Posted September 17, 2012
kljadfjhadf: This is poor reasoning. There are plenty of low income earners in all of the regions you mentioned, as well as my own, for whom the prices of games are exorbident compared to the amount of money they earn. The poor of the world are not huddled into a handful of countries and looking for the best deals on things isn't necessarily a matter of greed rather than prudence just because you live in a developed country. So again, why is it acceptable for businesses to seek to maximise their profits by artificially inflating the prices of their product within a local marketplace, but not acceptable for consumers to seek to minimise their expenditure by purchasing the product elsewhere?
It is not the "poor of the world" it is average income and market income disparity. The market in those countries simply has less money available. As I said, It's not "rich vs. poor" but simply a lower income. All the local goods in those countries are lower in price because of this. And also videogames should reflect this. While I earn ten times as much as my Bulgarian counterpart, that doesn't mean he is poor. He can probably afford a standard of living similar to my own. But, having him pay the inflated western price for a game is something I deem unjust. A modern AAA videogame is in most cases designed for the western market. Therefore the budget is written around expected revenue, which is calculated on western average income and price.
I have no objection in cross border buying of games from equal income areas (France, US, UK, etc.), but I won't buy russian keys. Steam is such a tremendous success in Russia, because they can sell games at a lower, fairer price. And I'm certainly not somebody who would exploit something like that.