Indian PC Gamers Use Twitter to Protest EA Price Hike

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These are digital items we're talking about. It takes almost nothing to send a digital game to a player, as it isn't tangible.
 
I love it. A lot of you think that gamers in Japan, Germany, United States, United Kingdom, et. al., should keep paying $50-80 a game while people in India get to only pay $16-25? Are you serious?

Hey people in India:

1) If you don't like the new prices, go play on Steam or elsewhere there are cheap/free games
2) If you can't get Steam, make your own Steam-like site.

But quit whining. There are people in the United States who save up and have to work multiple low-paying jobs to afford a game too.

Just because your country let Microsoft, Dell, and other corporations come in and pay you 1/10th of what an American got paid isn't our fault. Stand up for your rights to be paid equally. Then you can afford what we've been paying for years that basically made your games cheap.

Jesus...people in the industrialized countries complain about people on the dole. Now, your gaming has to help subsidize gamers in other countries.

I think I'll go back to playing D&D...at least Gary Gygax and TSR didn't make me pay $12.00 for a Dungeon Master's Guide in 1984 and then sell one for $2 to an RPG player in Mumbai.
 
The Indian gamer... hmm. Very populated country there, but it's got like a 270 million dollar market (when converted to USD). Put in perspective, the US is 14 billion, Japan and China 7 billion a piece, South Korea 5 billion-ish, and the UK like 4 billion.

India should be a potentially HUGE market, but it's not. It's pathetically small. It's insignificantly small compared to, say, Canada, by itself. (Canada's videogame market is somewhere around 5 times larger than India's).

Think about that a sec. Canada, with like 34 million people, has a videogame market that's 4-5 times larger than India's, with India's population at 1.24 Billion.

*pauses* The "average" Indian person does NOT buy videogames. Period. They wouldn't have the money. This is a very small minority within the upper class and rich that is able to make these purchases.....

Microsoft recently raised their prices on this small group by about 25% also. If sales are hurt by these decisions, I'm sure they'll go back down....

But, yeah, all this about how the poor Indian people are having to choose between rent and Grand Theft Auto stuff is just ridiculous. Poor Indian people don't buy videogames.
 
Some of these comments are crazy. The guy said what he pays for a game is equal to half of his rent. As an American my rent is $700 per month. If I had to pay $350 for a video game I would be incensed also. EA just keep pushing their greedy envelope as far as they can. Unscrupulous company.
 
Every item I can think of is priced according to the geographic and economic condition where it is being sold. So, no, a new Mercedes does not cost $10k, it actually costs more than in the US. You can try and figure out why for yourselves.
If EA raises the prices of its games, then demand will decrease. (Check market force, invisible hand) So, if the demand decreases enough, EA might lower the prices again. This will go on until EA determines it has maximized units sold * average margin (i.e. profit). Some consumers will still not be able to afford the games, but then that's the case for all goods and services.

It's frustrating for Indian consumers right now, but ultimately, their decision to NOT buy EA games will have an effect.
 
The best way for EA and developers to profit off this is to keep it low, that way a country that otherwise wouldn't even be considered for sales would rack in the dough with a ton more sales at a lower price. 1,000,000 purchases at $25 is four times more revenue than 100,000 purchases at $58.

However if the split in purchases is lower, then they may still be able to get the same profit, while nipping the VPN issue in the bud.

I feel sorry that India is the one to be caught up in this debacle.
 

Well, now with EA games, they do! XD


Listen, person who doesn't know much about the rest of the world, yet chooses to display their ignorance:
We get the US Steam site, so we pay US prices on steam, the obvious problem with that is that it's subject to foreign exchange fluctuation.

Also, we pay $800 for an iPhone, so your patriotic Apple makes sure that the third world gets to subsidize the first world's luxuries, if you're going to look at it like this. I mean, they do a fine job of exploiting China already.

Same for other hardware, the rig that costs you $1000 costs us $1300+. Wanna buy a GTX 680 for $580 or more? Come over here.

So seriously, suck up the BS. A carpenter in the US probably earns 5x as much as one would here. Economics isn't as simple as you think it is. But now you'll tell me you have a major in Economics, i'm sure.
 

This is true. The reason prices were so low in the first place was because people would simply pirate. And not by downloading, but buying pirated games for Rs. 100 or 50 (atm $1=Rs.60).

Now that people were starting to feel more responsible with software purchases, they've pulled this on us. Most parents can't justify spending a thousand rupees on a game.

Only reason i can afford games now is because i've been earning $100 a month for the last two years through part time journalism. Before that it was either illegal methods or i was at my parents' mercy...lol.

In comparison, watching a movie at a up-market cinema hall (like in a mall) costs Rs.250-300 (less than $5), and people readily spend there because they find it worth it.

A loaf of bread costs Rs.20-35.
 
Unfortunately, I think some gamers have a rather simplistic view of economics because in-game economies are so simplistic (not to mention screwed up). I'd love to see a game that actually simulates real-world economics to teach people about how currencies, economies, etc. actually work (or doesn't work, as the case is increasingly around the world).

I don't claim to understand the minutiae of real-world economics either, but I think it would be something interesting to learn as part of, for example, a massive MMO complete with different economies in different parts of the game world. Of course, you'd probably have to design some kind of limited resource structure, or you'll find in-game currencies quickly devalued through inflation if you could just keep mining indefinitely or pick up gold off corpses. ;P
 


I don't own any of the consoles. Do u know the reason why?
The cost of Budget gaming PC + cheaper PC games in India is cheaper than the cost of a console(PS3 in India was priced about just a little less than a budget gaming PC at launch) + 60$ console games in the long run.
And I'm a programmer so the cost of hardware is justified since i use it for a lot other purposes other than gaming.

