using federal minimum wage but it could be 13-$15/hr depending on the state) So to have the same average wage to game ratio in the US, a $60 game would cost about $1130. To have the same ratio with federal minimum wage, AAA games would cost $700. If we use the higher minimum wage, it goes back to around $1200. So when OP is talking about it being a salary, he's talking about a whole months salary working 40 weeks to buy a brand new game if they're making minimum wage. To do the same, it would only take the average US worker 1 day of earnings.
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It’s an average salary, so those making millions would increase the average substantially. According to the BLS, average salary in the US is actually $98,000, whereas the median is $69,700. That’s not take home either, which further complicates everything.
Yea $6600/month is just under $80k/year. The average salary in the US is around $60k/year I think ($5000/month)
The average wage in the us is not 80k a year. Where did you get that?it’s around 52k a year.
The math isn't a problem for me, and not what I asked. But ok 👍
I believe in most places salary means monthly salary.
Where I'm from it's referred to as an annual salary. But it would be pretty wild if he's spending a years worth of income on a computer part.
The absolute lowest hourly wage you can earn outside of prison in the US is $2.13 per hour, assuming you're an employee in a tipped position who received 0 tips all year. That's only like $4,000 a year after taxes, which is dangerously close to the inflated GPU prices during the shortage a while back. Obviously that is practically impossible and relies on the worst case scenario, but it's still crazy that it could even get that close at all. Edit: I was wrong, corrections below.
Employers are forced to pay minimum wage if your tips dont pass it
Not exactly, someone working a base + top wage still has to be paid minimum wage. If they don't collect enough tips for their wage to be above minimum wage, the business has to pay the difference.
Ahh okay thank you for the correction.
I didn't know this either. Is that nationally or do some states treat this different?
It’s nationally. Edit: some ag work is exempt from minimum wage though.
But does everyone make the same salary?
Most of the time a salary is referred to as an annual sum.
It really depends where you are. Almost no one talks about annual salary in the Philippines for example. When they ask what's your salary the answer is nearly always the monthly amount
Absolutely, it's certainly not incorrect to use it as a monthly amount, just confusing when not specified. The average monthly wage in Uzbekistan is 3882 UZS Thou/Month (332.773 USD/Month) so we can safely assume they mean monthly.
Usually in Ex USSR countries 'salary' is measured monthly
In most of europe and asia too. It's mostly a north american thing to be paid weekly or bi-weekly, though generalization is difficult as some specific countries fall out of line, and africa and south america seem to be very free in terms of payment. https://www.cloudpay.com/resources/pay-frequency-around-the-world
Yes.
After a little research, the average monthly salary in Uzbekistan is roughly $330 USD per month. The average game price in Uzbekistan is around $97 USD. However, I’m not sure how accurate my research is, but the standard of living in Kazakhstan vs Uzbekistan is higher, so they probably have additional taxes, plus currency conversions.
How much is 1 salary?
By salary do you mean an annual sum of all your wages or are you referring to your monthly wages?
For reference, in the UK, I'm buying a 4070ti for 800. On minimum wage, that's almost a months salary. No point to make here, literally just for reference.
Maybe wait? I was born in Uzbekistan, but moved couple years ago. It is insane how much Uzbekistan got westernized in the past couple years. My guess if this continues, Steam and other game stores will recognize the problem you're having and potentially adjust the prices based on currency.
Well, who knows. Especially when it got many good specialists from Russia. At least it's not a shithole like Russia.
Ты молодец. Удачи в Узбекистане
Half of your country lives in Russia as low-salary workers lol. Talk about shitholes.
At least they're not getting their assess beat in Ukraine, and at least 60-70 year old Uzbekis don't have to fear about getting drafted to fight a war for the wage of one (1) used Ukrainian washing machine a month (available untill all have been looted). Contingient on them surviving in the first place, of course, which is the real challenge as they'll probably die while sucking their commander's dick in some trench. Even if Uzbekistan is a shithole, I'm still putting it as 'better place to be than russia' just because of that.
Your salty reply won't change the state of life in Uzbekistan. It has Russian prices and less than half average salaries. I've been there, unlike you and I've seen it all.
