Is this about preventing people from buying the game in EU countries where it's sold cheaper to then use in their own EU country?
Yes, it is exactly that. This likely will effectively eliminate regional pricing for the EU.
We have this here in the Americas. Some Central and South American countries can buy keys cheaper than we can in the United States.
Regional pricing is (was) the industry's way of trying to provide more inclusive access to gaming entertainment. Regional locks are what they use to ensure rich countries can't exploit that system. With those locks gone the incentive to provide regional pricing is done. Companies aren't going to take a revenue loss so greedy rich gamers can exploit a loophole.
Yeah I get that the companies' reaction will lead to higher prices for those currently getting a break but I can't help but compare this to international bargain hunting for analog goods that can't be geo-locked or international bargain hunting to manufacture products in countries with lower wages.
It also makes me wonder about games that have geo-locked versions to comply with unique local censorship requirements as used to be the case (it may still be) with games displaying Nazi symbols in Germany, the biggest gaming market in the EU.
And then I start thinking about strange concepts such as "minimal viable pricing" on the assumption that the lower prices for some countries is not charity sold at a loss but that it still turns a profit... just not as much of a profit as sales in countries affluent enough to pay higher prices.
I guess I'm ambivalent about whether this is a good or bad thing. It's not black and white to me.
Physical goods often have a considerable cost of production, so you really can't sell them all that much cheaper in poorer parts of the world. If it costs $8 each to build widgets and you're selling them in the United States for $10 each, then you make money. If you determine that you can't sell them for more than $5 each in Senegal, then building them for $8 and selling for $5 means you lose money on every one, so you won't bother.
They also have a considerable cost of transportation, so even if you sell widgets for $5 each in Paraguay and $10 each in the United States, if it costs $10 each to ship widgets from Paraguay to the United States, you can't get cheaper widgets in the US by importing them.
Neither of those costs are significant for computer software. It costs a lot of money to build the first copy of a program, but once you have one, making a million more copies of it costs basically nothing. Furthermore, digitally transferring the software (or especially just license keys) also costs basically nothing. So it's easy to charge different prices in different places without losing money on each unit sold, and it's also easy for customers to cheat the system by importing licenses from poorer areas.
It isn't about rich and poor countries it is about the value of their currency. If you price something in US dollars where one US dollar is worth 100 of their currency and it then becomes very expensive then you're placing the product out of their reach. So they price it according to the value in their currency. This isn't about discrimination the way you seem to think.
Don't forget that we have our own cost of living and taxes. Of course if you take your currency and visit a country that has 5 times the value it will seem cheap but the things costs according to what the earning power is there.
Companies who do business and want to sell in those places have to price items in equivalent terms. It isn't about parity it is about value.
I believe Big Mac Index addresses this very issue. Note: Big Mac costs differently in Norway and in Zimbabwe, but it's McD's intent for it to cost the same % of average salary. And that's fair imo.
No, costing the same fraction of salary is not their intent. Rather, the Big Mac costs different amounts of money in different places because beef and cheese and human labor and so forth costs different amounts of money in different places. The reason that the Big Mac is used as a pricing index is because it is basically the same everywhere in the world. That gives you a measure of how much it costs to buy a fixed budget of goods and labor in different places. For many other goods, part of the reason why the analogous goods are more expensive in some places than others is that the goods themselves are different.
same on EU wages ..as Austria ( cca 3.5k eur netto/month ) has borders with Germany ( 3k ), Czech ( 1k ), Slovakia ( 700eur ), Hungary ( 700e ), Slovenia ( 800eur ), Italy ( 2k ) ..so what's the correct pricing here for each or global country? Central Europe.
And don't forget Luxembourg, Finland, Denmark where the salaries goes around 6k.
Also 60USD isn't 60EUR as we can see games going for. I hate the fairness in this. I would like to see EUR drop to half of a dollar and the companies still keep the pricing.
same on EU wages ..as Austria ( cca 3.5k eur netto/month ) has borders with Germany ( 3k ), Czech ( 1k ), Slovakia ( 700eur ), Hungary ( 700e ), Slovenia ( 800eur ), Italy ( 2k ) ..so what's the correct pricing here for each or global country? Central Europe.
And don't forget Luxembourg, Finland, Denmark where the salaries goes around 6k.
Also 60USD isn't 60EUR as we can see games going for. I hate the fairness in this. I would like to see EUR drop to half of a dollar and the companies still keep the pricing.
In Europe we pay 60 euro’s instead of 60 dollars because they are poorer then us over in the USA. And THATS the power of local pricing/geo blocking etc., they couldn’t afford 60 euro games so they get a discount
/Cheers, Lahnmir
'the only way he could nail it any better is if he used a cross.'
Kyleran on yours sincerely
'But there are many. You can play them entirely solo, and even offline. Also, you are wrong by default.'
Ikcin in response to yours sincerely debating whether or not single-player offline MMOs exist...
'This does not apply just to ED but SC or any other game. What they will get is Rebirth/X4, likely prettier but equally underwhelming and pointless.
It is incredibly difficult to design some meaningfull leg content that would fit a space ship game - simply because it is not a leg game.
It is just huge resource waste....'
Gdemami absolutely not being an armchair developer
same on EU wages ..as Austria ( cca 3.5k eur netto/month ) has borders with Germany ( 3k ), Czech ( 1k ), Slovakia ( 700eur ), Hungary ( 700e ), Slovenia ( 800eur ), Italy ( 2k ) ..so what's the correct pricing here for each or global country? Central Europe.
And don't forget Luxembourg, Finland, Denmark where the salaries goes around 6k.
Also 60USD isn't 60EUR as we can see games going for. I hate the fairness in this. I would like to see EUR drop to half of a dollar and the companies still keep the pricing.
In Europe we pay 60 euro’s instead of 60 dollars because they are poorer then us over in the USA. And THATS the power of local pricing/geo blocking etc., they couldn’t afford 60 euro games so they get a discount
/Cheers, Lahnmir
Prices in Europe customarily include tax. Prices in the US customarily do not.
There is still geo-blocking according to each countries rules. This rule about geo-blocking applies to the EU member states. It is illegal for publishers and retailers to block keys bought in one state from being activated in another.
Publishers and retailers must comply with EU regulations and the laws and regulations of each country they sell in. So in Germany, for example, keys for games with blocked content cannot be sold within Germany and keys from other regions can be blocked. This I sourced from comments by Germans on another gaming site.
