» Fri Feb 07, 2014 8:03 am Recently I made a thread about the payment method for Brazilians in the ESO forums, and I was told this would be the place for it.
This is the post:
To start this, I want to say this isn't about payment policies (f2p vs p2p) and it also ain't directly about prices.
I will be talking bout Brazil, because it is the country I currently live in.
Here, whenever you buy something with a price over $50 overseas, you need to pay 60% of the price of the product, plus the price of importing said product and insurance, as taxes. For example, let's say I bought a souvenir which cost me $120, with an $20 mailing price, and an $10 insurance, for a total of 150$, I would need to pay an extra $90 as taxes.
When buying something more expensive it gets even more ridiculous, for example, take the PS4. Considering today's dolar prices as 1 dolar ($) = 2.38 reais (R$), it costs sony $360.50 to bring a PS4 to Brazil, it needs to pay $1060.50 as taxes, and the distribution plus the stores try to have about $368 as profit. To reduce a bit the price sony gives a $108 price reduction. This means that a customer here in Brazil needs to pay $1680 to acquire a PS4, while sony is getting about 250$, minus production prices.
In ESO's case this means that the $60 digital standard edition will cost 60 * 1.6 = 96 dollars for brazilian customers. The same way the digital imperial edition will cost 128$ for us.
The $15 subscription shouldn't get high taxes, because of its low price, probably going to something like $16, but this is when another problem kicks in. Because of recent laws, many banks now refuse to pay companies in reais while charged with foreign coins. This means I simply cannot buy anything when the price is given in dollars to the bank, even if it is automatically converted into reais, because the banks will try to pay it with the day's exchange, which might give a different price to what you might have been initially charged. For many of us, we would only be able to buy the game if ZeniMax charged us directly with reais while the payment being made nationally, or if we somehow got the bank to pay directly with the charged currency.
Basically, 3 of the big banks of Brazil will deny your request if you try to buy in reais to overseas. Also, only international credit cards are accepted. So even for those that have accounts in any of the other major banks, if you only have debit cards and/or national credit cards (so you have to pay less taxes to the bank), you will need to get a new international credit cards, with new taxes and insurances.
Now, as said by support (link), brazilian players will be able to pay by using Paypal while being charged in US dollars. Yet, Paypal has the same restrictions as if someone tried to pay directly through the bank, and so has the same limitations stated before.
One of the companies that has made a good work around this is STEAM. They have made a brazilian store, where you pay to their brazilian subsidiary in reais. This means that we can buy games in steam by using any type of card from any bank. I personally use a kind of brazilian paypal known as boacompra, so I don't even need a card, as long as I have a bank account (even though I still do use my debit card).
So, unless ZeniMax does something to make ESO more accessible to brazilian players, they will see many less local players than they could possibly have.
Now, the question is, would it be worth it for ZeniMax to spend money to get more brazilian players? Considering the fame of the Elder Scrolls Saga, as seen by the number of skyrim's sold copies (about 20 million if I am not wrong), and the number of brazilian players, I do believe it is.
According to an article I read a while ago, 80% of brazil's mmo players only play f2p games. Why? Mostly because of the issues I just explained.
If trusting wikipedia's numbers, there are currently about 345280 brazilian players of Tibia, a german mmo. There are also thousands of WoW players.
According to wikipedia:
"The Brazilian games market is growing at a rapid pace. It generated $ 2.6bn of revenues in 2012 (up 32% from 2011) with the total number of gamers at 40.2 million. The total time spent on games was on average 13 hours per person per week. According the CEO of Newzoo, Peter Warman, "Brazil is possibly the fastest growing games market in the world when it comes to total consumer spending. Its anticipated growth of 32% is way ahead of the global average of 7% and even more compared to the US with 1% and Europe +3%.Enormous growth in the traditional console sector fueled by price drops and a flourishing economy in combination with continued popularity of online and mobile gaming are currently accelerating growth"
Brazil has full potential to be the largest market for games in Latin America, a position currently occupied by Mexico. According to Daniel Cervantes, director of games and entertainment division of Microsoft for Latin America, Brazil occupies the 15th position in world ranking of videogames, with 600 thousand consoles sold annually."