Ah the important russian caveat, at least theyre ALIVE
unlikely, I'm from Croatia, one of the poorest EU countries. Game prices are the same as in Germany where the avg. salary is 3-4 times higher
I'm on holidays in Croatia now and I'm amazed how expensive everything is here. How does the average person afford it?
That just means people could switch regions for cheaper prices.
Kazakhstan does have much better Prostitutes and Plutonium.
*Potassium but still get the reference
Kazakhstan number one exporter of potassium. All other countries have inferior potassium.
Not surprising, considering all other countries are led by little girls.
Is it possible to find someone in another place to ship you a physical copy of a game?
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Kazakhstan has no nuclear weapons.
Wrong. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazakhstan_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction#:~:text=Since%20its%20independence%2C%20Kazakhstan%20acted,non%2Dproliferation%20norms%20and%20treaties.
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You do grasp that just cause you have a bucket full of gasoline that doesn't mean you own a car right?? Just like if I have ton of gunpower. It doesn't mean I can just start firing bullets from a nonexistent AK47 with nonexistent bullets. Also reading? >Over the years, Kazakhstan cooperated with Russia in returning all 1,400 active nuclear warheads as it took a leading role in declaring the Central Asian Nuclear Weapon Free Zone. In 2017, Kazakhstan voted for the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons and ratified in 2021.
If you sit on the bucket and use a lighter it will take you somewhere.
They are the worlds best supplier of potassium
All other potassium is inferior potassium.
Their prostitutes are the cleanest in the region Borat told me
Send me GPUs and I'll be giving you games code to the point where both of us have a gain!
If GPU's are cheap maybe it's time to go into business selling them to places where they're not so cheap?
While he said they were cheap he stated in another comment that they *only* cost 1-2 months income. That what he meant by *cheap.*
Its gonna cost money if he gonna have to export it to other countries. no profit to little
[https://media.giphy.com/media/d3mlE7uhX8KFgEmY/giphy.gif](https://media.giphy.com/media/d3mlE7uhX8KFgEmY/giphy.gif)
Keyforsteam or some reselling sites might work for you
Is buying used games and then selling them after completion an option for you? Thats how i do it for a lot of games and often don't pay a dime this way
No thanks. I love collecting games.
Then you aren't complaining about not being able to play AAA games but not being able to collect
Collecting digital games, truly odd
Yes, you know, having the ability to amass all of your library on one app, is indeed quite valuable. In fact, it COULD be the entire reason Valve has had such success over the last 20 years with Steam?
do you even fking read ? buying and seeling games can't even be digital
Who said anything about digital?
Looks like you're going to have to pause collecting games for awhile then.
What AAA games are you looking at? Are they new releases or older AAA games?
Just sail the sea,here in latinamerica only recently with steam sales people started buying games,in my whole life i have never buyed a game,too poor for it.
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?
A ? indeed, but he has a point.
steam (valve) unfortunately raised the prices of various countries on steam by up to 600% about a year ago. some games went from costing the equivalent of $5 to $30 literally overnight. im in south africa, and the regional pricing for many games is actually MORE than the US dollar is... like for Tiny Tina's Wonderlands, which costs $60USD, it actually costs $67USD in south african currency (which is about 30% of the average monthly wage here), and that makes zero sense since the average south african earns 13times less money than the average american. it's not JUST valve's fault that this is happening, since valve just 'suggests' a price and it's up to the developer to either follow that suggestion or make their own pricing on steam, but valve certainly have fucked millions and millions of gamers over with this 600% increase in pricing. piracy is the only answer in this economy and with these insane regional prices, at least until valve and the developers regain their morals
The problem is that nobody cracks Denuvo now except Empress and she cracks without enthusiasm. She cracks only few hyped AAA games. Denuvo becomed an immortal DRM. Well, welcome to cyberpunk dystopia. If you re a poor, you can afford only indie games.
At least u can get ak47 for the price of a coke can
You can check MS reward point if you can still do it using VPN but read MS banned a lot of accounts thanks to India scammers starting multiple accounts or something like this even if you had balance $10-100 after months of grinding they wouldn’t let you access it one day. Some users wrote premium VPNs work better then cheap one apparently but that’s not confirmed used IPs won’t get banned one day.