Regional pricing is allowed. For physical goods there are other taxes and shipping fees that can be applied. There are costs and supply limitations for physical goods being sold cheaper in other regions and transported to "richer" regions with a higher cost of living.
This isn't a "black and white" moral issue. It's just how Capitalism works. Digital goods were provided to people in poor regions to make them accessible. There is certainly profit to be made from this, however I doubt revenue projections are ever based on the buying power of the poorest regions on the planet. So, while there is profit to be made they are also making an effort to include regions which would otherwise not be economically viable in and of themselves. Big AAA publisher isn't going to spend $500M USD on a game that will sell in Baltic nations for pennies of profit per unit.
The TL;DR - Publishers can and must geoblock according to local laws. This really only affects poor nations who will get screwed over by poor (or a complete lack of) modern and relevant digital consumer laws and regulations.
Just for the record I totally and completely disagree that "poor nations" should have some kind of subsidized support for video games. I do totally agree that the companies should be able to charge whoever they want, whatever they want though. Just to me, that kind of discrimination (Oh you are from the US so you must be rich. You are from Brazil so you must be poor) is personally horrific. It's not something I want them to do, but I believe they should have the freedom to price their product however they want.
The simple fact is this : in the USA, at federal minimum wage, a sixty dollar game is roughly 10 hours of work, after taxes. 7 (or less) if you live in a state with at least a $10 minimum wage.
Depending on where one lives, that can be weeks (or more) of wage. In Brazil for example, their average monthly income this year is expected to be the equivalent of $500 USD. That’s less than what I pay for my share of rent and bills. Without the country-based price adjustments video games at $60 would be a product of adult saving up over several months.
Are you saying that because they don’t live in the US they shouldn’t be able to play video games?
Are you saying that video games are some kind of basic human right and that people from one country should fund them so that others can then satisfy that basic human need?
As I have said repeatedly, I believe a company should have the freedom to charge whoever they want, whatever they want. Personally I find price discrimination to be disgusting. We aren't talking about drinking water or medicine. We are literally talking about games.
Quick, someone grab Greta, and let's start a campaign about the basic human rights of video games, raise them to 70 in wealthy countries so we can get them even cheaper for poorer places!
Hate to break it to you, but new games already are starting to charge $70.
When I looked up GeoBlocking, it was as the name implies. Blocking the content. So, in short the access to that service/product is blocked not priced differently.
This is a new thing to me, so, I could be reading it all wrong.
In any case, price variance is not a new thing, in physical product this is super common, even different states in the US have variable prices due to changes in local and state taxes and laws, as well as regions of production.
IE: If you live in a heavy lumber region the cost of a 2x4 will be cheaper then if you live in a desert region and the wood needs to be shipped 1200 miles to get to you.
This is something we all grasp, local goods tend to be cheaper than imported, Obviously government also plays a role where the more asinine and restrictive the laws coupled with higher cost of delivery and production the more things will ultimately cost.
This is just the basic way life works.
I am not sure how this affects digital products that have no physical transport involved, since they have no added cost due to region generated vs region delivered to, nor are they really affected much by local laws or wages.
I could see some companies not wanting to deal with nations that have rules and laws they disagree with, like that whole Loot Box issues, where some nations deemed it gambling, so they opted to not provide their service to those nations. That simply makes sense, just like any company would not want to deal with a nation or municipal that makes selling their product difficult.
Ideally it seems rather pointless to charge people more for translations that already exist, and the like, because that does not modify the overall cost of the product as it is made, and quite frankly I think there should be laws to ensure that price gouging does not exist if say someone wants an English Language version of a game, even if they live somewhere like China.
Egotism is the anesthetic that dullens the pain of stupidity, this is why when I try to beat my head against the stupidity of other people, I only hurt myself.
same on EU wages ..as Austria ( cca 3.5k eur netto/month ) has borders with Germany ( 3k ), Czech ( 1k ), Slovakia ( 700eur ), Hungary ( 700e ), Slovenia ( 800eur ), Italy ( 2k ) ..so what's the correct pricing here for each or global country? Central Europe.
And don't forget Luxembourg, Finland, Denmark where the salaries goes around 6k.
Also 60USD isn't 60EUR as we can see games going for. I hate the fairness in this. I would like to see EUR drop to half of a dollar and the companies still keep the pricing.
In Europe we pay 60 euro’s instead of 60 dollars because they are poorer then us over in the USA. And THATS the power of local pricing/geo blocking etc., they couldn’t afford 60 euro games so they get a discount
/Cheers, Lahnmir
Prices in Europe customarily include tax. Prices in the US customarily do not.
I know, but the being poor makes for a much better story
/Cheers, Lahnmir
'the only way he could nail it any better is if he used a cross.'
Kyleran on yours sincerely
'But there are many. You can play them entirely solo, and even offline. Also, you are wrong by default.'
Ikcin in response to yours sincerely debating whether or not single-player offline MMOs exist...
'This does not apply just to ED but SC or any other game. What they will get is Rebirth/X4, likely prettier but equally underwhelming and pointless.
It is incredibly difficult to design some meaningfull leg content that would fit a space ship game - simply because it is not a leg game.
It is just huge resource waste....'
Gdemami absolutely not being an armchair developer
There is still geo-blocking according to each countries rules. This rule about geo-blocking applies to the EU member states. It is illegal for publishers and retailers to block keys bought in one state from being activated in another.
Publishers and retailers must comply with EU regulations and the laws and regulations of each country they sell in. So in Germany, for example, keys for games with blocked content cannot be sold within Germany and keys from other regions can be blocked. This I sourced from comments by Germans on another gaming site.
Regional pricing is allowed. For physical goods there are other taxes and shipping fees that can be applied. There are costs and supply limitations for physical goods being sold cheaper in other regions and transported to "richer" regions with a higher cost of living.
This isn't a "black and white" moral issue. It's just how Capitalism works. Digital goods were provided to people in poor regions to make them accessible. There is certainly profit to be made from this, however I doubt revenue projections are ever based on the buying power of the poorest regions on the planet. So, while there is profit to be made they are also making an effort to include regions which would otherwise not be economically viable in and of themselves. Big AAA publisher isn't going to spend $500M USD on a game that will sell in Baltic nations for pennies of profit per unit.
The TL;DR - Publishers can and must geoblock according to local laws. This really only affects poor nations who will get screwed over by poor (or a complete lack of) modern and relevant digital consumer laws and regulations.