So, even though Brazil ain't a giant market, principally when compared to Asia, it does have a lot of potential, which might go to waste.
Also, the following link does give a good explanation on the latin american game market, Brazil and Mexico being the biggest.
link
Basically, it explains how Latin America has the second highest compound annual growth rate, just behind the middle east. It also states that "... (Brazil) is the world's 4th largest games consumer overall ".
Even then, there is the matter of price adjustment. I won't go in-dept, but according to link, US median household income in 2012 was $51,017, while in Brazil, according to link, it is R$84000, which while using the same rate as before is equivalent to $35,294, which means $15723 less median average yearly household income.
The datas might not be 100% accurate, but they do give a good idea about what is happening.
As such, how many of the MMO and ES fans will actually go through the hassle of getting a new bank account with a new card, while having a lower income and having to pay higher prices for a game?
Don't know how viable this is, but I remember reading about other MMOs, which when they were brought to another country, their price was also ported, so, for example, someone in the US had to pay $15, while someone here in Brazil had to pay R$15, subscription-wise.
Needs to be taken in consideration too, the fact that many people (like me), can't play too much because of work and studies, which makes kind of expensive having to pay $96 or $128 for the initial product, plus about $1 per hour spent playing (considering about 4 hours per week, god bless weekends). The subscription by itself isn't expensive (worst case I could unsubscribe my 8$ monthly Netflix, and fill my free hours with ESO), considering the price of alternative entertainment, but when combining both prices (initial price + subscription), it does get a bit salty.
I don't know about LOTRO's payment method, but how would something akin to Tibia or Runescape work, were one can access part of the map for free, and needs subscription for the rest of it? That way one could buy the game, and just play the "F2P" part of the game while busy, and subscribe whenever one knows that s/he will have time to play.
In the case that new payment options, in a way we don't get the extra outrageous prices, were enabled, I would almost certainly subscribe, but if nothing is enabled, I will probably wait at least 1 year to see what happens to the game, and then decide if it is worth buying. I understand that these problems aren't ZeniMax's fault, but even then they do complicate further the process of acquiring and playing the game.
Again, as stated, I don't have a problem with the model or price itself, but the increased prices plus the difficulty of the payment, because of brazilian legislations, makes the game harder to get, which is why I believe a workaround should be done.
In the end, I believe that it's ZeniMax's choice to do or not do something about it, depending if they think it to be worth it.
Also, I am not sure where would be the best place to post this, but imo, this was better than the other sub-forums.
Edit: Also will try to contact support about it, as Mudshovel suggested.
I will also post the comments, to see if they help give some insight.
In the end my objective is just to give some awareness, and I will also try to see if there are some cheap alternatives that can be helpful, because I find it hard to see what ZeniMax could do in their end which would be worth it for them.
COMMENTS
1:
I'm a bit boggled by the idea of a digital version being subject to that increased pricing because you're not "importing" anything physical.
2:
I personally do not see what relevance this has regarding beta testing. There are other sites for this, may I suggest they are the appropriate place for this?
Me:
@1 I agree with you, since it is nothing physical, but all they care is the fact that money is leaving the country. Still, I believe the biggest problem is how hard it is to be able to buy the game.
Me:
@2 I agree that this does not seem to be the best place for this, but considering that this is the official ESO forum, and I wasn't able to find any non beta sub-forum, I believed this the best place to give ZeniMax some awareness. If you know a better place for it, please, do tell me. I normally don't use forums, and this was the best idea I had.
3:
Here is where you should bring up this topic:
link
4:
Dat wall...
link
5:
Why just stop at trying to get ESO to accept reais? Why not get the government to change the laws? You do have a representational government. The tariffs your government is imposing are "protectionist" tariffs, but what are they protecting against?
