Steam Discrimination or bad commercial decisions?

[Mcintosh Pro]

I’ll try to keep it short.

Steam region locked every single game for gifting in the country I live (Mexico), so during holidays I couldn’t gift games to my friends and family (US,Canada and Europe). This is both discriminative and a bad move. It’s a bad move, since I used to buy hundreds of games to gift during holidays (and I’m sure I wasn’t the only one in this region). It’s discriminative, since for some reason they believe people here need a lower price to be able to purchase their games. So… we can receive gifts but not gift ourselves?
So I would like for steam heads to reconsider. Why not just make the store go back to dollars like it was some months ago… charge the same price for them as the US and CAD… and we are all happy.

We don’t need a lower price.. I bought my games in normal pricing and nobody asked for that price reduction or help… it would be ok if only it wouldn’t actually mess with the BASIC functions of steam and take away the spirit of what the community likes about it.

So I’m sure that we are not the only ones with that problem. So here are 2 possible solutions:

1-Go back to a universal price in USD (or actual local exact equivalent) and charge the same amount to every single country. If u really want to give out discounts, average your prices so everyone gets benefited. So people won’t be paying 60euros for a 600 pesos game that should be 60 dollars. Equality over discrimination (exploiting the “rich” or giving advantages to the “poor” wtf)

2-Make it possible that we can choose the regional price of what we are buying. So we can gift it to anyone.. making us pay the “universally unlocked version price”. That way we can buy a “full unlocked copy” for the “full price” even if it’s different from the price of our region (we don’t mind paying more if it’s for a gift!!! Get it?)

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3-Give your solution.
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So the idea of this post is to get more ideas and in a way settle for one that we can really push steam to take. So give more ideas or develop these I’m giving please. This is a huge problem for me… I can’t even gift my kid presents from my account since he is in Canada… I want equality, I’m sure Steam doesn’t support discrimination and this was just a bad commercial decision without the intention to damage their customers.

Note: This doesn’t have to do with normal developer regional locks (so please refrain posting the concept that developers can choose the locks and areas since this doesn’t have to do anything with that). Please investigate this problem a bit before trying to explain your imaginary hypothesis about why it’s ok for us to be going through this problem. I’ll help you with a link… but its extends are much bigger (also check for the rupees problem). http://kotaku.com/you-cant-gift-steam-games-wherever-you-want-anymore-1672525767

[Black Blade]

İlk olarak Dreez tarafından gönderildi:

Gotta love the Valve/EA tactics of killing a subject with silence.

Whos killing what subject?
If Valve give one response saying:
Ya, we are working on it
Or
Nop not going to happen

Will the tread keep going?

[dragonemp]

if mexico has lower price than us/canada/europe steam store, then it's perfectly fine to prevent mexico steam customers to gift lower price games to other regions with higher price, i don't see problem with it.

[Black Blade]

İlk olarak dragonemp tarafından gönderildi:

if mexico has lower price than us/canada/europe steam store, then it's perfectly fine to prevent mexico steam customers to gift lower price games to other regions with higher price, i don't see problem with it.

The problem is users in Mexico, also want to gift games to there friends outside of there country, and have no way to do so, they are not even able to pay the high prices to be able to gift

[Mcintosh Pro]

İlk olarak dragonemp tarafından gönderildi:

if mexico has lower price than us/canada/europe steam store, then it's perfectly fine to prevent mexico steam customers to gift lower price games to other regions with higher price, i don't see problem with it.

It's not only users in mexico.. its happening in many places. But the thing is that we are not getting that huge of a difference in prices, actually its pretty much like te difference between what americans pay compared to UK or other european countries.

So, should they prevent people frome the US to be able to gift people in europe and australia for that? Cause i'd be happy to see that happen, so this topic actually gets the traction it deserves.

Note: We pay $58USD in avarage for a $59.99 game that comes out. The discounts are in the back catalog where i have calculated a price cut of up to 30%.. which is good.. and we don't complain. But the difference between US and Europe is of aprox $15USD for each $59.99 title.. so make the math... are we really "entitled" or deserve to be blocked even with the offer we get? and when does the difference become enough to block a country or whole continent?

