Buying your games on the digital stores of poorer/cheap regions.

[partious]

How do people feel about this?

 

It seems to be something most noticeable in the Switch threads, with the proponents of "pretend you live in a developing country to save a few quid" constantly popping up to tell others how it's cheaper on the South African eshop and oh so easy to set up etc.

 

Should we all just use whichever country's digital store is cheapest, regardless of where we actualy live?

Is there an ethical issue involved in lying to avail of prices that are cheaper because people in some countries are on average poorer than people in the UK or because you are avoiding sales tax completely or paying a low rate to a country you don't actually live in.

 

How do you feel about flat pricing across all regions regardless of the local economic realities? I've seen some people saying how cruel this is on forums lately regarding the epic store.

 

Are you a "well, it's wrong but companies should somehow lock it down with ip/credit card checks and until they do that, pretending to live in Africa to save a few quid is perfectly reasonable" type of person.

 

[Quest]

There's no eShop for the country in which I live, so I'm pretty fine with it.

[gossi the dog]

The prices on the U.K. shop are invariably a joke. Red Dead Redemption 2 was £59.99. So I bought it from that developing economy known as the United States for the equivalent of £40.

[partious]

22 minutes ago, gossi the dog said:

The prices on the U.K. shop are invariably a joke. Red Dead Redemption 2 was £59.99. So I bought it from that developing economy known as the United States for the equivalent of £40.

 

My guess is that it's a combination of lower average salaries and more significantly the UK having higher sales tax than the low/zero sales tax in whichever US region you're pretending to live in (dare I hazard a guess that your phoney US address isn't in a high sales tax state).

[gossi the dog]

39 minutes ago, partious said:

 

My guess is that it's a combination of lower average salaries and more significantly the UK having higher sales tax than the low/zero sales tax in whichever US region you're pretending to live in (dare I hazard a guess that your phoney US address isn't in a high sales tax state).

 

I live in a youth hostel in Portland, Oregon. Yes £10 of the U.K. price would have been VAT. Still, if you’re going to price above the price of the physical equivalent then I’ll actively look for cheaper alternatives. 

[witchypoos]

There's definitely a moral discussion to be had on the topic, hopefully without any sort of guilt tripping/high horse climbing.

 

I wonder how nintendo are viewing the South African economy now that everybody and their ganny seem to have 2 copies of "enter the gungeon" each

"Hmm, maybe we'll bump up the price next quarter, they're obviously not doing quite as bad as we thought. Fackin' gangbangers! You gotta love 'em!"

 

Obviously, I'd like to see devs get their fair cut, I have principles, a heart of gold and legs to die for, but buying digital on console is more like renting a game than buying it.
To be honest, I don't blame anyone for saving a few quid.

 

Nintendo are pulling the plug on the wii shop soon, turning off all the servers so you can't play online or download any of the digital wii and ds games you bought.
I mean, I know everything moves at a fair clip these days but it still seems a little too soon.

 

I've got a horrible feeling that Nintendo might one day decide that you're not entitled to any of those Ethiopian games licenses you've amassed and the scythe will come sweeping down, taking out half of everycunts digital library.
Is that possible? Could that happen?

I've heard of valve catching people buying dodgy keys from resellers and revoking them without warning.

 

It makes me wonder why all the doors were left unlocked. Surely they knew what would happen. People will go to the effort of crawling over broken glass in asda to wrestle their granny for a rotten pear with a yellow sticker on it just to save 2p, they're not going to pass up significant discounts on expensive games when it's so easy to do.

[partious]

Not interested in guilt tripping etc. To be honest I don't have strong opinions either way I just think there's an interesting discussion to be had.

 

When I made this thread I was mainly thinking about the possible effect of noticeable numbers of westerners making fake addresses to buy from countries like South Africa or South American relatively low wage economies. I feel like the eventual losers in any "solution" to this will be the people who actually live in poor countries and can only afford the lower price.

 

The tax thing is interesting too so I've added that to the opening post.