Just for the record I totally and completely disagree that "poor nations" should have some kind of subsidized support for video games. I do totally agree that the companies should be able to charge whoever they want, whatever they want though. Just to me, that kind of discrimination (Oh you are from the US so you must be rich. You are from Brazil so you must be poor) is personally horrific. It's not something I want them to do, but I believe they should have the freedom to price their product however they want.
The simple fact is this : in the USA, at federal minimum wage, a sixty dollar game is roughly 10 hours of work, after taxes. 7 (or less) if you live in a state with at least a $10 minimum wage.
Depending on where one lives, that can be weeks (or more) of wage. In Brazil for example, their average monthly income this year is expected to be the equivalent of $500 USD. That’s less than what I pay for my share of rent and bills. Without the country-based price adjustments video games at $60 would be a product of adult saving up over several months.
Are you saying that because they don’t live in the US they shouldn’t be able to play video games?
Are you saying that video games are some kind of basic human right and that people from one country should fund them so that others can then satisfy that basic human need?
As I have said repeatedly, I believe a company should have the freedom to charge whoever they want, whatever they want. Personally I find price discrimination to be disgusting. We aren't talking about drinking water or medicine. We are literally talking about games.
Here's the hypocrisy. It is perfectly alright to relocate and exploit and make your goods in another country while happily flouting the regulations that control the production in your own country but when it comes to sharing those luxuries we're suddenly not entitled to it.
Is this about preventing people from buying the game in EU countries where it's sold cheaper to then use in their own EU country?
Yes, it is exactly that. This likely will effectively eliminate regional pricing for the EU.
We have this here in the Americas. Some Central and South American countries can buy keys cheaper than we can in the United States.
Regional pricing is (was) the industry's way of trying to provide more inclusive access to gaming entertainment. Regional locks are what they use to ensure rich countries can't exploit that system. With those locks gone the incentive to provide regional pricing is done. Companies aren't going to take a revenue loss so greedy rich gamers can exploit a loophole.
Yeah I get that the companies' reaction will lead to higher prices for those currently getting a break but I can't help but compare this to international bargain hunting for analog goods that can't be geo-locked or international bargain hunting to manufacture products in countries with lower wages.
It also makes me wonder about games that have geo-locked versions to comply with unique local censorship requirements as used to be the case (it may still be) with games displaying Nazi symbols in Germany, the biggest gaming market in the EU.
And then I start thinking about strange concepts such as "minimal viable pricing" on the assumption that the lower prices for some countries is not charity sold at a loss but that it still turns a profit... just not as much of a profit as sales in countries affluent enough to pay higher prices.
I guess I'm ambivalent about whether this is a good or bad thing. It's not black and white to me.
Physical goods often have a considerable cost of production, so you really can't sell them all that much cheaper in poorer parts of the world. If it costs $8 each to build widgets and you're selling them in the United States for $10 each, then you make money. If you determine that you can't sell them for more than $5 each in Senegal, then building them for $8 and selling for $5 means you lose money on every one, so you won't bother.
They also have a considerable cost of transportation, so even if you sell widgets for $5 each in Paraguay and $10 each in the United States, if it costs $10 each to ship widgets from Paraguay to the United States, you can't get cheaper widgets in the US by importing them.
Neither of those costs are significant for computer software. It costs a lot of money to build the first copy of a program, but once you have one, making a million more copies of it costs basically nothing. Furthermore, digitally transferring the software (or especially just license keys) also costs basically nothing. So it's easy to charge different prices in different places without losing money on each unit sold, and it's also easy for customers to cheat the system by importing licenses from poorer areas.
Shipping costs for a forty foot container from Shanghai to Port of Vancouver costs $2300 cad and normally takes three weeks. I can fit a hell of a lot of product in a forty foot container. In most cases shipping costs are negligible. The shipping and distribution around North America is much more expensive than shipping from Asia to North America.
Some of the products I use to manufacture myself are now imported from Asia because I can purchase the finished painted product cheaper than the raw material costs here, even the materials that are imported from there. In the last three years I've even started having tool and die work done in China. I can send my Solidworks tooling designs to China and have the tools delivered to my door within 4 - 6 weeks at 20% of the cost that it would cost me to do here. I don't have enough tradesmen to keep up. The vast majority of them are retired or dead and we in North America don't produce enough of them anymore and thats because we import everything. My newest hires in the Tool & Die field are immigrants from Iran. Very intelligent, respectful, hard working people. A definate asset to my business. I looked for over two years unsuccessfully to find competent domestic tradesmen.
Believe you me, taking a walk through a Home Depot and seeing the prices on some of the products. I don't know whether to laugh or cry because I see products that sell for $5 or $6 each that I sell for 30-40 cents each. They sell mass produced products in there that if you wanted 50 or a 100 pieces, I can custom make them for you cheaper per unit then they're charging.
There is an old saying... "charge what people are willing to pay"
Ten years ago when the canadian dollar was equal to the U.S. dollar I was listening on the radio to an interview with a Starbucks executive. Canadian prices vs U.S. prices have always been a sore point here. The interviewer asked the Starbucks executive why a coffee mug that costs $8 in the U.S. cost over $17 in Canada? The executives answer was that Americans were only willing to pay $8 for that coffee cup while Canadians were willing to pay the $17.
There is still geo-blocking according to each countries rules. This rule about geo-blocking applies to the EU member states. It is illegal for publishers and retailers to block keys bought in one state from being activated in another.
Publishers and retailers must comply with EU regulations and the laws and regulations of each country they sell in. So in Germany, for example, keys for games with blocked content cannot be sold within Germany and keys from other regions can be blocked. This I sourced from comments by Germans on another gaming site.
Regional pricing is allowed. For physical goods there are other taxes and shipping fees that can be applied. There are costs and supply limitations for physical goods being sold cheaper in other regions and transported to "richer" regions with a higher cost of living.
This isn't a "black and white" moral issue. It's just how Capitalism works. Digital goods were provided to people in poor regions to make them accessible. There is certainly profit to be made from this, however I doubt revenue projections are ever based on the buying power of the poorest regions on the planet. So, while there is profit to be made they are also making an effort to include regions which would otherwise not be economically viable in and of themselves. Big AAA publisher isn't going to spend $500M USD on a game that will sell in Baltic nations for pennies of profit per unit.
The TL;DR - Publishers can and must geoblock according to local laws. This really only affects poor nations who will get screwed over by poor (or a complete lack of) modern and relevant digital consumer laws and regulations.