[rfpraweb]

I have to also agree with supertrooper in respect to Silicon Vampire post. Sure it would have been nice if he elaborated more on the information. However if he did, he would be writing a thesis on it and it would be full of numbers, charts and market terms that for most who didn't major in business would be lost after the first page. Now the last sentence was a little on the harsh side. That could have been restated in a less attacking manner or a putting down manner that seems to say we know the reasons, you simply are reaching for things and hence don't know what you are talking about.

Instead, "Valve had to make business decisions that are impacted by the constantly changing global markets, the economies and illegal market activity, which we have seen documentated with internal reports, feedback, etc., Some of this information is formatted in a way that unless you have access to the full Steam financial system and how we account for various aspects of our business (like current accounting regulations), would cause confusion and incorrect conclusions or mistaken speculation which will only lead to futher suspicision or accusations, that would require us to respond to quickly to clear us these postings. Since there are more than 1 posting on an issue relating to Steam, we would have to devote resources to monitoring every forum for these issues to clarify, which simply would increase the cost of doing business. If you would like more information, we encourage you to visit www.abcdefgh.com/financial (or whatever they would use) which can help to clarify some of your questions you might have. We are currently looking at new methods of how we can possible address these issues regarding our pricing, region locking and other policies that have had an impact on members. Ideas include a live chat and Q&A, a dedicated forum where each thread is dedicated to a particular topic which only Steam or its appointed representatives can create or represent Steam in their response."

I know a great deal of shovling it in the above, but bettter than the other and at least says Steam is listening, even if only at a moderator level.

Steam probably doesn't respond, because it would simply take too many resources to respond to every ?, complaint, etc. members put out there. However they should make some effort to see what topics are trending or have involvement that indicates that of those members who post frequently they are seeing an increase in the number of newer members who are responding to a particular topic (meaning they would need to use Stats.) and perhaps address them, trying to keep it as simple as possible. Responding would also require lawyers, accountants, Public relations, and other special fields to go through a response to make sure nothing can come back at them, either legally, financially or public relations.

I must restate this, it would be near impossible for Steam to deal with international currency values and economic conditions to handle daily flucuations that are seen on the stock and international markets. What is worth $1 today, 12 hours later it could be only $1.10. Then they would be dealing with complaints about why they were charged the higher currency valuation, since the order was placed at such and such a time or it was gifted at a certain time. So they are probably just trying to stay away from a problem that would almost certainly balloon into an even bigger and major problem.

Region lock is simply a response to those who have abused the system or found a way to game the system in such a manner that Steam, if it allows it to continue, would see widespread abuse as the secret of how you could pay less for your games by running a client designed for one country, and then transferring it to another.

A great example of the above are those free trial accounts that come with most games and mmo's. Since the free accounts could provide/trade/sell things that the more of them created the more it could benefit a single user account. For example if every new account is given 10 gold pieces, then if they didn't lock that to that account, then those who are willing to abuse the account creation system, plus have nothing but time on their hands, could create hundreds of accounts and trade all that gold to that one single user account or worse, sell it off market, etc, thereby destabilizing the in game economy and damage to the player base as they see this abuse being used to gain an unfair advantage over them. Those who are playing fair, might only be able to buy a beat up piece of wooden shield, while those who are taking advantage of this issue, exampled in this paragraph, could buy bright and shiny diamond plated Long shields or enhanced shield with bonsues.

[Mcintosh Pro]

I just love it. But in order to say that Steam knows more than we do as customers of this... global international ever changing market (that is a fancy way of saying "what customers want and what their governments want to take from that"), you need official info, just as i do. But to me the official info is the act indeed, for you guys, that info is in a drawer we both don't have a key for. I can understand that they want to keep their interests intact and i don't blame them, that they took the best decisions they could.. i can even go with that (they thought they where doing the best for themselves, sure). To say that it was a fair decision or a smart one.... that would require that they open the information for both the people complaining and the people defending. Before that.. we just work both with conjectures.