 

I suppose it's increasingly difficult to argue that customers have any moral responsibility to not evade paying sales tax when we are surrounded by giant corporations making a game out of paying as little tax as possible.

[witchypoos]

35 minutes ago, partious said:

Not interested in guilt tripping etc. To be honest I don't have strong opinions either way

 

No, me neither. Just trying to set the tone.

I've been on the internet long enough to know how quickly these well intentioned, open minded discussions can descend into binary arguments and personal slanging matches.

 

Edit: I didn't throw spunk at you by the way, I only use the upvote.

Oh my, it's all kicking off already, I can feel it. I'm not cut out for this.

[witchypoos]

1 hour ago, Nequests said:

There's no eShop for the country in which I live, so I'm pretty fine with it.

 

What, what, what? Can you talk more about this, or is there nothing more to say?

[witchypoos]

56 minutes ago, gossi the dog said:

Portland, Oregon.

 

OK, Gordon

[gossi the dog]

17 minutes ago, witchypoos said:

 

What, what, what? Can you talk more about this, or is there nothing more to say?

 

China?

[gossi the dog]

35 minutes ago, partious said:

 

I suppose it's increasingly difficult to argue that customers have any moral responsibility to not evade paying sales tax when we are surrounded by giant corporations making a game out of paying as little tax as possible.

 

It’s more a case of one of the vagaries of sales tax. You generally pay it in the country of purchase not the country of use. 

[Quest]

Loads of countries don't have their own eShop, as Nintendo have almost zero official presence there. China is the most obvious, but I think even Hong Kong is expected to use the JPN eShop.

 

There's no way Nintendo are unaware of how much money Chinese mainlanders are spending on foreign eShops, though. They won't be keen to shut that down any time soon, I'd imagine.

[iknowgungfu]

I have bought a few things from other regions for the switch and I do have that niggling ethical dilemma when I do it. 

 

What I have found is that if the difference is a matter of a few quid then usually I can't be arsed and I get it from the UK store. If it is quite a difference then I switch regions. 

[simms]

2 hours ago, witchypoos said:

Obviously, I'd like to see devs get their fair cut, I have principles, a heart of gold and legs to die for, but buying digital on console is more like renting a game than buying it.
To be honest, I don't blame anyone for saving a few quid.

 

Nintendo are pulling the plug on the wii shop soon, turning off all the servers so you can't play online or download any of the digital wii and ds games you bought.
I mean, I know everything moves at a fair clip these days but it still seems a little too soon.

 

I've got a horrible feeling that Nintendo might one day decide that you're not entitled to any of those Ethiopian games licenses you've amassed and the scythe will come sweeping down, taking out half of everycunts digital library.

 

Wow that’s crazy.  Are you still going to be able to play downloaded games or just if you need to redownload for some reason?

[witchypoos]

You'll still be able to play games offline if you've already downloaded them

 

https://www.nintendo.co.uk/News/2017/September/Important-information-about-the-closure-of-the-Wii-Shop-Channel-1285994.html

 

Quote

End date of each service

 - Adding points to the Wii Shop Channel: Monday 26th March 2018 at 21:00 UK time

 - Purchase of WiiWare, Virtual Console software, Wii Channels (including free software)*: Thursday, 31st January 2019 at 06:00 UK time

 - Full closure of the Wii Shop Channel and disabling of redownload functions in 2019 (more details to be announced at a later date)

 

[Marlew]

I'll be frank, I have no interest in paying inflated prices for something I can't refund or exchange if it's shit or if I don't like it. I feel there's a massive ethical and economic imbalance with digital purchases in general and Nintendo are the worst offenders. If the service were anything as reasonable as Steam and I could refund half the games I've abandoned within twenty minutes, I might feel inclined to pay full whack on the UK store. You might well call this rationale 'entitlement' or 'greed' but I sleep easy that Nintendo have done very very well out of me.

