Kindly get your regional pricing right, developers!!

[Abbey Road]

Am a big CRPG fan from India! I appreciate Owlcat Games and the work that you guys do, but please note that as a prospective consumer, I would always compare the price of the game with other similar games in the genre, and that usually plays a role in my purchasing decisions. I have bought Pathfinder Kingmaker, Pillars of Eternity series, DOS games, Tyranny, Torment, Wasteland 3 amongst other games.

Was really looking forward to pre-purchasing Wrath of the Righteous! Unfortunately, someone at Owlcat Games apparently forgot to utilise the Regional Pricing options that Valve helpfully provides for the developers to utilise.

Now, I am sure the developers are aware of the merits of regional pricing, given that the purchasing power / per capita income of various countries are not exactly at par with each other, hence I do not want to delve into detail on this aspect.

I did expect that Owlcat would have taken this into consideration, given that Pathfinder: Kingmaker did have regional pricing and Pathfinder WOTR looks to be developing to be a very well-polished CRPG gem in the making and I hope for a successful launch for the game.

While I appreciate the hard work put in by the developers into this game, it seems from the price list below that the pricing for this game (in India at least, and going by the comments, in certain other regions as well) is fairly bonkers in comparison to its competitors. Unfortunately, this current price of Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous will keep me away from this game unless a serious future discount is offered. That's only from an India standpoint though-hence the request to the developers/publishers to be mindful of regional pricing considerations while setting the price on Steam, rather than having a 'one size fits all' approach, when it comes to pricing! Cheerio!

For ease of reference of the developers, set out below are prices of certain other well-known CRPGs set out in INR (Indian Rupees) that are currently available for purchase on Steam. Hopefully, the developers take this into account and rectify the regional pricing for India. Am assuming the same will also apply for other regions like Brazil, Turkey, Russia, etc.

Edit- Since some folks have quite reasonably flagged that the comparison should be made with the release prices of games when they first came out-accordingly, I have updated my original post to ensure that the table below has been updated to provide a comparison against the release price of the games.

Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous - Mythic Edition Bundle : INR 4,848 (Price at release on Steam); INR 4,848 (Current price on Steam)

Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous - Commander Edition Bundle : INR 3,449 (Price at release on Steam); INR 3,449 (Current price on Steam)

Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous : INR 2,449 (Price at release on Steam); INR 2,449 (Current price on Steam)

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire - Obsidian Edition : INR 1,549 (Price at release on Steam); INR 1,868 (Current price on Steam).
Note: Ironically, PoE 2 was less expensive at release than it is now, since apparently sometime in the intervening period, Obsidian raised their region-friendly prices across the board.

Divinity: Original Sin 2 - Divine Edition : INR 1,468 (Price at release on Steam); INR 1,468 (Current price on Steam)

Pathfinder: Kingmaker - Imperial Edition Bundle : INR 1,795 (Price at release on Steam); INR 1,313 (Current price on Steam)

Wasteland 3 :
Release price at November 2019 was INR 3,499. This was clearly done without any regional pricing done and led to a lot of forum posts. See historical posts around the release date below for an example.
https://steamcommunity.com/app/719040/discussions/1/1639802081897088936/
https://steamcommunity.com/app/719040/discussions/1/1639802081897126881/
Later on, they activated regional pricing in August 2020, at which point it came down to INR 1, 299.
Accordingly, INR 1,299 can be treated as the price corrected release day price for this game which remains the same until today.
See below posts on this point for instance at the time this change was made:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/719040/discussions/1/2923353981927414492/

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire - Standard Edition : INR 929 (Price at release on Steam); INR 1,245 (Current price on Steam)

Dragon Age Origins : INR 665 (Price at release on Steam); INR 999 (Current price on Steam)

Dragon Age: Origins - Ultimate Edition : INR 1,499 (Price at release on Steam); INR 1,499 (Current price on Steam)

Note: Strangely, the DAO Ultimate Edition was unavailable on Steam for India until February 2021. Back in June 2020, when EA came back to Steam with their tail between their legs, after their failed Origins experience, for some reason this Ultimate Edition was unavailable to purchase. Why? God (and EA) only knows!
As an aside, Dragon Age Inquisition is still unavailable for purchase on Steam in India. Why? Homosexuality, if you must know, but that’s another story for another day. But you can read my post below, if interested.
https://steamcommunity.com/app/1238040/discussions/0/2293968408148501960/?ctp=2

Dragon Age 2 : INR 999 (Price at release on Steam); INR 999 (Current price on Steam)
Note: Again, this was only released on Steam in India in June 2020.

Divinity: Original Sin 2 : INR 989 (Price at release on Steam); INR 989 (Current price on Steam)

Tyranny - Deluxe Edition : INR 1,559 (Price at release on Steam); INR 899 (Current price on Steam)

Divinity: Original Sin Enhanced Edition : INR 849 (Price at release on Steam); INR 849 (Current price on Steam)

Pillars of Eternity - Definitive Edition : INR 849 (Price at release on Steam); INR 849 (Current price on Steam)

Pillars of Eternity Hero Edition : INR 929 (Price at release on Steam); INR 729 (Current price on Steam)

Wasteland 2 Director’s Cut Edition : INR 849 (Price at release on Steam); INR 699 (Current price on Steam)

Tyranny : INR 929 (Price at release on Steam); INR 699 (Current price on Steam)

Pathfinder: Kingmaker - Enhanced Plus Edition : INR 899 (Price at release on Steam); INR 529 (Current price on Steam)

[mk11]

How about the at release prices for comparison. You appear to be comparing pre-order prices against games that have been out for quite a while.

[bibron]

How suprising, the older a title gets, the less you have to pay for it.