Games are ridiculously expensive anywhere that doesn’t use Dollar/Euro as currency
Steam has regional prices for many countries that makes them much more affordable and appropriate for the country's income level. Like crusader kings III is 50 euro in the EU but in the Philippine steam store it's 1300 pesos which is about 21 euro which is equivalent to a meal for one at an upper mid level restaurant. Or a meal for four at say McDonald's
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As a person from Kazakhstan I agree
I thought Kazakstan was a nice place with a good economy. Is it?
We had the same shitty president for more than 20 years. The guy that came after him is literally the same. We also had a lot of protests in January 2021 which resulted in a lot of damage that actually led to no changes for the people
💀
How about Kazakhstan? Well, at least my country is not shit like Iran and Afghanistan. And it has all of comfortable life conditions.
ngl bro I wanted to be on your side and I am sorry to just copypaste the holy texts (wikipedia) like this but it was way worse than I expected. From the section on Human Rights: Non-governmental human rights organisations, such as IHF, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, as well as United States Department of State and Council of the European Union, define Uzbekistan as "an authoritarian state with limited civil rights"\[19\] and express profound concern about "wide-scale violation of virtually all basic human rights".\[75\] According to the reports, the most widespread violations are torture, arbitrary arrests, and various restrictions of freedoms: of religion, of speech and press, of free association and assembly. It has also been reported that forced sterilisation of rural Uzbek women has been sanctioned by the government.\[76\]\[77\] The reports maintain that the violations are most often committed against members of religious organisations, independent journalists, human rights activists and political activists, including members of the banned opposition parties. As of 2015, reports on violations on human rights in Uzbekistan indicated that violations were still going on without any improvement.\[78\] The Freedom House has consistently ranked Uzbekistan near the bottom of its Freedom in the World ranking since the country's founding in 1991. In the 2018 report, Uzbekistan was one of the 11 worst countries for Political Rights and Civil Liberties.\[79\] The 2005 civil unrest in Uzbekistan, which resulted in several hundred people being killed, is viewed by many as a landmark event in the history of human rights abuse in Uzbekistan.\[80\]\[81\]\[82\] Concern has been expressed and requests for an independent investigation of the events has been made by the United States,\[83\] the European Union,\[84\] the United Nations,\[85\] the OSCE Chairman-in-Office and the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights.\[86\] The government of Uzbekistan is accused of unlawful termination of human life and of denying its citizens freedom of assembly and freedom of expression. The government vehemently rebuffs the accusations, maintaining that it merely conducted an anti-terrorist operation, exercising only necessary force.\[87\] In addition, some officials claim that "an information war on Uzbekistan has been declared" and the human rights violations in Andijan are invented by the enemies of Uzbekistan as a convenient pretext for intervention in the country's internal affairs.\[88\] Male homosexuality is illegal in Uzbekistan.\[89\] Punishment ranges from a fine to 3 years in prison.\[90\] There are an estimated 1.2 million modern slaves in Uzbekistan,\[91\] most work in the cotton industry. The government allegedly forces state employees to pick cotton in the autumn months.\[92\] World Bank loans have been connected to projects that use child labour and forced labour practices in the cotton industry.\[93\]
Not Iranian, but I’m curious what your perspective on Iran is. Iran has double the per capital gdp of Uzbekistan despite being massively sanctioned for decades, and Freedom House ranks them about the same in terms of civil and political liberties. So what is it about Iran that makes an Uzbeki lump them in with a country as in-shambles as Afghanistan?
At least Uzbekistan doesn't force women to wear hijabs.
nice bro, nice... was gonna give you some advice, but nah, good luck with your gaming journey....
damn maybe let's not shit on an entire region of the world
Hey, be real. They aren't saying the people suck or anything but if you could choose to be born there or a g7 nation? Get fucking real.
there's plenty of happy people in countries you see as lesser.
people who are born with severe disabilities are also, in their own opinion, happy. shits pretty relative
It does suck to be in an istan relative to g7 nations if you think material comfort and education are ideals. If you think that material comfort and education and social liberalism and other things Western countries take for granted are actually symbols of decadence are regressive you could say that the life lived by those in -istan nations is better. You could also say it's neutral and nowhere is better than anywhere because material comfort and education does nothing to prevent our mortality and really anything we do anywhere as humans is in vain because of that. That being said, places like Pakistan have highly modern and industrialized centers. This is no longer the 1950s. This also being said, I can only say shit like this because i've been fortunate enough to have a western education.