My point is that saying that Steam wasn't wrong is adventurous and a bit dangerous still. It would render as idiots all who supported steam in this decision... if steam tomorrow gives a solution to this that makes the "complainers" happy, since it would be an admitance of their mistake. But since Steam keeps quiet, they can always say they just took provisional measures and no mistake done. Voila!

But what is hard to negate is the impact it has. To a bystander like me that was looking at the russian problem for quite a long time, it just bogles my mind that after test running a failing system for what... a year?... they would just say- so this system is bad and we are loosing so much here due to exploiters, we have this super idea in a changing market.. lets extend it to a whole new continent-.

The other question is also interesting, why would the "provisional meassure"(if so) was applied to the accounts of the "poor" countries? The exploiters aren't exactly the people that buy lots of games from steam and think of selling them a lil higher. Its the people buying them, they are the ones actively avoiding steam as the seller and not taking the offer steam gave them. Those are the ones whose accounts should be blocked from recieving "cheaper games". As i see it.. us in south/latin america still pay a heck lot more than east europe.. at least we should be able to gift them too, don't u think?

And the idea of an mmo is based on an idea of balancing an ecconomy which has little to nothing to do with purchasing goods.. Tho ill give u that one.. i do see your point. But here Steam is not gifting you a headstart, they are assigning markets for their sellers and providing tools to create a huge unbalance. It is steam who is finally offering as a brand. So heck if they sell GTAV to me in 5 dollars ill take it!!! but don't u think that since they control the entirety of all those markets they could maybe take a lil more advantage?

I'm all about helping the poor, but also about not taking advantage of the rich and the only way i can see a solution is that steam dictates policies so the price discrepancies are not so huge, Then they basically take away the attractiveness to try to buy cheaper or to sell more expensive. What they would loose in poor countries.. they would win in rich ones. BTW what am i saying? Steam is no loosing in Mexico!!! They just have a few months giving stuff with a price cut and in local currency so they can revert it with virtually no probs.

And lastly... i would say that if a business is so diversified and can't solve problems or has so many they can't handle them.. as a general rule... it will start to crumble. Anyway.. i'm not against Steam actually i'm a big fan and i wish them success.. but i want this to be fixed. I just get aggravated sometimes... if someone says something is terrible with no information, the person that says its great with that same information is a fool. But in this case info has been provided, denying is just stopping constructiveness.

[dragonemp]

Directly from OP "since I used to buy hundreds of games to gift during holidays"
I REALLY have hard time to believe he's gifiting away 100s games, not selling them for profit

[Mcintosh Pro]

İlk olarak dragonemp tarafından gönderildi:

Directly from OP "since I used to buy hundreds of games to gift during holidays"
I REALLY have hard time to believe he's gifiting away 100s games, not selling them for profit

So how do u profit if you buy at 60USD a game of 60USD? Didn't u also read that i used to pay the same price USA did... and that the local currency thing.. and the price cut just.. happened?

But yeah.. i used to buy that much in the old days, and i did make a profit... the warmth and smile of my good old friends. :) That... just priceless.

Note: also after the price changes they messed my huge business of re selling dying light... since it was such a good deal to buy it in $899 mxpesos to sell it $1.4 dollars less to americans.. wooooooo. Ofcourse.. i'm being sarcastic.. but the price is true, you pay $59.99 USD, I with my special price cut pay $61.40 USD. So... i wish that explains my twisted empire of profit. Gimme a hug!.... guess i'm paying 1.40 for the region lock piece of code they had to add. :P.. so i don't buy hundreds and re-sell them. muahhahhahahaha.. this keeps making me smile.

