STEAM | September II 2014 - Ride the Lightning

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DocSeuss said:
Uh... well, Steam's letting me install Shadow of Mordor, which I got via Russia...
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I got it that way too (I believe?). Why wouldn't it let us? It's ROW, right?

Oh shit, they region locked it? I added it to my account around 3, and it's downloading. I'm all good, right? I can't get locked out of it retroactively or anything? I'm assuming that I can't be, and that it wouldn't have been able to be added to my account if I hadn't gotten it in time.
 
Jawmuncher said:
I know this was old news but I just had to jump online and check if Dragon Age Inquistion was going to have controller support on PC. That was going to be a huge factor in purchasing on PC instead of console.
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People played it on PC using a controller on Twitch earlier.
Praise the science.
 
Stumpokapow said:
A very well though out explanation.
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Wow, perfect.

Let's take a theoretical.

Say, theoretically, a game was put up without region locking. Who wants the hassle of managing that? And, if a small group of dedicated customers can get around it, well what's the harm.

However, say in the days leading up to a major release, a whole bunch of posts start going up in BST threads featuring the title, and a whole bunch of people recommend people just buy games off of traders...

Then, theoretically, the pub keeps track of the steam data and sees that Russia (usually <10 share) all of a sudden grows to 15%, then 20%, then 25%, and then on the day their big game is to release the Russian share starts the day at over 30%... what do you do then?

Unfortunately, you gotta lock that down.

All theoretical, of course.
 
MattyG344 said:
I got it that way too (I believe?). Why wouldn't it let us? It's ROW, right?

Oh shit, they region locked it? I added it to my account around 3, and it's downloading. I'm all good, right? I can't get locked out of it retroactively or anything?
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"AllowCrossRegionTradingAndGifting" affects only adding to library.
If you have added it, it will work everywhere, regardless when it was activated or purchased.
 
xBladeM6x said:
To be fair, I never gave this one thing too much thought, that's why I asked. However if it's so understood as to why this happens, why do consumers treat it like it's an unfair business practice?
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I dont, and I find it hilarious when people do. Putting aside game price validity, which me as a European get doubly fucked over on usually mind you, buying games at basically half price because there is a market where games are much cheaper and we use a loophole in the trading system to buy them is not "our right as consumers". Its something we are abusing, and I am shocked that more companies dont lock their games (although as we have seen, more and more new releases are locked, especially full price games) since its clearly spreading.

jediyoshi said:
Serious response? Like an actual business reason. Something something distribution rights, something something ratings boards.
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something something money? they are getting half of what they "should" be getting when they sell it in russia. Now, you can argue that we wouldnt buy the games on release if it wasnt with russian prices, so they wouldnt get that sale... but thats now dangeously close to the piracy excuse. I remember a trade, who shall remain nameless, telling me he was selling Divinity by the dozens, people buying like 10 copies at a time and shit to then resell on the market. Which leads me to the second reason why game companies would lock the games, to cut off the "black market" aspect of it
 
CosmicQueso said:
Wow, perfect.

Let's take a theoretical.

Say, theoretically, a game was put up without region locking. Who wants the hassle of managing that? And, if a small group of dedicated customers can get around it, well what's the harm.

However, say in the days leading up to a major release, a whole bunch of posts start going up in BST threads featuring the title, and a whole bunch of people recommend people just buy games off of traders...

Then, theoretically, the pub keeps track of the steam data and sees that Russia (usually <10 share) all of a sudden grows to 15%, then 20%, then 25%, and then on the day their big game is to release the Russian share starts the day at over 30%... what do you do then?
Click to expand...

Digital games are kind of a perfect storm for this sort of scenario anyway.

- The content is exactly identical regardless of region (whereas with DVDs, emerging markets typically get barebones releases, so the price/feature tradeoff exists),
- The act of "importing" to circumvent regional pricing takes no time because there's no good to ship (compare to the textbook example)
- The consumers are largely highly knowledgeable and tech-savvy and so any advantage that's possible is likely to be taken advantage of (compare to literally any other medium, which is filled with rubes)
- Consumers are extremely price sensitive in part due to market conditions (games last a very long time, there's a glut of new releases, catalogue titles are widely available and cause some substitutionary effect)
- Regional price differences are extreme enough to allow middlemen to actually arbitrage the difference
- Resale/importing can be virtually automated by technical means (actually, they could be completely automated; anyone with a Russian address, bank account, and <$10/month VPS could actually set up an automatic Russian trading bot, it's not even difficult. A mediocre programmer could do it in a day or two. And then the purchasing side is basically as convenient as chatting.)
 
I understand region locking. What I don't understand is the last minute locks. Makes me wonder if the only reason pubs do them is retail agreements that don't take effect until the game is released. Thus they milk it as long as they can. Otherwise logically they should either lock it from the beginning or never.
 
Stumpokapow said:
Digital games are kind of a perfect storm for this sort of scenario anyway.

- The content is exactly identical regardless of region (whereas with DVDs, emerging markets typically get barebones releases, so the price/feature tradeoff exists),
- The act of "importing" to circumvent regional pricing takes no time because there's no good to ship (compare to the textbook example)
- The consumers are largely highly knowledgeable and tech-savvy and so any advantage that's possible is likely to be taken advantage of
- Consumers are extremely price sensitive in part due to market conditions
- Regional price differences are extreme enough to allow middlemen to actually arbitrage the difference
- Resale/importing can be virtually automated by technical means.
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Now, there's no excuse that some territories like Australia pay inordinately more than norm. However, that's a holdover from the packaged business. Once packaged PC product goes completely away, then the taxes and duties that drive high packaged prices goes away, which will allow digital prices to fall to more reasonable levels. Retail, for better (help with IP caps, etc) and worse (pricing), still impacts steam prices in many parts of the world. The impact of retail on US pricing, however, is very different, as digital now accounts for over 90% of PC sales.

