Those who trick the system with VPNs want to save money. The rich countries aren’t affected.

We see complaints on both ResetEra and Reddit. „[…] This is about regional pricing and how people from rich countries can screw over poor counties by taking advantages of it. So, when Steam opened up preorders on Horizon Zero Dawn, the price of the game in Argentina was 539 pesos (about 7 dollars). Overnight, that price went up to 2100 pesos. This is because of the number of people buying the game using a VPN to get the game cheap – Sony decided to up the price.

For everyone that doesn’t know, here in Argentina we have high inflation numbers every year. Due to customs, buying hardware here (consoles, PC parts, etc) can cost 2 or 3 times more than in the US. Gaming is an expensive hobby and here even more so. The only good thing we had in the last couple of years is having some stores on PC with competent regional prices, but if people in other countries keep abusing this, we won’t even have that.

In the end, I just wanted to vent a little and bring awareness that if you’re in a first-world country and abuse regional pricing to get games cheap, you’re actively hunting people that most likely have a lot less income than you,” the ResetEra post says.

Reddit has looked into the price hike. Argentina suffered from a 389% increase. Turkey follows with a 357% price hike, and Russia is third with a 301% price jump. All countries have regional pricing, and now, all of them are suffering from high prices, which could cut the local players off from legally acquiring the game. All because of people used VPNs to buy the game there. „Interestingly enough, as a result of this, the game can now be cheaper on the Epic Games Store than Steam despite EGS prices being a bit higher than Steam’s when the game was listed on the stores. This is because EGS has not seen any price increase,” the Reddit post concludes.

One person disagrees: „Steam’s price in Indonesia didn’t increase but the Epic Games Store price did. It was $14.44 at the start but now it’s $18.99. Ironically it’s cheaper now because of the $10 coupon.” (You get a coupon that you can use on games that cost 15+ dollars.)

Here are the system requirements:

Minimum system requirements:

• Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
• OS: Windows 10 x64
• Processor: Intel Core [email protected] or AMD FX [email protected], or better
• Memory: 8 GB RAM
• Graphics: Nvidia GeForce GTX 780 (3 GB) or AMD Radeon R9 290 (4GB)
• DirectX: Version 12
• Storage: 100 GB available space

 

Recommended system requirements:

• Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
• OS: Windows 10 x64
• Processor: Intel Core [email protected] or Ryzen 5 [email protected]
• Memory: 16 GB RAM
• Graphics: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 (6 GB) or AMD Radeon RX 580 (8GB)
• DirectX: Version 12
• Storage: 100 GB available space

 

Horizon Zero Dawn Complete Edition launches on August 7 on PC. Those who are in the EU pricing region, without using the euro as their currency, are still screwed with no local pricing.

Source: VG247

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