[Cinnamon]

İlk olarak dragonemp tarafından gönderildi:

Directly from OP "since I used to buy hundreds of games to gift during holidays"
I REALLY have hard time to believe he's gifiting away 100s games, not selling them for profit

I would imagine that you haven't noticed that Mcintosh has OVER 1300 games...so of course he must be homeless and without funds to buy his friends and family games - and that he's terribly concerned about getting 'the best deal'. Finding that he buys around 100 games for his family/friends each Christmas isn't so hard to imagine if he can buy 1300+ for himself. Try to imagine how you would react if you were so constricted regarding who you can gift and in what country when buying Christmas and birthday presents for your family and friends through Steam. I find it interesting how people do not understand the problem when they don't have it themselves - life is good for them, right? But God forbid this affects the US in such a fashion --then the forums would be going nuts!

[Aftertaste]

I am an american, and i completly agree with you guys.

[rfpraweb]

Well with all the explanations given, as I said I am not a Steam fanboy, however from a business standpoint this isn't unexpected, and others have chimed in, and the op won't understand that Steam is a business and some things are outside the pervue of users. I don't know if Steam is a privately held or even trades on the stock market. If it did, I would suggest if you want to learn more about Steam as for their Annual Stockholders Report (however I don't think they are a publicly traded, so that probably isn't available). If you have bought 100's of games, I would think they would know who you are and would be more apt to respond to you than to me or others who don't gift that many.

It is a business decision and yes sometimes business decisions aren't always popular until one sees some of the reasons and then what looks like an afront to clients/members/users is then realized they are protecting all of us.

My last suggestion, since nothing has stopped the OP from saying it is isn't right or it is wrong, or is a bad decision, etc., is actually go the HQ that Gabe hangs out at, I think it is in the state of Washington, not sure. Actual ask to have an appointment with a representative of the company. If you bring news cameras you might get a better response or be asked to leave. However that is about the only other way to provide an answer to you. Sure I would love to use the, purchasing power of my USD and go to a country where my $60 could buy 20 games or more, but Steam can't allow that as then why would anyone buy from the US store, when they could instead go to the store in whatever country and buy more than could in the US. There would be no point for them to have a store in any country where the cost are high in local currency because users would simply not buy there. While I am glad Mexico likes trading with the US, Canada and Europe, the problem comes down to the currency valuation. It doesn't matter how many games you have bought in the past or present. It doesn't matter whether you live in Meixco, the US, somewhere in Europe, Russia or whereever. People found a loophole that allowed the purchase and gifting of items at a value that was not in line with the country they were being sent to or activated in. Since Steam has clients that are based on a local country, they have had to take this step to prevent users from violating possibly some export laws that Steam could be held accountable to.

It is a bummer, but this essentially like a duty/tariff situation. When you travel overseas you can only bring back a certain amount of goods in your home countries currency after which you have to pay a tariff or duty or tax on the item or they have a fixed amount, like with US and Cuba, only a certain amount of Cubana Cigars can be brought back, anything above that limit they take away and destroy. Since this is virtual licenese versus a physical product, I am sure there are laws governing the sale/export/import/trading of software.

There are many companies in the software industry and games, that already have a lock on sales. What I mean by lock is they autodetect your region and offer you the product at that regions prices. If you then try to activate it outside of a region, it will usually disallow the product to work. This can be something detected at the OS level or when you connect to the internet, your ip address, etc. Many sites where you buy goods if you are resident of the US it says this product cannot be exported, sometimes even Canada you can't send it to. So all I can say to the original poster of this thread, is you need to go out and see what Steam has done is a normal business practice for any company that is selling in a global market. Sure in the old days, before the internet, etc. you could easily buy software/games/ or anything for that matter and then bring it home. However that was then. For Steam, when it was more or less just a small game client that had few steam client stores beyond the US or North American Market plus without things like the current trading cards and team fortress hats, keys, or whatever, they didn't really restrict. However they have grown to a size where issues beyond just monetary or business that have put them in a position where they have to now start restricting the trading/gifting/purchasing outside of yourcountry the client is running in.