Just for the record I totally and completely disagree that "poor nations" should have some kind of subsidized support for video games. I do totally agree that the companies should be able to charge whoever they want, whatever they want though. Just to me, that kind of discrimination (Oh you are from the US so you must be rich. You are from Brazil so you must be poor) is personally horrific. It's not something I want them to do, but I believe they should have the freedom to price their product however they want.
The simple fact is this : in the USA, at federal minimum wage, a sixty dollar game is roughly 10 hours of work, after taxes. 7 (or less) if you live in a state with at least a $10 minimum wage.
Depending on where one lives, that can be weeks (or more) of wage. In Brazil for example, their average monthly income this year is expected to be the equivalent of $500 USD. That’s less than what I pay for my share of rent and bills. Without the country-based price adjustments video games at $60 would be a product of adult saving up over several months.
Are you saying that because they don’t live in the US they shouldn’t be able to play video games?
Are you saying that video games are some kind of basic human right and that people from one country should fund them so that others can then satisfy that basic human need?
As I have said repeatedly, I believe a company should have the freedom to charge whoever they want, whatever they want. Personally I find price discrimination to be disgusting. We aren't talking about drinking water or medicine. We are literally talking about games.
Here's the hypocrisy. It is perfectly alright to relocate and exploit and make your goods in another country while happily flouting the regulations that control the production in your own country but when it comes to sharing those luxuries we're suddenly not entitled to it.
So you are suggesting that the games were outsourced to Brazil? Or are you just trying to make some silly political point?
Even then, your analogy is wrong. What is actually happening here is that companies are asking places like the US, Germany, etc... to fund the development costs of a game so that other countries can enjoy them at a dramatically discounted rate.
The entitlement in that post you made is stunning. That you EXPECT citizens of other countries to fund the cost of games so that you can pay a tiny sliver of that cost to play them yourself. As I said... this isn't clean water or food or some basic human need. We are talking about GAMES.
And for the third time... I do support the rights of these companies to sell to whoever they want at whatever prices they want. But I find it personally disgusting.
PS: And if you think I support outsourcing production of anything then you have apparently missed my posts for the last decade.
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
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Is this about preventing people from buying the game in EU countries where it's sold cheaper to then use in their own EU country?
Yes, it is exactly that. This likely will effectively eliminate regional pricing for the EU.
We have this here in the Americas. Some Central and South American countries can buy keys cheaper than we can in the United States.
Regional pricing is (was) the industry's way of trying to provide more inclusive access to gaming entertainment. Regional locks are what they use to ensure rich countries can't exploit that system. With those locks gone the incentive to provide regional pricing is done. Companies aren't going to take a revenue loss so greedy rich gamers can exploit a loophole.
So its ok for greedy rich companies to exploit their customers ???
Top 3 MMO's PRE-CU SWG GW1 GW2
Worst 2 wow and Lotro Under standing stones it went woke
Is this about preventing people from buying the game in EU countries where it's sold cheaper to then use in their own EU country?
Yes, it is exactly that. This likely will effectively eliminate regional pricing for the EU.
We have this here in the Americas. Some Central and South American countries can buy keys cheaper than we can in the United States.
Regional pricing is (was) the industry's way of trying to provide more inclusive access to gaming entertainment. Regional locks are what they use to ensure rich countries can't exploit that system. With those locks gone the incentive to provide regional pricing is done. Companies aren't going to take a revenue loss so greedy rich gamers can exploit a loophole.
So its ok for greedy rich companies to exploit their customers ???
It's ok for them to charge whatever they want. It's also ok for us not to buy their products.
If enough people "don't" buy their products they will rethink their prices. If enough people "do" buy their products then they don't have to.
Now, if it's food or medicine or basics of life then "no" I don't think companies should charge high costs just to see how much they can make. But video games?
Yeah, charge $1000 bucks for all I care and see if people bite.
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
Is this about preventing people from buying the game in EU countries where it's sold cheaper to then use in their own EU country?
Yes, it is exactly that. This likely will effectively eliminate regional pricing for the EU.
We have this here in the Americas. Some Central and South American countries can buy keys cheaper than we can in the United States.
Regional pricing is (was) the industry's way of trying to provide more inclusive access to gaming entertainment. Regional locks are what they use to ensure rich countries can't exploit that system. With those locks gone the incentive to provide regional pricing is done. Companies aren't going to take a revenue loss so greedy rich gamers can exploit a loophole.
Yeah I get that the companies' reaction will lead to higher prices for those currently getting a break but I can't help but compare this to international bargain hunting for analog goods that can't be geo-locked or international bargain hunting to manufacture products in countries with lower wages.
It also makes me wonder about games that have geo-locked versions to comply with unique local censorship requirements as used to be the case (it may still be) with games displaying Nazi symbols in Germany, the biggest gaming market in the EU.
And then I start thinking about strange concepts such as "minimal viable pricing" on the assumption that the lower prices for some countries is not charity sold at a loss but that it still turns a profit... just not as much of a profit as sales in countries affluent enough to pay higher prices.
I guess I'm ambivalent about whether this is a good or bad thing. It's not black and white to me.
Physical goods often have a considerable cost of production, so you really can't sell them all that much cheaper in poorer parts of the world. If it costs $8 each to build widgets and you're selling them in the United States for $10 each, then you make money. If you determine that you can't sell them for more than $5 each in Senegal, then building them for $8 and selling for $5 means you lose money on every one, so you won't bother.
They also have a considerable cost of transportation, so even if you sell widgets for $5 each in Paraguay and $10 each in the United States, if it costs $10 each to ship widgets from Paraguay to the United States, you can't get cheaper widgets in the US by importing them.
Neither of those costs are significant for computer software. It costs a lot of money to build the first copy of a program, but once you have one, making a million more copies of it costs basically nothing. Furthermore, digitally transferring the software (or especially just license keys) also costs basically nothing. So it's easy to charge different prices in different places without losing money on each unit sold, and it's also easy for customers to cheat the system by importing licenses from poorer areas.
Shipping costs for a forty foot container from Shanghai to Port of Vancouver costs $2300 cad and normally takes three weeks. I can fit a hell of a lot of product in a forty foot container. In most cases shipping costs are negligible. The shipping and distribution around North America is much more expensive than shipping from Asia to North America.
