Pricing of the game on Steam, seriously? 49.99拢=78$... : Fallout 4

» Fri Nov 27, 2015 10:33 pm

That's true mate. It's an interesting thought though. Maybe the RRP is on the rise, but the likes of Amazon and Asda (walmart) absorb the extra cost like with lots of things, as you say.

» Fri Nov 27, 2015 1:18 pm

I don't know about in the US, but Amazon UK is selling the physical copy at almost exactly $60 (at current exchange rate) - the same price as Bethesda are selling FO4 in their store.

The downloadable copies Amazon UK are selling, which are basically just Steam keys (it says, "Steam version" in small print) are selling at a much higher price.

» Sat Nov 28, 2015 3:58 am

Lol 80 bucks for a DIGITAL copy?

no thanks

I'll be getting a disc way cheaper, half the price

» Fri Nov 27, 2015 8:39 pm

In the UK the Amazon price is currently ￡37.85 for a disc version for PC, and ￡49.99 for a download key.

» Fri Nov 27, 2015 6:42 pm

Err... not quite sure if you're agreeing, disagreeing, or just adding greater precision... :confused: .

At current exchange rate, those are $59.11 and $78.06 respectively. Bethesda are selling at exactly $60.00

» Fri Nov 27, 2015 2:46 pm

The UK market isn't based on exchange rates. Generally games have been ￡40 for a long time, but a few like Fallout 4, Far Cry 4, and Witcher 3 have been 49.99 on steam.

» Fri Nov 27, 2015 2:40 pm

Oh, fair enough. But my point remains that for FO4, Amazon UK are not applying a large mark-up over the US RRP, while Valve are.

Amazon may be selling at a low (compared to UK going rate) price to encourage purchase, but it's not so far below the US price to make it highly likely that they're selling at a loss rather than making good use of economies of scale (and lack of physical retail stores) to lower their overheads.

Valve are unquestionably selling the same (effective) product at well above the US RRP.

One problem is, unless you know what the publisher charges the retailer, and what the comparative sales taxes are, and what (if any) import duties there are... you can't easily say who is taking a loss and who is overpricing. But personally I've no doubt Valve are significantly overpricing - as they're perfectly entitled to do.

» Fri Nov 27, 2015 4:52 pm

By my knowledge (Which could be wrong), a lot of European countries have sales tax added into the price, while in the US sales tax (for the most part) is added at the time of sale. Now I have no idea what the sale tax laws are for digital products in anywhere but the US (In the US in order for sale tax to be charged the company must have a physical presence in your state, which for the case of Steam is just Washington state). Now assuming sales tax is added into the UK price (I don't know) then with a 20% VAT (Ouch) you are actually paying less using the Amazon price, or a little more (~$6) on Steam.

If sales tax doesn't apply or is added after the fact...well then just ignore this...

Edit: Had things backward with Euro and UK prices.

» Fri Nov 27, 2015 12:17 pm

Yea there's just no way for us to know for sure what's going on in the back room there. Spot checking a few games, Amazon are consistently at least ￡10 cheaper than Steam, for a product that arguably costs more money (fuel to transport, import tax, printing costs etc).

Our product tax, called VAT, is included in the prices I'm giving. That's currently 20% VAT.

» Sat Nov 28, 2015 3:33 am

Heh, yeah, UK based here, so familiar with the... necessary evil? of VAT

[edit]

I'm assuming various taxes are identical for physical and downloaded copies of PC games, so those costs should be identical for Valve and Amazon UK.

» Fri Nov 27, 2015 8:47 pm

Save 25 a month until release, if you can, and buy the collectors edition or 15 a month and buy the normal one. Big titles will almost always cost least $60 at release and thereafter lower in price gradually. If you can't afford it, wait for a sale, discount or a year. Then the pricing should fit your wallet. Complaining about it will do very little. They'll not change the price even if a 1000 people want it. Basically only the investors of Bethesda have a say, because that's where the money comes from and they're not likely to change their minds.

» Fri Nov 27, 2015 5:38 pm

The problem with the brazillian price of Fallout 4 has nothing to do with Valve, Bethesda and not even, for once, our government. If everything our community uncovered is true, than it`s the fault of a single very greedy man, who wanted to botch Steam prices in Brazil for a long time, and Bethesda, unaware of this of course, gave him the power to do so.

If anyone is interested, here's a text I've written in another thread explaining everything:

Spoiler

If our beloved Moacyr Alves really is behind this, the explanation is pretty simple.