 

There's also the flipside, in that I may never have gambled on half of this stuff if I'd had to pay up. Would it have been better if I'd spent half as much but via the UK store? I'm not being facetious, I genuinely don't know. In any case, Nintendo offer me no incentive to pay more for the same product.

 

That said, I don't like the idea that a kid in Jo'burg is unable to afford a game because of my 'working the system'. The reality - and I don't know if @partious is aware of this - is that they did increase the prices in the SA eShop about eight months ago, with reference to an increase in VAT on digital sales (went up from 14% to 15%, for what little difference it makes to us). On reflection, that doesn't sit especially well with me. 

 

My own conclusion in the end comes from a slightly different place, and it came about six months ago: I don't like 99% of indie games, nor certain genres (strategy, Metroidvania, non-Mario platformers et al) nor scaled-down ports. I also very very rarely play on the go or in bed or on the sofa while my wife watches telly. The Switch is now a first-party/exclusive system for me and with that in mind, I'm much more considerate of my purchases. 

 

[witchypoos]

2 minutes ago, Stanshall said:

I don't like 99% of indie games

 

Unless you tell me that you don't like 99.9% of AAA games, me and you are gonna fall out fast.

 

3 minutes ago, Stanshall said:

I may never have gambled on half of this stuff if I'd had to pay up.

 

That's a very good point, it is literally a gamble when there's no demo or refund system. You can do all the research you like, but the proof of the pudding is in the eating, in the end you have to stump up the cash for a digital only title and just hope that it's what you wanted.

Rather than buying 1 dev a happy meal, you bought 4 devs a burger each. I'd sleep well with that knowledge.

[Thor]

49 minutes ago, Stanshall said:

The reality is that they did increase the prices in the SA eShop about eight months ago, with reference to an increase in VAT on digital sales (went up from 14% to 15%, for what little difference it makes to us). On reflection, that doesn't sit especially well with me.

Was the price increase only to account for the VAT? 

[alex3d]

1 hour ago, witchypoos said:

That's a very good point, it is literally a gamble when there's no demo or refund system. You can do all the research you like, but the proof of the pudding is in the eating, in the end you have to stump up the cash for a digital only title and just hope that it's what you wanted.

Rather than buying 1 dev a happy meal, you bought 4 devs a burger each. I'd sleep well with that knowledge.

 

Yep, my thinking as well. 

[Marlew]

@witchypoos

 

I'll spoiler these off-topic ponderances:

 

Spoiler

I would say that 99% of games are of no interest to me, full stop. I'm mostly a mechanics/arcadey kind of guy, which is why I've enjoyed getting into a number of shmups this year, and 'game feel' is probably the most important element to me. Super Mario Kart, Street Fighter, Dark Souls, Splatoon, BotW, Ikaruga, DBFZ, Isaac, GT Sport, ARMS, Tetris Effect, Steamworld Dig 2, Monster Hunter, Forza, RE4. This is the stuff that really scratches the itch from one second to the next, and that I can feel in my fingertips when I visualise myself playing the game.

 

It seems that the vast majority of games don't or can't aspire to this, but they feel good enough and they succeed or excel in different ways. Indie games tend to be about exploring one or two different ideas and properly rinsing them, which is more likely appealing to me if that idea is something mechanical. There are also now loads and loads of variations on very well-worn themes and lots of pretty/original-looking games which are boring to play, so I feel less excited by indie development than I was five years ago. The 1% is still a lot of games, though, when you consider the size of the iceberg. My GOTY 2017 was Isaac AB+ (on Switch) and this year it's Psyvariar Delta (also on Switch) so the peak experiences are clearly rising to the top. AAA games often feel equally derivative, both of each other and of recent trends, and so I also find them uninspiring and uninspired for the most part. It's taken me a long time to realise and accept this, but I am now more careful about what I buy.

 

I think this is the case for every medium, of course.

 

[Marlew]

26 minutes ago, Thor said:

Was the price increase only to account for the VAT? 

 

That was the official reason given but obviously there was plenty of speculation as to the truth of that statement. 