Some of the products I use to manufacture myself are now imported from Asia because I can purchase the finished painted product cheaper than the raw material costs here, even the materials that are imported from there. In the last three years I've even started having tool and die work done in China. I can send my Solidworks tooling designs to China and have the tools delivered to my door within 4 - 6 weeks at 20% of the cost that it would cost me to do here. I don't have enough tradesmen to keep up. The vast majority of them are retired or dead and we in North America don't produce enough of them anymore and thats because we import everything. My newest hires in the Tool & Die field are immigrants from Iran. Very intelligent, respectful, hard working people. A definate asset to my business. I looked for over two years unsuccessfully to find competent domestic tradesmen.
Believe you me, taking a walk through a Home Depot and seeing the prices on some of the products. I don't know whether to laugh or cry because I see products that sell for $5 or $6 each that I sell for 30-40 cents each. They sell mass produced products in there that if you wanted 50 or a 100 pieces, I can custom make them for you cheaper per unit then they're charging.
There is an old saying... "charge what people are willing to pay"
Ten years ago when the canadian dollar was equal to the U.S. dollar I was listening on the radio to an interview with a Starbucks executive. Canadian prices vs U.S. prices have always been a sore point here. The interviewer asked the Starbucks executive why a coffee mug that costs $8 in the U.S. cost over $17 in Canada? The executives answer was that Americans were only willing to pay $8 for that coffee cup while Canadians were willing to pay the $17.
How important shipping costs are depends on several factors:
1) how large, heavy, and bulky the goods are 2) how valuable the goods are 3) where they need to be shipped to and from 4) how large of quantities you can reasonably expect to sell
For small, valuable goods such as CPUs, the money cost of shipping across the ocean is generally trivial, and the time cost is the one that matters. For bulky, cheap goods such as toilet paper, the cost of shipping it halfway around the world even from one port to another can be a significant fraction of its value.
Yes, it's cheap to ship containers from one major port to another. But that's not an option, or at least doesn't cover the expensive part of the journey, if you need to ship goods to Nepal.
Being able to fit ten thousand widgets into a shipping container is great if you can sell them by the millions. It doesn't do you as much good if you can only sell a hundred widgets per year.
They also have a considerable cost of transportation, so even if you sell widgets for $5 each in Paraguay and $10 each in the United States, if it costs $10 each to ship widgets from Paraguay to the United States, you can't get cheaper widgets in the US by importing them.
Neither of those costs are significant for computer software. It costs a lot of money to build the first copy of a program, but once you have one, making a million more copies of it costs basically nothing. Furthermore, digitally transferring the software (or especially just license keys) also costs basically nothing. So it's easy to charge different prices in different places without losing money on each unit sold, and it's also easy for customers to cheat the system by importing licenses from poorer areas.
Shipping costs for a forty foot container from Shanghai to Port of Vancouver costs $2300 cad and normally takes three weeks. I can fit a hell of a lot of product in a forty foot container. In most cases shipping costs are negligible. The shipping and distribution around North America is much more expensive than shipping from Asia to North America.
Some of the products I use to manufacture myself are now imported from Asia because I can purchase the finished painted product cheaper than the raw material costs here, even the materials that are imported from there. In the last three years I've even started having tool and die work done in China. I can send my Solidworks tooling designs to China and have the tools delivered to my door within 4 - 6 weeks at 20% of the cost that it would cost me to do here. I don't have enough tradesmen to keep up. The vast majority of them are retired or dead and we in North America don't produce enough of them anymore and thats because we import everything. My newest hires in the Tool & Die field are immigrants from Iran. Very intelligent, respectful, hard working people. A definate asset to my business. I looked for over two years unsuccessfully to find competent domestic tradesmen.
Believe you me, taking a walk through a Home Depot and seeing the prices on some of the products. I don't know whether to laugh or cry because I see products that sell for $5 or $6 each that I sell for 30-40 cents each. They sell mass produced products in there that if you wanted 50 or a 100 pieces, I can custom make them for you cheaper per unit then they're charging.
There is an old saying... "charge what people are willing to pay"
Ten years ago when the canadian dollar was equal to the U.S. dollar I was listening on the radio to an interview with a Starbucks executive. Canadian prices vs U.S. prices have always been a sore point here. The interviewer asked the Starbucks executive why a coffee mug that costs $8 in the U.S. cost over $17 in Canada? The executives answer was that Americans were only willing to pay $8 for that coffee cup while Canadians were willing to pay the $17.
How important shipping costs are depends on several factors:
1) how large, heavy, and bulky the goods are 2) how valuable the goods are 3) where they need to be shipped to and from 4) how large of quantities you can reasonably expect to sell
For small, valuable goods such as CPUs, the money cost of shipping across the ocean is generally trivial, and the time cost is the one that matters. For bulky, cheap goods such as toilet paper, the cost of shipping it halfway around the world even from one port to another can be a significant fraction of its value.
Yes, it's cheap to ship containers from one major port to another. But that's not an option, or at least doesn't cover the expensive part of the journey, if you need to ship goods to Nepal.
Being able to fit ten thousand widgets into a shipping container is great if you can sell them by the millions. It doesn't do you as much good if you can only sell a hundred widgets per year.
I've paid 10k to have an oversized load ( $1,200,000.00 usd presision industrial fiber laser) on a special air ride trailer delivered from Farmington Connecticut to Vancouver. I've also paid 4.6k to have a 1200lb special lifting bracket to be flown from the same location on an emergency 24hr delivery.
I've paid 35k to have a similar machine shipped from Chur Switzerland via Hamburg Germany to the port of Vancouver.
I've had to pay for a couple longshoreman at port to lift a 69ton machine off a special skid and on to a truck because of height restrictions. It took them 30 minutes and they charged me 4k. They have you by the balls, you have no choice
You can buy solid wood furniture from Malaysia here for cheap cheap. Landed undamaged and sold cheaper than a photo finished particle board piece of crap cost you back in the 1980's.
The shipping cost for the vast majority of your average consumer items is negligible. Look how cheap produce is shipped from one side of the world to the other. Produce is one of the harder more expensive things to ship.
Quantities don't matter, what matters is whether its worth your while.
same on EU wages ..as Austria ( cca 3.5k eur netto/month ) has borders with Germany ( 3k ), Czech ( 1k ), Slovakia ( 700eur ), Hungary ( 700e ), Slovenia ( 800eur ), Italy ( 2k ) ..so what's the correct pricing here for each or global country? Central Europe.
And don't forget Luxembourg, Finland, Denmark where the salaries goes around 6k.
Also 60USD isn't 60EUR as we can see games going for. I hate the fairness in this. I would like to see EUR drop to half of a dollar and the companies still keep the pricing.