A couple of years ago he was the knight in shinning armor for many gamers in Brazil after founding the project Jogo Justo(Fair Game). It was a group of people whose intentions would be to pressure the government to reduce the taxes on games. As others have already mentioned, the taxes on games here are absurd, the only thing that got higher taxes than games are cigarettes, even alcoholic beverages got lower taxes than games here. The reason is because a long time ago Video-Games were considered and taxed as TOYS, not Slot Machines as some suggested. Back then we had some big toy manufacturers here in our country, so the government kept import taxes high to protect our companies. But alas that didn`t help and pretty much all of them went bankrupt. And since then the taxes on toys never changed, so neither on games.

So everything looks quite noble of Mr. Moacyr, right? Not really. Turns out he's the president of the largest chain of VG stores in Brazil, pretty much the Brazillian Gamestop. But the thing is, they are and always have been a joke. Their prices are always ridiculously high, their staff know absolutely nothing about games, except for the latest FIFA, GTA ou COD and they show absolutely NO support for PC games. But still, if his motives were genuine all of this could be forgotten. And so Mr. Moacyr got more of the spotlight, actually got in contact with several politicians and things were looking bright. But time passed and nothing changed. Until one fateful day when Mr. Moacyr gave an interview complaining that the reason stores don't sell more games in Brazil is because of services like Steam. That Steam should be taxed or blocked so brazillian stores would stand a chance. And then Moacyr Alves went from the knight in shinning armor one day to the most hated figure by the brazillian gaming community the next.

You see, first of all his stores don't deal much with PC games, if at all. Second of all PC games have ALWAYS been cheaper than Console Games, because PC Games are considered SOFTWARE in our country instead of Toys, so they get a much smaller bite from the government. PC Games, even physical copies, were always sold for 99 BRL for DECADES. Yes, DECADES, I'm 31 right now and bought the first Diablo at Launch for that price. Keep in mind that we usually pay 2 times that for Console releases, in fact the average price of the last Mortal Kombat for Consoles was even higher, around 220 BRL. And when Steam started selling games here that was their starting price and everyone was fine with it. Sure, they started increasing the prices a couple of months ago, but what can they do? Thanks our government the USD/BRL rate is crazy high right now, pretty much all gamers understand that and even though we would rather keep paying those 99 BRL we UNDERSTAND that Steam had to raise their launch prices to around 120~130 BRL.

So, what's the link between Moacyr Alves and the ridiculous price for Fallout 4 in Brazil? Quite simple. If he really is now the representative of Bethesda in Brazil, his interest is that people buy Fallout 4 for Consoles, in his store. So what does he do? Contact Steam and tell them to sell a PC GAME for a prohibitive price. He knows pretty much everyone will just pirate the game now, but if he let the prices down he wouldn't be getting any sales either. With that price at least those who BUY the game will prefer to buy the physical copy from him, wich will probably be a bit cheaper around 220 BRL like Mortal Kombat, instead of the digital one just like most people do when they have this option.

Bethesda, here in Brazil we love your games. Even back then when the only way we'd play a PC game were by pirating it, my first RPG ever was Elder Scrolls: Arena, wich I just called Arena cause I was too young and had absolutely no grasp of the english language. You have huge amount of fans and a huge following here. And this man will flush all down the drain. Most serious gamers in Brazil, despite our past, got together to never pirate a game again, thanks to Steam. Because now we could buy the games legally for a fair price. But now, thanks to Moacyr, all I hear is people saying that this just won't cut, that they really wanted to buy the game but can't afford it, so they'll just pirate it. And it makes me really sad, because we are a community who don't want to do that anymore, but unless you're swimming in money we just can't afford prices like that.

Bethesda, If this really is the man behind the helm here in Brazil, just stop. Find someone else. Or at least let him in charge of your console games only, with no say on Steam prices. Because he'll flush everything you built here through many, many years, down the drain.

Link to the original post: http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1523622-the-game-price-on-steam-brl/?p=24123874

» Sat Nov 28, 2015 12:57 am

I have no problem with my wallet don't have to save for it, I just think that a game is not worth 78$. Yeah maybe with this cheap piece of plastic for the phone it would be worth 78$. But not through a digital platform.

I just wanted to share my opinion to see what other people opinion is.

The problem is it's getting ridiculous, Apple started this - overpricing and getting away with it.