I knew about 100 people personally in my old office(mostly males, girls dont play AAA video games in India) and all had good salary as per Indian standards and only one of them owned a PS3 and for good reason.
He had 2 little brothers and his family was richer than mine.







The poor Indian guy also cannot afford the what u call the 'cheap'(it is actually not cheap for us) PC games in India.




Your viewpoint is completely wrong. What u are trying to compare is the salary of a pizza delivery boy and an IT professional in your own country.
What u should compare are the salaries of IT professionals in America and India who does the same kind of work, works for the same hours, produce the same quantity and quality results.
I bet the American guy gets paid atleast 10 times[this is an underestimate probably] than the Indian guy.








The same can be said for US public.
 
Quote:
If US customers are paying $50 then so should every one else period. The price should be based on prices in the states and every country need to pay the same it is as simple as that.

.....that is the typical response of an American Republican Teabagger. Simple, not well thought out, devoid of any logic, devoid of any empathy, devoid of any multicultural research, devoid of economic reality, devoid of logic....and it is these people that want to control our country some day. Scary thought!
 


That was harsh.
But check this video just for fun

 
The thing is that pirated games cost 1$ per DVD (Yes it depends on number of DVDs of the game and not what the game it is and how old it is). It is easily and widely available. So if you are going to ask for 50$ for a game for which anyone can get 50 DVDs worth of games you are gonna have a bad time. For those people who say prices should be at par with those at international levels, it is just going to encourage piracy as there is virtually no repercussions for buying or downloading a pirated game in India.
 


Why is everyone talking that piracy will increase if EA raised its prices on its games?
Remember that EA plays its game very well.
Titanfall is a multiplayer only game that uses Microsoft's Cloud to do calculations.
So the probability of pirating Titanfall is almost 0 since there cannot be pirated servers.
And Titanfall is priced at 3499 INR.
And i bet the upcoming PC games are either multiplayer only or multiplayer focused games.
Very cheap smart move by EA.
Thats the reason for the protest otherwise we would have simply silently pirated the games.
 
I really don't understand all these comments about "everyone should pay the same price as the US". Really!? Do you fools even understand the concept of cost of living? Do you even know that the price of goods varies from state to state in the US, and even from city to city in the same state!? Just look at the cost of fuel across the US, if varies from east coast to west, some Major cities pay more than me some pay less. The price in each country should be different due to economic factors like cost of living. Heck I believe there should even be a discount for purchasing content digitally since there is cost for physical production of dvd's involved as in $50 for a physical copy and say $40-45 (or less) for purchasing digitally. I applaud the Indian gamers for boycotting and protesting EA's actions.
 

While i agree with the rest of your comment, this is complete crap. Girls do play AAA games here if you expose those games to them. They tend to not prefer mindless shooting games (like CoD, BF3), but i know plenty of exceptions...anyway, my definition of AAA games isn't mindless shooters, and girls do play those. It's just an unfortunate Indian mindset that discourages girls from playing games. Thankfully, it's changing slowly.


I can agree with this, though i think most people who can afford to pay for a legal copy. Also, now pirated copies are just a download away, so almost free...but no multiplayer on most.

And anyway, most of the times the pirated DVDs don't work, have malware, etc. and don't come with a guarantee.


SimCity Alert!
 


Only those multiplayer games are pirated that are popular enough and the server runner can atleast cover the cost of running the server. So yeah pirated multiplayer games are tough to find but they are not what Indian Gamers primarily look for because of various factors like ridiculous FUPs by Indian Broadband Companies. The other games which supposedly do calculations over the air (*Cough Cough* SimCity 2013) has been pirated. Single Player games cannot go into cloud because maintaining and running a server is expensive. If the game doesn't sell and it has cloud based calculation then they would lose more money on running the servers or if they chose to shutdown the servers they would either have to patch the game to run offline or well "Worst Company of the Year ( even beating BP after the oil spill for the crown) . So they would build a backdoor in the game which hackers can easily exploit. So single player games will always be pirated no matter what.
 


Well pirated DVDS do work, they have the same supposedly malware as the downloaded ones and yeah some people give guarantee on it . The thing is gaming is considered a huge waste of time by parents and the main people who game are college student. So the people who are almost living at 10000 per month and asking them to cough up 3500 will give them a no brainer decision to make. Even if the person is making 30000 a month (which is about the avg salary of a undergraduate in India) he still can think of a thousand different ways where that money would be well spent. Sure there are people who but games. But they are less than 5% (at most) of the gaming population in India. Plus SimCity 2013 has been cracked.
 


lol,rofl,hahahahahahahahahahaha................um hum
I dont have to say anything because u said it urself.



u mentioned which type of games they DO NOT play. But u did not answer the more important question - Which games DO they play? The only game i can think of is Portal.....well that isnt much.

Now i will tell u the most ridiculous thing u might have ever heard. I have 5 friends(all men) that work in a small indie gaming industry. They don't have decent GPUs in their home PCs and none of them own any of the consoles. They don't play video games and they work in a gaming industry!!!!. And u tell me that girls play AAA video games in India. lol. U must be a member of high rich society to tell that.





Dude u have no idea about the development side of video games do u.
First of all, the thing that Simcity 2013 uses cloud computations is a lie. This LINK might shed some light. So there is actually no problem in pirating Simcity 2013.
Whereas Titanfall for legit uses cloud computations and is the first of its kind. And dont even think that there can be pirated servers because its using the Microsoft Cloud and its entire hardware infrastructure. Do u think that pirates will make that infrastructure. Even if somehow it gets pirated do u think there will be a community to play it.

And about that singleplayer thingy. Do u think that ONLY SINGLEPLAYER games will be released by EA in future?
Remember BF3 - all reviewers said that u can completely skip the single player campaign and just play the multiplayer.


 
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