In Europe we pay 60 euro’s instead of 60 dollars because they are poorer then us over in the USA. And THATS the power of local pricing/geo blocking etc., they couldn’t afford 60 euro games so they get a discount
/Cheers, Lahnmir
Prices in Europe customarily include tax. Prices in the US customarily do not.
We've got tax on top of tax on top of tax basically
We have taxes in the US, too, though commonly at lower rates than much of Europe. It's just that in the US, prices are typically quoted without tax. You find out what the tax is when you go to check out.
same on EU wages ..as Austria ( cca 3.5k eur netto/month ) has borders with Germany ( 3k ), Czech ( 1k ), Slovakia ( 700eur ), Hungary ( 700e ), Slovenia ( 800eur ), Italy ( 2k ) ..so what's the correct pricing here for each or global country? Central Europe.
And don't forget Luxembourg, Finland, Denmark where the salaries goes around 6k.
Also 60USD isn't 60EUR as we can see games going for. I hate the fairness in this. I would like to see EUR drop to half of a dollar and the companies still keep the pricing.
In Europe we pay 60 euro’s instead of 60 dollars because they are poorer then us over in the USA. And THATS the power of local pricing/geo blocking etc., they couldn’t afford 60 euro games so they get a discount
/Cheers, Lahnmir
Prices in Europe customarily include tax. Prices in the US customarily do not.
We've got tax on top of tax on top of tax basically
We have taxes in the US, too, though commonly at lower rates than much of Europe. It's just that in the US, prices are typically quoted without tax. You find out what the tax is when you go to check out.
Taxes are lower in the US, but not knowing the tax before you check out would be seen as almost a stealth tax over here.
same on EU wages ..as Austria ( cca 3.5k eur netto/month ) has borders with Germany ( 3k ), Czech ( 1k ), Slovakia ( 700eur ), Hungary ( 700e ), Slovenia ( 800eur ), Italy ( 2k ) ..so what's the correct pricing here for each or global country? Central Europe.
And don't forget Luxembourg, Finland, Denmark where the salaries goes around 6k.
Also 60USD isn't 60EUR as we can see games going for. I hate the fairness in this. I would like to see EUR drop to half of a dollar and the companies still keep the pricing.
In Europe we pay 60 euro’s instead of 60 dollars because they are poorer then us over in the USA. And THATS the power of local pricing/geo blocking etc., they couldn’t afford 60 euro games so they get a discount
/Cheers, Lahnmir
Prices in Europe customarily include tax. Prices in the US customarily do not.
We've got tax on top of tax on top of tax basically
We have taxes in the US, too, though commonly at lower rates than much of Europe. It's just that in the US, prices are typically quoted without tax. You find out what the tax is when you go to check out.
Taxes are lower in the US, but not knowing the tax before you check out would be seen as almost a stealth tax over here.
Not knowing the tax would be seen as illegal in most of Europe. When marketing is targeted to consumers here the price must include value added tax.
same on EU wages ..as Austria ( cca 3.5k eur netto/month ) has borders with Germany ( 3k ), Czech ( 1k ), Slovakia ( 700eur ), Hungary ( 700e ), Slovenia ( 800eur ), Italy ( 2k ) ..so what's the correct pricing here for each or global country? Central Europe.
And don't forget Luxembourg, Finland, Denmark where the salaries goes around 6k.
Also 60USD isn't 60EUR as we can see games going for. I hate the fairness in this. I would like to see EUR drop to half of a dollar and the companies still keep the pricing.
In Europe we pay 60 euro’s instead of 60 dollars because they are poorer then us over in the USA. And THATS the power of local pricing/geo blocking etc., they couldn’t afford 60 euro games so they get a discount
/Cheers, Lahnmir
Prices in Europe customarily include tax. Prices in the US customarily do not.
We've got tax on top of tax on top of tax basically
We have taxes in the US, too, though commonly at lower rates than much of Europe. It's just that in the US, prices are typically quoted without tax. You find out what the tax is when you go to check out.
Taxes are lower in the US, but not knowing the tax before you check out would be seen as almost a stealth tax over here.
You will see the total with tax and shipping during the checkout process. The tax is based on your local and State sales tax rate. Where I live it is 7%. I think the highest is 9.5 and some States have zero.
Typically you see your tax when you also see the shipping charge.
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
In Europe we pay 60 euro’s instead of 60 dollars because they are poorer then us over in the USA. And THATS the power of local pricing/geo blocking etc., they couldn’t afford 60 euro games so they get a discount
/Cheers, Lahnmir
Prices in Europe customarily include tax. Prices in the US customarily do not.
We've got tax on top of tax on top of tax basically
We have taxes in the US, too, though commonly at lower rates than much of Europe. It's just that in the US, prices are typically quoted without tax. You find out what the tax is when you go to check out.
Taxes are lower in the US, but not knowing the tax before you check out would be seen as almost a stealth tax over here.
Not knowing the tax would be seen as illegal in most of Europe. When marketing is targeted to consumers here the price must include value added tax.
in the US, you have State, Local, and Federal Taxes, lets say Taco Bell runs a sale, where they sell a beefy 5 layer burrito for 1.99+tax. As opposed to making a bunch of banners that adjust according to local regions, they make one Banner that says 1.99+tax.
On your Receipt, you will see the exact tax amount you paid.
America also has taxable and non-taxable goods. Like Direct Food is Non-Taxable. IE: You typically don't pay taxes on an Apple.
While Other states have additional taxes on services, like for example, In California, they have a service tax you pay for the privilege of doing business in California.
There are a lot of days when I think really America would be better off being like Europe and separate into individual Nations.
Egotism is the anesthetic that dullens the pain of stupidity, this is why when I try to beat my head against the stupidity of other people, I only hurt myself.
There are a lot of days when I think really America would be better off being like Europe and separate into individual Nations.
Yes, because not only would that not fix anything it would also add layers more work on importing/exporting beefy 5 layer burritos.
That would be a way too political discussion, instead lets talk about MMO's.
See it's a lot like an MMO, where the MMO has simply too much bloat, way too much overhead, and a management team that is totally out of touch with it's player base. But, it threw a huge net to catch everyone it could, and now is trying to be the everything to everyone with systems that are supposed to be catch all, but as opposed to being really good, they are all mainly lackluster and mediocre, that is. Even if they provide a wanted service to start with as opposed to what becomes more an imposition then helpful, it is often generic and sometimes not all that helpful, albeit better than nothing, but nowhere near as good as it could be, if the MMO was smaller and focused on it's direct population.