I have no problem with paying for things, but they have to be worth the price. I can't see why digital version of refurbished Fallout 3 would be worth 50?78$. There is nothing about F4 from what has been shown so far that screams: this game is actually worth 42% price increase over a standard average 35?..

» Sat Nov 28, 2015 1:53 am

If bethesda dont fix thys prices soon fallout 4 will be the new world recond on most pireted game ever.

» Fri Nov 27, 2015 2:09 pm

Hmm. Whereas in the US, a $60 retail game tends to be $60 retail from every source - on the shelf at a store, physical copy from Amazon, digital copy from Steam. There's a rare $10 pre-order discount sometimes. But mostly, launch day price is the same everywhere. And that's before tax, so generally it'll be 6-8% higher for the final price. (taxes on online orders has a bunch of inconsistancies at the moment)

(Retail prices in the US are typically quoted without tax, likely due to the fact that each state - and some cities/counties - have their own tax rates. So a $60 game for me is a bit more than $64 at the register.)

You need to take that up with your country and your retailers, really. Also, doubtful - threads bemoaning the crazy pricing on Steam & Amazon & other retailers in the UK/Europe/Australia/etc have been popping up for years on all sorts of forums for all sorts of games. It's nothing particularly new.

» Sat Nov 28, 2015 1:18 am

Well steam said the price was point by bethesda so is bethesda fault couse there is no tax here for digital products on steam.

» Fri Nov 27, 2015 3:54 pm

In Brazil Fallout 4 costs US$ 80 (R$ 249,00). This is the highest price in the world (seriously). And we do not have our language too.

The Witcher 3 costs US$ 42,00 (R$ 130,00) and came fully in PT-BR.

Bethesda seems to hate the Brazilians gamers.

» Fri Nov 27, 2015 5:50 pm

When are people going to catch on to the fact that Steam and Valve have turned into the bad guy

» Sat Nov 28, 2015 12:16 am

Prices Steam Brazil:

http:// i. imgur. com/x5PmI8X. jpg

Delete the spaces.

Witcher 3 on pre-order was only R$ 95 (US$ 30). The Elder Scrolls Online is costing the right price.

We just want a fair price. They are charging something much above of normal.

Bethesda always has charged a fair price here in Brazil. What happened now? Why this happened with Fallout 4, may be the best game of the year? This is not right.

» Sat Nov 28, 2015 1:30 am

Bethesda is just another greedy corp. pushing abusive prices at this price tag i will not buy it.

» Fri Nov 27, 2015 11:48 pm

The amount of misinformation in this topic is astounding. As at least one person said, Valve does not set the price of the games, the one selling the game does which in this case is Bethesda/ZeniMax.

» Sat Nov 28, 2015 2:13 am

In Brazil it's not Bethesda/ZeniMax. It seems to be Moacyr Alves.

» Fri Nov 27, 2015 10:31 pm

so if i gather most misinformation on this thread its Bethesda fault that almost every fall game this year is going to be 79.99$CDN instead of 69.99$CDN or could just be that publishers are increasing the price of games across the board? who knows i just know blameing Bethesda sounds weird to me .

i did quick search of edgames/gamestop(results below) here in canada and yeah everone is jacking prices so......

Madden NFL 16- 79.99 presell-Electronic Arts

Halo 5 Guardians- 74.99 presell-343/Microsoft

Tony Hawk Pro skater 5-79.99 presell-Activision

NBA 2K16-presell-79.99-2K games

Assassin's Creed Syndicate-79.99 presell-Ubisoft

Call of Duty: Black Ops III -79.99presell-Activision

Fallout 4- 79.99presell-Bethesda Softworks

https://www.ebgames.ca/SearchResult/QuickSearch?platform=52&release=1

and compare that to batman arkham knight 69.99CDN and witcher 3 wild hunt also 69.99CDN that came out this year im finding real hard to blame Beth on this one.

» Sat Nov 28, 2015 2:30 am

I'm european but the price is about similar if converted. So I will use dollars to better illustrate here as most people on this forum are probably from the US. 78 dollars for a game I will play for a minimum of 600 hours (that is even being pessimistic, considering my skyrim playtime) boils down to:

78$ / 600 = 0.13 dollar per hour.

At the highest cost - I will be paying 13 cents per hour for Fallout 4. Now... come with a game that can provide a similar entertainment cost per hour ratio.

» Fri Nov 27, 2015 1:58 pm

I pre-ordered mine for X-Box One and the pricing is at $75.00 Cripes, this game is expensive!