But yeah, you're spot on, as usual.
 
szcftw.gif
 
Lomax said:
I understand region locking. What I don't understand is the last minute locks. Makes me wonder if the only reason pubs do them is retail agreements that don't take effect until the game is released. Thus they milk it as long as they can. Otherwise logically they should either lock it from the beginning or never.
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As CosmicQueso hypothetically discussed, pubs don't actually give a damn about the small contingent of people who have 2000 games in their Steam account depriving them of a few bucks because they're super-savvy consumers who exploit the system. Hell, a lot of those people are probably going to encourage their friends to buy the game and thus drive more revenue the publisher's way.

The issue is, hypothetically, when the people responsible for measuring pre-orders happen to notice that the exploitation is common-place and they're losing out on significant amounts of money. I mean, the difference between "we hit our sales targets but ARPU is down 5%" and "we beat our sales targets by a huge margin but ARPU is down 50% and we're losing money on our launch what the christ wait this is happening because all our copies are sold in Russia even though 80% of our players are in NA or western Europe" is a pretty big one, right?

I think as pubs get more experience they'll be able to conclude whether or not they need to pre-emptively lock stuff.
 
Stumpokapow said:
As CosmicQueso hypothetically discussed, pubs don't actually give a damn about the small contingent of people who have 2000 games in their Steam account depriving them of a few bucks because they're super-savvy consumers who exploit the system. Hell, a lot of those people are probably going to encourage their friends to buy the game and thus drive more revenue the publisher's way.

The issue is, hypothetically, when the people responsible for measuring pre-orders happen to notice that the exploitation is common-place and they're losing out on significant amounts of money. I mean, the difference between "we hit our sales targets but ARPU is down 5%" and "we beat our sales targets by a huge margin but ARPU is down 50% and we're losing money on our launch what the christ wait this is happening because all our copies are sold in Russia even though 80% of our players are in NA or western Europe" is a pretty big one, right?

I think as pubs get more experience they'll be able to conclude whether or not they need to pre-emptively lock stuff.
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Lol that VERY conversation theoretically happened this morning.
 
Stumpokapow said:
As CosmicQueso hypothetically discussed, pubs don't actually give a damn about the small contingent of people who have 2000 games in their Steam account depriving them of a few bucks because they're super-savvy consumers who exploit the system. Hell, a lot of those people are probably going to encourage their friends to buy the game and thus drive more revenue the publisher's way.

The issue is, hypothetically, when the people responsible for measuring pre-orders happen to notice that the exploitation is common-place and they're losing out on significant amounts of money. I mean, the difference between "we hit our sales targets but ARPU is down 5%" and "we beat our sales targets by a huge margin but ARPU is down 50% and we're losing money on our launch what the christ wait this is happening because all our copies are sold in Russia even though 80% of our players are in NA or western Europe" is a pretty big one, right?

I think as pubs get more experience they'll be able to conclude whether or not they need to pre-emptively lock stuff.
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Well this is two straight WB Games releases that were locked the day before release. I find it hard to believe they just "noticed" on both games in that same fashion. If anything I'd think they noticed increased sales and kept it open as long as they could. And we all know in the grand scheme of things, NeoGaf and the gray market are tiny.
 
Lomax said:
Well this is two straight WB Games releases that were locked the day before release. I find it hard to believe they just "noticed" on both games in that same fashion. If anything I'd think they noticed increased sales and kept it open as long as they could. And we all know in the grand scheme of things, NeoGaf and the gray market are tiny.
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Russia taking 30 share on release day is tiny? 8 share sure, maybe even 12... But when Russia is the #2 territory? That raises questions. Theoretically.

Midnight eastern btw. Believe.
 
Aw come on I got the ball rolling on a copy of Mordor and they region locked it? I wanted to shake out impressions and see how it was running.

Was really looking forward to it to as I'm kind of not loving this new job. Oh well.
 
CosmicQueso said:
Russia taking 30 share on release day is tiny? 8 share sure, maybe even 12... But when Russia is the #2 territory? That raises questions. Theoretically.

Midnight eastern btw. Believe.
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Well then I'd wonder why when that was noticed on Gauntlet they didn't lock Shadow of Mordor at the same time. I'd also contend that a large portion of those last minue sales are people who had been on the fence, heard the good buzz, and decided to go ahead and bite on the cheap price. I know I almost bought a RU copy and there's an absolutely zero percent chance I'd ever buy (or especially pre-order) the title at full price, and chances are the price I do end up paying in six months or a year will be even lower. And while the one day blip might be noticeable, in the grand scheme it's still small and will certainly be dwarfed by day one of the first steam sale it has.

I'm not saying I think it was wrong for the game to be locked, and I'd understand a lock right before a big sale for example. But the whole "unlocked for months of pre-orders and locked on release day" just seems weird to me, like it was planned.
 
So apparently Roboito messaged me saying that Mordor is available now. I went to click on it. Still encrypted. But the store page has the "Play Now" button available.

Valve is teasing us :(
 
Sigh...seems like Witcher 3 and Civ BE also receive a price hike in my region.
So much for that cheap regional pricing.

Witcher 3 is almost 2 times the price now without the 20% discount.
 
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