Not only that, the whole game design flops back and forth due to an identity crisis of some sort, between trying to make the Hardcore players happy to trying to appease the Casuals, and it just becomes some pitiful shit show, that most would dump if it was not so hard to find another game to replace it.
By making smaller more focused MMO's, you can target the demographic of the area and region, and directly focus on their needs, you can custom design services that work for those people and that population density as opposed to trying to slap a catch-all band-aid on the problem, which may or may not actually do anything to address the actual problem or even fix it.
If you have an MMO with huge wide open maps and a more spread out population you need to have a higher focus on fast map travel for players to get around, build systems that will allow those players to have an interactive world and network, and focus on the little things that work for them. They love the huge maps, that is why they are there, so trying to dump Small city maps into the game, or putting in systems that work for large clusters of people will not work for those players, they love the small group and lone wolf gameplay, and thus trying to put in a bunch of raids, because of some asinine belief that everyone loves raids, will not work for this demographic of players and just make things a lot harder on them, and makes them feel neglected, because the developer is wasting time and money on something they not only, do not want, they directly do not like, and is not giving them more of what they do want, which is gameplay that synergizes well with their small group and lone wolf style play.
At the same time, if you have players that are densely clustered together, they love massive gatherings of 100's of players for world events, open world PvP of 1000's of people clashing, and a direct drive for more and more raid content, you need to have systems that ensure they can all get along with ease, this means having the infrastructure set up as to handle the graphic rendering demand of that game as well as means to reduce lag, which is not going to be as much a problem for games where the population is more spread out. and the players like the dense population, they don't want spread out maps, they want their close knit city structure and being able to just take a quick walk to the raid portal, no they do not want to have to run for 5 min straight to get to where they want to be, they love the small tight maps, the cityscape, that feeling of people and population.
What will work for these players will not work for the players that want to run off solo. It's just that simple.
And it's about high time we all start to really realize that.
This is a huge problem with MMO's that simply just want to find a way to add more players without a care of who they are, where they come from, it shows a direct lack of care for the players they have, and a direct lack of direction for the game as a whole, it makes it so that a once great game becomes this generic bland thing, that losses it's identity and what made it special to start with.
Egotism is the anesthetic that dullens the pain of stupidity, this is why when I try to beat my head against the stupidity of other people, I only hurt myself.
UK - 60pounds per game=67,53 Eur. Minimum wage, right now is 1 524,52 EUR. I used to get around 1.2-1,4k pounds working as a bartender when i was in UK, it was 3 years ago. My country Lithuania - 60 Eur. Minimum wage, 550 Eur.
Care to elaborate? Must be European Union, i guess.
Comments
They also have a considerable cost of transportation, so even if you sell widgets for $5 each in Paraguay and $10 each in the United States, if it costs $10 each to ship widgets from Paraguay to the United States, you can't get cheaper widgets in the US by importing them.
Neither of those costs are significant for computer software. It costs a lot of money to build the first copy of a program, but once you have one, making a million more copies of it costs basically nothing. Furthermore, digitally transferring the software (or especially just license keys) also costs basically nothing. So it's easy to charge different prices in different places without losing money on each unit sold, and it's also easy for customers to cheat the system by importing licenses from poorer areas.
And don't forget Luxembourg, Finland, Denmark where the salaries goes around 6k.
Also 60USD isn't 60EUR as we can see games going for. I hate the fairness in this. I would like to see EUR drop to half of a dollar and the companies still keep the pricing.
/Cheers,
Lahnmir
Kyleran on yours sincerely
'But there are many. You can play them entirely solo, and even offline. Also, you are wrong by default.'
Ikcin in response to yours sincerely debating whether or not single-player offline MMOs exist...
'This does not apply just to ED but SC or any other game. What they will get is Rebirth/X4, likely prettier but equally underwhelming and pointless.
It is incredibly difficult to design some meaningfull leg content that would fit a space ship game - simply because it is not a leg game.
It is just huge resource waste....'
Gdemami absolutely not being an armchair developer
When I looked up GeoBlocking, it was as the name implies. Blocking the content. So, in short the access to that service/product is blocked not priced differently.
This is a new thing to me, so, I could be reading it all wrong.
In any case, price variance is not a new thing, in physical product this is super common, even different states in the US have variable prices due to changes in local and state taxes and laws, as well as regions of production.
IE: If you live in a heavy lumber region the cost of a 2x4 will be cheaper then if you live in a desert region and the wood needs to be shipped 1200 miles to get to you.
This is something we all grasp, local goods tend to be cheaper than imported, Obviously government also plays a role where the more asinine and restrictive the laws coupled with higher cost of delivery and production the more things will ultimately cost.
This is just the basic way life works.
I am not sure how this affects digital products that have no physical transport involved, since they have no added cost due to region generated vs region delivered to, nor are they really affected much by local laws or wages.
I could see some companies not wanting to deal with nations that have rules and laws they disagree with, like that whole Loot Box issues, where some nations deemed it gambling, so they opted to not provide their service to those nations. That simply makes sense, just like any company would not want to deal with a nation or municipal that makes selling their product difficult.
Ideally it seems rather pointless to charge people more for translations that already exist, and the like, because that does not modify the overall cost of the product as it is made, and quite frankly I think there should be laws to ensure that price gouging does not exist if say someone wants an English Language version of a game, even if they live somewhere like China.
/Cheers,
Lahnmir
Kyleran on yours sincerely
'But there are many. You can play them entirely solo, and even offline. Also, you are wrong by default.'
Ikcin in response to yours sincerely debating whether or not single-player offline MMOs exist...
'This does not apply just to ED but SC or any other game. What they will get is Rebirth/X4, likely prettier but equally underwhelming and pointless.
It is incredibly difficult to design some meaningfull leg content that would fit a space ship game - simply because it is not a leg game.
It is just huge resource waste....'
Gdemami absolutely not being an armchair developer
Some of the products I use to manufacture myself are now imported from Asia because I can purchase the finished painted product cheaper than the raw material costs here, even the materials that are imported from there. In the last three years I've even started having tool and die work done in China. I can send my Solidworks tooling designs to China and have the tools delivered to my door within 4 - 6 weeks at 20% of the cost that it would cost me to do here. I don't have enough tradesmen to keep up. The vast majority of them are retired or dead and we in North America don't produce enough of them anymore and thats because we import everything. My newest hires in the Tool & Die field are immigrants from Iran. Very intelligent, respectful, hard working people. A definate asset to my business. I looked for over two years unsuccessfully to find competent domestic tradesmen.