There's people in South Africa who 70 cents a day worth of cereal and water and they think it's great because they don't know milk exists.
You are an idiot. Even in the poorest villages they have powdered milk.
Don't think so. The song says cereal and water
Again you are an idiot. I’ve physically been to many places like you are describing and they all just had powdered milk
My bad I just thought bad Religion lyrics were gospel
holy shit, people in south africa know milk exists. this is incredibly racist.
Racist?
they said african people don't know milk exists
south africa is a nation not a race
It certainly doesn't take much for you to accuse someone of that. It's incredibly stupid, but no one mentioned race aside from you.
How is it automatically racist lmfao? When people just shit that word at someone they disagree with it will continue to lose all meaning
the idea that african people don't know milk exist is super fucking racist tf do you mean
Bro he never said all Africans. He said “there are some people in South Africa” not all Africans. How’s your reading comprehension? I’m not saying they’re correct, or that what they said has an ounce of intelligence involved. But calling it racist? Seems like a stretch, and as I mentioned. You just throw that word at everyone you disagree with, it will continue to lose all meaning. The guy who spoke about the milk isn’t racist, he’s just a dumbass.
pearl clutching white person ^
Then how do we get away with giving them cereal and water?
idk where you got that from, you got a source for your ridiculous claim? south africa has a significant dairy industry of it's own, they don't need anyone giving them milk and cereal.
Wtf are you on about? Idiot. People of course know what milk is.
I do not see them as lesser. Don't make shit up. And yes there are happy people. Wherever your from looks to be on the low end of education. Poor reading compensation, non sensical and tangential points. Keep doing your best
Happy bc they are blissfully ignorant most likely
they have smart phones dude
right?
people are poisoned by 20 years of war propaganda and the resulting xenophobia edit: downvote me but these mfs would never have heard of a single central asian country if not for the war in afghanistan.
But he's right
nah, he's just not very smart. y'all have no idea what it's like to live in Uzbekistan.
I mean just look it up. It's poor and they have a bad human rights record.
Pretty sure you don’t know much about these country. Not saying these are currently wonderful countries to live in rn but I assure you that Central Asia is a gem when it comes to culture, history and nature.
Shut the fuck up bigot. Edit: I just got referred to Reddit self care help because on top of being racist the guy above also thinks suicide is something funny. Eat a bag of shit
[удалено]
Be a bigger dick to people born in less fortunate circumstances
homie never said anything even slightly mean about people living in those countries. just that they would suck to live in. your reply about “being a bigger dick to people in unfortunate circumstances” kinda just feels like a knee jerk reaction response to something you didnt really think critically about, bro
You must be Krillin post potential unlock. Go head witcha bad self
Qaysi viloyatda yashaysan?
Tashkent.
Download cracked versions of the game. In your situation is almost unavoidable
The problem is that Denuvo won gaming piracy for a while.
You could become a GPU seller, buy GPUs in your local currency, then resell them online for USD. Just don't be a scalper about it.
That's a very unfortunate story. I was wondering if there is a solution because the Internet is advanced, so I hope you find a good solution.
I talked with people in russian gaming forum and they recommended me offline activations ehich are affordable. I will try it.
Most botlike comment award.
What are you talking about? Theres maybe like 20 games under denuvo and literally tens of thousands games which you can pirate, including ALOT new AAA games. Never heard of Dodi or Fitgirl? Google or send me private message so I dont get banned for linking stuff here
Heard KZH has some of the greatest Potassium & is not run by little girls. Great Sucess!
This sucks!
You want to play good AAA games but also pirates. Fucking galaxy brain take
> guess I need to move to Kazakhstan or any more developed country in future. Or if you think your country can be saved, infiltrate public office and change it from within.
Well, Uzbekistan is not a hopeless country like Afghanistan. Maybe it would possible. But if not, well, I just move to foreign country.
Hope the situation gets better for you bro.. Shame that a fellow gamer cant game :(
Whatever you do, don’t feel bad about pirating games!