[dulany67]

Originally posted by mk11:

How about the at release prices for comparison. You appear to be comparing pre-order prices against games that have been out for quite a while.

[klykva]

Game costs more than new tales of arise (2299 inr) game, overpriced!

[Liero]

Originally posted by mk11:

How about the at release prices for comparison. You appear to be comparing pre-order prices against games that have been out for quite a while.

^

and your Price is much more lower than my region. Im not sure if this is an elaborate bait or just pure entitlement.

tbh, even if my price is slightly higher than yours OP, ITS STILL cheap compared to Western pricing.

[Jetrel]

Well yeah guys, you need to take a look at Indias minimum wage first.
Sure when you pump it into a conversion table a 2449 inr game looks underpriced to what we pay. But these dudes make INR 176 (US$2.80) per day minimum wage. divide it up and you see it would take someone 14 days of full time work just to buy it. Which is next to impossible when having to pay for all of lifes other crap needed just to survive.

For us up in Canada with a minimum wage with an average of around $13/hr is only takes us less than a day of work to buy it.

The problem with regional pricing is impossible to fix. Specifically when you get people using vpn's to buy games at lower prices then sell their steam accounts to people for higher currency in regions where the pricing is higher for less than what is being sold on steam regionally. If it is too low they make more money doing this and the problem gets much worse, there is no win win here.

[Darx]

Originally posted by mk11:

How about the at release prices for comparison. You appear to be comparing pre-order prices against games that have been out for quite a while.

this

[dulany67]

Originally posted by Jetrel:

Well yeah guys, you need to take a look at Indias minimum wage first.
Sure when you pump it into a conversion table a 2449 inr game looks underpriced to what we pay. But these dudes make INR 176 (US$2.80) per day minimum wage. divide it up and you see it would take someone 14 days of full time work just to buy it. Which is next to impossible when having to pay for all of lifes other crap needed just to survive.

Should a game be priced for minimum wage earners?

[Jetrel]

Yes, it should. The minimum wage is what most kids work for while they are playing video games. Hell it is what I was working for when I wanted to buy a playstation to begin with. Even then I bought it in much less time that it would take some kid from India to even buy one game.

[Kronus]

Originally posted by Jetrel:

Well yeah guys, you need to take a look at Indias minimum wage first.
Sure when you pump it into a conversion table a 2449 inr game looks underpriced to what we pay. But these dudes make INR 176 (US$2.80) per day minimum wage. divide it up and you see it would take someone 14 days of full time work just to buy it. Which is next to impossible when having to pay for all of lifes other crap needed just to survive.

For us up in Canada with a minimum wage with an average of around $13/hr is only takes us less than a day of work to buy it.

The problem with regional pricing is impossible to fix. Specifically when you get people using vpn's to buy games at lower prices then sell their steam accounts to people for higher currency in regions where the pricing is higher for less than what is being sold on steam regionally. If it is too low they make more money doing this and the problem gets much worse, there is no win win here.

Irrelevant considering the fact that OP's comparison is taking older games and games at a discount to make his analogy.

He claims that Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire - Obsidian Edition is 1,868 INR, but that game is currently 75% off and it was discounted as well on the base price since it is a 3 years old game. Pillars without the discount is currently 65 Euros, aka 5730.92 INR, quite a bit more than pathfinder Mythic edition bundle.

[Jetrel]

Completely relevant, the entire pricing scheme is broken.

[bibron]

Originally posted by Jetrel:

Well yeah guys, you need to take a look at Indias minimum wage first.
Sure when you pump it into a conversion table a 2449 inr game looks underpriced to what we pay. But these dudes make INR 176 (US$2.80) per day minimum wage. divide it up and you see it would take someone 14 days of full time work just to buy it. Which is next to impossible when having to pay for all of lifes other crap needed just to survive.

For us up in Canada with a minimum wage with an average of around $13/hr is only takes us less than a day of work to buy it.

The problem with regional pricing is impossible to fix. Specifically when you get people using vpn's to buy games at lower prices then sell their steam accounts to people for higher currency in regions where the pricing is higher for less than what is being sold on steam regionally. If it is too low they make more money doing this and the problem gets much worse, there is no win win here.

In germany, the minimum wage is around 1150 €/month netto.
I have to pay running costs of like 800 € a month (no food included, only stuff like power, internet, rent and so on)
That means I would have 350 € left for food (would be around 200-300 €) and jeah ... the game costs 50 € so ... I guess I would be ♥♥♥♥♥♥, even so I live in one of those rich countrys where everybody can whipe theire asses with money.

[dulany67]

Originally posted by Jetrel:

Yes, it should. The minimum wage is what most kids work for while they are playing video games. Hell it is what I was working for when I wanted to buy a playstation to begin with. Even then I bought it in much less time that it would take some kid from India to even buy one game.

Pricing is never about being nice for the consumer. It's about maximizing price to the point where falling sales begin to reduce revenue.

Which is to say that not every product is aimed at every consumer. That's been true for the entire history of mankind.

[Darx]

i want everybody to play it but i cant really agree with those opinions.

thats like saying a car and a house should be priced for the minimum wage limits so everybody can afford it. would be great but thats no how the world works.
playing a video game is a luxury not a necessity

[Liero]

Originally posted by Jetrel:

Yes, it should. The minimum wage is what most kids work for while they are playing video games. Hell it is what I was working for when I wanted to buy a playstation to begin with. Even then I bought it in much less time that it would take some kid from India to even buy one game.

No it shouldnt. Have you even checked OP's library? 500 games and that includes Triple A games as well. And my country is considered as a "third world" as well. My regional pricing is slightly higher but hey im not even complaining. And as someone pointed out, he's comparing old games current pricing with a new released price. Its silly tbh. He should have compare the price when it FIRST came out. Not its current price where its been heavily discounted.