Believe you me, taking a walk through a Home Depot and seeing the prices on some of the products. I don't know whether to laugh or cry because I see products that sell for $5 or $6 each that I sell for 30-40 cents each. They sell mass produced products in there that if you wanted 50 or a 100 pieces, I can custom make them for you cheaper per unit then they're charging.
There is an old saying... "charge what people are willing to pay"
Ten years ago when the canadian dollar was equal to the U.S. dollar I was listening on the radio to an interview with a Starbucks executive. Canadian prices vs U.S. prices have always been a sore point here. The interviewer asked the Starbucks executive why a coffee mug that costs $8 in the U.S. cost over $17 in Canada? The executives answer was that Americans were only willing to pay $8 for that coffee cup while Canadians were willing to pay the $17.
"Be water my friend" - Bruce Lee
Even then, your analogy is wrong. What is actually happening here is that companies are asking places like the US, Germany, etc... to fund the development costs of a game so that other countries can enjoy them at a dramatically discounted rate.
The entitlement in that post you made is stunning. That you EXPECT citizens of other countries to fund the cost of games so that you can pay a tiny sliver of that cost to play them yourself. As I said... this isn't clean water or food or some basic human need. We are talking about GAMES.
And for the third time... I do support the rights of these companies to sell to whoever they want at whatever prices they want. But I find it personally disgusting.
PS: And if you think I support outsourcing production of anything then you have apparently missed my posts for the last decade.
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
So its ok for greedy rich companies to exploit their customers ???
Top 3 MMO's PRE-CU SWG GW1 GW2
Worst 2 wow and Lotro Under standing stones it went woke
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
1) how large, heavy, and bulky the goods are
2) how valuable the goods are
3) where they need to be shipped to and from
4) how large of quantities you can reasonably expect to sell
For small, valuable goods such as CPUs, the money cost of shipping across the ocean is generally trivial, and the time cost is the one that matters. For bulky, cheap goods such as toilet paper, the cost of shipping it halfway around the world even from one port to another can be a significant fraction of its value.
Yes, it's cheap to ship containers from one major port to another. But that's not an option, or at least doesn't cover the expensive part of the journey, if you need to ship goods to Nepal.
Being able to fit ten thousand widgets into a shipping container is great if you can sell them by the millions. It doesn't do you as much good if you can only sell a hundred widgets per year.
I've paid 35k to have a similar machine shipped from Chur Switzerland via Hamburg Germany to the port of Vancouver.
I've had to pay for a couple longshoreman at port to lift a 69ton machine off a special skid and on to a truck because of height restrictions. It took them 30 minutes and they charged me 4k. They have you by the balls, you have no choice
You can buy solid wood furniture from Malaysia here for cheap cheap. Landed undamaged and sold cheaper than a photo finished particle board piece of crap cost you back in the 1980's.
The shipping cost for the vast majority of your average consumer items is negligible. Look how cheap produce is shipped from one side of the world to the other. Produce is one of the harder more expensive things to ship.
Quantities don't matter, what matters is whether its worth your while.
"Be water my friend" - Bruce Lee
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
On your Receipt, you will see the exact tax amount you paid.
America also has taxable and non-taxable goods. Like Direct Food is Non-Taxable. IE: You typically don't pay taxes on an Apple.
While Other states have additional taxes on services, like for example, In California, they have a service tax you pay for the privilege of doing business in California.
There are a lot of days when I think really America would be better off being like Europe and separate into individual Nations.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
See it's a lot like an MMO, where the MMO has simply too much bloat, way too much overhead, and a management team that is totally out of touch with it's player base. But, it threw a huge net to catch everyone it could, and now is trying to be the everything to everyone with systems that are supposed to be catch all, but as opposed to being really good, they are all mainly lackluster and mediocre, that is. Even if they provide a wanted service to start with as opposed to what becomes more an imposition then helpful, it is often generic and sometimes not all that helpful, albeit better than nothing, but nowhere near as good as it could be, if the MMO was smaller and focused on it's direct population.
Not only that, the whole game design flops back and forth due to an identity crisis of some sort, between trying to make the Hardcore players happy to trying to appease the Casuals, and it just becomes some pitiful shit show, that most would dump if it was not so hard to find another game to replace it.
By making smaller more focused MMO's, you can target the demographic of the area and region, and directly focus on their needs, you can custom design services that work for those people and that population density as opposed to trying to slap a catch-all band-aid on the problem, which may or may not actually do anything to address the actual problem or even fix it.
If you have an MMO with huge wide open maps and a more spread out population you need to have a higher focus on fast map travel for players to get around, build systems that will allow those players to have an interactive world and network, and focus on the little things that work for them. They love the huge maps, that is why they are there, so trying to dump Small city maps into the game, or putting in systems that work for large clusters of people will not work for those players, they love the small group and lone wolf gameplay, and thus trying to put in a bunch of raids, because of some asinine belief that everyone loves raids, will not work for this demographic of players and just make things a lot harder on them, and makes them feel neglected, because the developer is wasting time and money on something they not only, do not want, they directly do not like, and is not giving them more of what they do want, which is gameplay that synergizes well with their small group and lone wolf style play.
At the same time, if you have players that are densely clustered together, they love massive gatherings of 100's of players for world events, open world PvP of 1000's of people clashing, and a direct drive for more and more raid content, you need to have systems that ensure they can all get along with ease, this means having the infrastructure set up as to handle the graphic rendering demand of that game as well as means to reduce lag, which is not going to be as much a problem for games where the population is more spread out. and the players like the dense population, they don't want spread out maps, they want their close knit city structure and being able to just take a quick walk to the raid portal, no they do not want to have to run for 5 min straight to get to where they want to be, they love the small tight maps, the cityscape, that feeling of people and population.
What will work for these players will not work for the players that want to run off solo. It's just that simple.
And it's about high time we all start to really realize that.
This is a huge problem with MMO's that simply just want to find a way to add more players without a care of who they are, where they come from, it shows a direct lack of care for the players they have, and a direct lack of direction for the game as a whole, it makes it so that a once great game becomes this generic bland thing, that losses it's identity and what made it special to start with.
My country Lithuania - 60 Eur. Minimum wage, 550 Eur.
Care to elaborate? Must be European Union, i guess.