Steam, has a different business model, than does ESO. Steam sells many different games, ESO is only one game. It makes financial sense for Steam to have a subsidiary in Brazil, not so much for ESO, unless every Steam user in Brazil purchases and subscribes to ESO.
In the end, it is much wiser to get your government to realize that we are now living in a world wide economy, and some things do need to imported and to not burden the population with outrageous taxes and tariffs.
Me:
@3 Thanks
Me:
@5 I do know that steam's business model is different, and not only it sells many games, they also sell it much cheaper than buying at retail prices, which guarantees them a steady influx of game every time a new supported game is out and every time they make sales.
It's just my government isn't exactly famous for listening, so even though the ideal would be to change my government's view, if there ever is to be a work around this problem, it will probably have to come from ZeniMax. The problem is finding a solution that is doable. In case I love this game, I will also go around to see if there is a cheap way to get international cards, and if I do find one, I will try to tell my fellow brazilian players.
One possible solution, price wise, at least for us, would be to see if ZeniMax can charge twice for $30, instead of once for $60, but I would first have to ask some people who understand better how importation taxes work and how it varies from case to case.
6:
as long as the prices are in dollars, the brazilian banks won't deny it.
you need a credit card with international purchases enabled and whenever you pay something, make sure the prices are in foreign currency.
whats gonna happen is that the store will charge your card, in its own currency, and your bank will save that. so, in the end of the month, the bank will sum all your expenses in each currency and will convert to 'reais' with the day's values for each currency and then charge from your account.
paypal has changed since i first started using it. i think now paypal accepts debit cards in brazil. i'm not sure. but when i was in brazil i used paypal just as a credit card saver so i wouldn't need to type my card number every time.
i have visa credit card from banco do brasil and i bought battlefield 4 premium from origin store a month a go or so with it. the price was in dollars. everything fine. of course i was charged with 6.38% extra for buying abroad. could be just 1 dollar, 6.38% always apply.
as for physical product purchases, don't do it. buy the digital version and you won't be charged for anything more than the 6.38%.
if you buy a physical product and wait for it to ship to brazil, your screwed. you need to wait for 3 months to receive your product. some times it gets lost.
you know "fire and forget"? it's "buy and forget". once it get inside brazil it gets stuck somewhere unattended. you need to pray every night, before you go to sleep, for some one to get your product, put a stamp on it, and pass it to the national post service so it can get to your home. if it costs more than 50 dollars than you know you will receive it cuz then your gonna pay extra taxes, but it will take a long time anyway. I think the taxes are 50% of the value that passes 50 dollars. So if a product is 60dollars, you pay (60-50)*0.5 = 5 dollars in taxes. Paying 50% tax is still cheaper than buying in a local retailer. *** up country...
7
@me WoW that svcks about the cost of things. I'm familiar with tariffs imposed by some governments to protect local industries from foreign imports but I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that Brazil doesn't have a native console competing with the PS4.
Your import taxes just sound like gouging without justification.
Me:
@6 Paypal does not accept debit cards, but checking now I do believe they accept bank transfer from a few select banks. Some people would still need to make new bank accounts, but at least wouldn't need any cards.
This:
"whats gonna happen is that the store will charge your card, in its own currency, and your bank will save that. so, in the end of the month, the bank will sum all your expenses in each currency and will convert to 'reais' with the day's values for each currency and then charge from your account."
Is exactly what some banks now refuse to do.
I had read it was 60% for anything that is over 50%, but I am not an expert, and the pages I used could have given me the wrong information. And yeah, paying the taxes still is better than buying at the retailer. And if what you say is true 65 dollars isn't that much higher than 60, so the biggest problem would be getting the new bank account. Gonna try to find out if I can get a new bank account with just debit card, use it to transfer funds to my paypal account and close it asap, so I don't have to pay too much taxes.
God, how I miss living in non-Brazil. When I lived in Mexico it was so easy, I could just directly pay with my debit card with no taxes or extra costs.
Had to remove links because I don't have permission to post them.