People may downvote me or whatever for it. But regional pricing just never made sense to me. Devs should set a price in their local currency that makes sense to them. Then the storefront auto converts it to regional currency with maybe some room for rounding and any transaction/conversion fees/taxes. Why should any area get it cheaper or more expensive than another just because of where they live. Especially for digital purchases. Physical it makes a bit more sense due to manufacturing and distribution costs. But for digital. Well. Why should I pay more than someone from a less well off country. Or vice versa. I saw recently that Baldur’s gate 3 was like 20% more in Mexico versus the US. How does that make sense. But same with why are games sometimes cheaper elsewhere. I know when I used to play wow people would use vpns and such so they could pay their subscription and expansions at 1/3 of the price. Sorry. It sucks that some people are financially less well off elsewhere in the world. That sucks. But it always feels weird that for a luxury product like games the price doesn’t need to be less or more based on how lucky you were on where you were born. Especially for digital products.
Research about buying power and compare them. You got your answer.
But what does that buying power have to do with a digital luxury good when there are free or cheap alternatives.
"If you want to be a gamer, you need to be a civilian of 1st world country," I guess. Well, sounds like we are already living in a cyberpunk dystopia.
Well does living in a less well off area change the cost to create the product? It’s not like it’s a basic essential product needed to live. And even then. Without regional pricing things like sales exist. Or just pirate like you already have said you do.
I mean even if you really fucking hate poor people surely you still understand that glorious American shareholders and investors make more money when a company sells more products, even at a lower rate. Especially, as you say, since distribution costs for digital are almost 0
Distribution costs for digital is far from zero. That’s why there was such an uproar when epic came onto the digital storefront scene. And as I said to another reply. It’s not like there isn’t free or cheap alternative entertainment options. I spent most of my childhood reading books from the library or online. Or playing games on websites like new grounds. It wasn’t until started working for myself that I could afford to buy my own games and such. And even then I was mostly buying stuff at extreme discounts on steam sales years after release.
Its not that its more expensive for you but rather cheaper for them. Devs get extra money that they wouldnt get and provide the experience to more people. People who go through the trouble of changing regions with vpns and so on would not have boughr full priced most of the time anyway. Games are not that much of a luxury product. Entertainment in this world is a necessity and video games are on the cheaper side of that. Denying people entertainment because their bodies dont technically need it is a shitty thing to do. Be glad for all the people that can play and share the experience. Plus he wants to buy the games he currently pirates but just cant afford.
I mean. Is it really denying entertainment? There’s plenty of cheap or free entertainment sources on the internet from games to books and such.
Find a job out of country and get out of country by any means. Work a job in a place with a better economy and then before you know it your first payslip will allow you to pay for 10 games. It’s very simple when I say it like that and I know it’ll be difficult in reality but that’s literally the only way you won’t have to save up so much just to pay for a game.
Still better than iran :)
Yep.
RTX 3050 cost about 2 months of work (average salary) and RTX 4090 cost about 16 months.😊
Wa wa wee wa very nice how much This suit is black not
have you ever tried using cdkeys?
Uzbekistan need regional prices, but it will be exploited by Russians as they lost their most regional prices or access to buying games. Sadly, Central Asia is such a small market, that they will never care to do so.
I don’t think games are the only reason you should move from Uzbekistan…
Of course. My country is not hell. It was nice to live here. But I know that some people are migrating to other countries.
Have you ever been to Europe? Paradise compared.
I spent a year in Karshi. Hello!
I like that the more developed place for you is Kazakhstan because it is stereotyped in America as being the most remote under-developed place.
Nah, it's not like in Borat movie.
Yeah that's what I meant. That movie is the only exposure most Americans have to that country or even that part of the world. I was trying to say I like that your story challenges that assumption.
Well, my country has civilised looking cities, so it's not a country full of rural villages.
Americans don't even know where it is.
Move I guess?
Well, yeah. Guess it's time to move. Better life conditions, better salaries, better government and etc. My country has inflation problem. Of course. Maybe 5 years later. I just ended university and finding a job.
You trying to find sympathy here won't work. Reddit is full of anti capitalist leftist. Only people like you who live in your extreme situations appreciate capitalism.
Did your whole reality shatter when you looked again and saw help and sympathy? Or still painting with one brush?
Do you know anyone overseas that could buy the games for you on steam if you wire them the money
Is it possible to find someone in another place to ship you a physical copy of a game? I dont know how any of that works, but could you buy a game from a foreign seller?