[footle]

I reckon that paying U.K. tax, and supporting U.K. jobs (even if they’re in marketing), is something that I should probably be doing, given that I and my family consume U.K. public services.

 

I’m also far too lazy to switch around account systems, and relatively protective of my credit card details (I’d prefer to use it in as few places online as possible: so I know if retailer a, b, c is compromised I should be concerned, but if random SA Nintendo accounts are lost then...). This is probably more the issue.

[footle]

Oh, and if you’re playing on anything other than a Nintendo machine then even if you want to stick to digital everything is going to be discounted to about half price in three months time anyway, so you could just wait...

[Gotters]

I take the view that Nintendo are pretty much the only games company consistently providing titles I want to play on a machine I want to play them on - I've taken a kind of ethical stance in recent years that I try to support those companies that provide services/products I want by not shopping exclusively on price (it can of course be a factor but not my sole driver).

 

To that end I'm quite happy to pay full whack on launch day for the big Nintendo first party games as not only do I get the convenience of being digital only, but Nintendo themselves get a healthy price for a product I wish to support and keep on seeing get made, without handing over a chunk to a retailer. 

 

I get why people would want or need to not do this, its just a choice I am making to hopefully ensure I keep seeing a steady supply of great games. 

[Thor]

4 minutes ago, Stanshall said:

That was the official reason given but obviously there was plenty of speculation as to the truth of that statement. 

That doesn't really answer my question. A quick Google tells me there was an increase in VAT in South Africa from 14% to 15%. 

 

So what I was asking is was the increase only the increase in VAT? 

 

For example, I just looked up Gris on the South Africa store, it's R223.00. That includes 15% vat. At 14% vat it would be R221.06.

 

For Pokemon Ultra Moon (R569) the difference is actually 5 rand. So basically, if the increase in prices across the board was only 3 to 5 rand per game, then yeah the increase probably was just the vat. 

[Fry Crayola]

I see an issue when it's a small developer and people are hopping stores to save a small amount of money that, individually, matters little but could have a role to play in supporting that developer. 

 

Not so much if it's Capcom or Ubisoft getting short changed. 

[Bojangle]

I'm both too lazy to bother doing it, and I'd also rather support the devs of the games I do buy as much as possible. I also don't buy keys off "unofficial" places because who knows where that money is going.

I don't have an issue with people doing it, especially with big triple A titles, like whatever those guys will carry on just fine, but when a new indie title is coming out and selling for £10 or whatever and the thread about the game is mostly  filled with people talking about the cheapest place to get it from, I do find that weird. You also saw this in the Hitman 2 thread where people were buying the digital edition cheap and then cut to a week or so after release and people are worrying about the future of the company. Some weird disconnect there man, support the stuff you want to see more of.

I should add I do look at this from the dev viewpoint because we see the same thing with our game where you can buy it off Steam for the UK price of £15 or you can buy it from Turkey for £5. Great for the consumer, rubbish for the people making the games and wanting to continue supporting the title.
 

[sprite]

The weird thing is that games in stores in South Africa specifically cost more than they do either on their eShop or in the UK/or neglible difference to UK pricing.

 

I can’t understand why in the UK we pay a premium for digital games, or why we have come to justify it to ourselves as some kind of convenience tax.  All my main Switch purchases have been physical for this reason (there’s no inconvenience as I have a very cool, neat case for my games).

 

I don’t region shop though, mainly because I can’t be bothered, rather than any moral objection.  

 

 

[footle]

1 minute ago, sprite said:

The weird thing is that games in stores in South Africa specifically cost more than they do either on their eShop or in the UK/or neglible difference to UK pricing.

 

I can’t understand why in the UK we pay a premium for digital games, or why we have come to justify it to ourselves as some kind of convenience tax.

 

I don’t region shop though, mainly because I can’t be bothered, rather than any moral objection.  

 

 

 

Because physical videogames are just one of many things being sold by supermarkets or amazon (where the discounts are).