Yes some one suggested, that Steam charges you some sort of export or currency exchange cost so you can gift/selll. However that is not as easy as it sounds. There are way to many variables that a company like Steam has determined it doesn't have the personnel or expertise to do this. Maybe as they see continued demand for gifting/trading/buying from another country they could look for those who can provide that skill or knowledge. However remember Steam is a gaming client that sells games, and either with or under Valve sells games that Valve develops, they are not a bank and they have chosen not to focus on that or there could be other limitations in the software itself (the client of Steam) that makes this difficult if not impossible at this time. In addition there could be some safeguards that they don't want to reveal in a post that could give those who would try to work around there software/code/safeguards, the info they need to do it. Also the SteamOS could currently have them busy and they can't devote the resources to this (also the SteamOS and its Linux roots and the hardware export laws for those companies selling or will sell SteamOS boxes, that they have had to put in place in anticipation of any issues that the SteamOS can or will create - and we know they aren't giving out details on SteamOS like they did, so this is just yet another factor that you might need to consider).

[Mcintosh Pro]

@rfpraweb

I appreciate you taking your time trying to explain your point of view. But I would like to clearify some points you make about me.. the OP. I think. Also i don't like it when people know what I think better than I do (at least in their minds). I believe, and i also don't like for people to believe for me. I know and that... somethings i do.

But those are the words, one designates the space of opininion, the other believe and the other knowledge and i try not to use them lightly.

I know that steam is a business and actually i think they are loosing much of their potential in international trade and i believe they are making a mistake by locking whole countries from the possibility of gifiting.

I see that you can tell how hard or how easy is to implement these changes (which? i dunno, since there hasn't been a clear decision of which are the ones we want, but the fact that we want to gift again). So here, i know that before mid december i was able to gift, i know that one day i woke up without the ability to do so. I know i had been paying in USD one day, i know i started paying pesos the next. So if its hard to change that it's not my area, even with all my programming knowledge. I am not qualified to say its easy or hard for the company and i have made it really clear that the only facts on which i base my observations on are the actions the company has taken by themselves. I don't presume to know their books or listened to their talks. So supporting this decision requires that you skip those accions or just qualify them as excellent and blindly decide it was a great decision in which as a customer u don't benefit from. You are working with conjectures at the most.

What you may not understand is that even huge corporations sometimes make mistakes too or have to take provisional meassures to find solutions. I am not expecting an answer quite honestly but an action (which is the best kind of answer and the silence of Steam encourages me towards it). I am not here to technically asses the difficulty of the challenges, just here to point out a problem. I can add to your list of things we should take in account lots and lots of things, but saying its merely impossible to solve it as you say.. that is a big leap.

I am sure that the Steam team is more than capable to solve this problem and what you call impossible probably is piece of cake to them. That is as much as i trust them and i don't believe they are as inept or stupid as people that think this problem is impossible or to complex to solve think they are. I trust that one day i will wake up and things will have a great solution.

[Silicon Vampire]

In an effort to keep this thread open, do not post any topics that are forbidden in the rules.

cosper seemed to want this thread closed but I took care of that.

[Mcintosh Pro]

İlk olarak Silicon Vampire tarafından gönderildi:

In an effort to keep this thread open, do not post any topics that are forbidden in the rules.

cosper seemed to want this thread closed but I took care of that.

Thanks Silicon :)

[Black Blade]

@rfpraweb

The idea is for users on the closed areas, to pay more so they can gift
Basically mean that Dev and Valve profit more from the sale on the one hand
The users that cant afford these games will be able to buy games on there prices even if they will not be able to gift (same as now)
And last the users that want to abuse the system cant do that, like now (as buying something from one of these countries will result in the same price of buying it in places they can also today)

So i am not really sure if you maybe seen only some part of the tread and miss that idea and like i think @Mcintosh Pro said, we cant know what happens in the back end of Valve, we can only see what comes out
That mean we can only suggest on that and discuss on that
As what is done now

If you want to rise a problem that may be something that Valve may have, that can be great, as then every one that wants can look for a way to fix it, a way that Valve may just missed, or did not think abut (the power of the mass )