I have played the game for more than 10 years with this account and other accounts.
I live in Egypt so the price of the subscription is very high for me in complete contrast with the price in other countries, if you do compare you’ll see it’s not even close.
if you want numbers ----
Average salary US 1 Day = 284$
Average salary Egypt 1 Day = 15$
Minimum Salary Egypt 1 day = 8$ if I’m being generous
Minimum Salary US 1 day = 138$ Without being generous
For 8 years I couldn’t pay for Omega a single time and i have just been buying plex in game.
I’d love to be able to play the game without feeling like it’s a job as I’m continuously trying to make my plex every month and always worried about not being able to pay it in game which what happened for 8 years now
I’m saying all of that not demanding anything as CCP doesn’t HAVE to make it fair as it’s not CCP’s problem and i certainly don’t feel entitled for such a solution or feel like i should even be.
But i really hope you do something about it
My suggestion is to have a country appropriate pricing
Where the price depends on the country the player is in based on his bank info or Something more reliable.
So Egyptian Residents and other poor countries can pay for Omega instead of buying it in game.
I don’t personally know any CSM Members to contact about this so if you do please convey the message .
Note : I’m not only talking about Egypt as there is multiple other counties in the region which have the same problem.
Things like Paypal aren’t limited to certain countries or regions, it’s just not feasible without people gaming the system. Beyond that, they still need to be paid for their efforts and running costs, just because it’s expensive for you doesn’t mean they can “give it away” because THEIR costs aren’t any cheaper for you compared to someone in, say, the US.
Very good points
The PayPal problem can be fixed by not accepting PayPal and none region specific payment methods
The “giving it away” problem is one i cannot think of a solution for outside big solutions that basically resample an investment in such poor countries, so this problem is up to CCP really if they cannot fix it then i cannot blame them at all.
This is a simple request and I’m not suggesting that CCP HAVE to do anything and i certainly don’t feel entitled for such a solution or feel like i should even be.
Note : I’m not only talking about Egypt as there is multiple other counties in the region which have the same problem.
I agree it’s hard and i don’t think i can set here and fix the problems that will be faced to implement such a thing, i merely put a suggestion up which i think will benefit CCP because right now they get nothing from such places if they make it easier for them it will be higher than nothing i think.
I mean there are examples of it being done, like youtube subs are way cheaper in Egypt than in the US for example so it is doable in some cases, is possible for a game? is it possible for EVE? is it feasible in the first place?
If CCP Sees an opportunity in that audience and want to they will want to answer these questions to themselves and i have not idea about the answer .
I do hope firstly they think about it secondly if they do and decide to implement it they would implement it in a way that cannot be cheated or at least super difficult to cheat, that’s all I’m hoping for.
Thanks for having an interest and having a convo about it though
Nobody said it couldn’t be done, but that it would be exploited, google has enough money to not care about the losses, subscriptions are the major source of income for CCP and they don’t really have the ability to absorb that cost
There is no real way to prevent it being abused if there is enough of an incentive, google just doesn’t care because they make billions and the extremely tiny loss is nothing to them, i wish CCP were big enough for that to not matter but they aren’t
The Primary problem is exploitation for sure but i really hope CCP might have a solution for this.
I don’t think Google loses money in these countries as they are like a distributed system they invest that money that’s worth less in the US in the countries they got it from so the money say in circulation in such countries so it’s useful where it is, it’s a complex dance but i don’t think they lose money can CCP do that i actually don’t think so but i don’t know still as there is a potential for investment in these countries.
but as i said before CCP gets close to nothing from these countries right now, don’t you think they might actually get something worth while instead if they do this?
i actually don’t know also
there is a lot of i don’t knows and only CCP knows the answers to all that, so we cannot say they can or cannot definitively.
I am living in a “developing country“ as well. Back when I started playing EVE, I was still in college with a budget of about, well,… 3 peanuts a week to survive. So I know your pain.
Anyway, yes the big companies are taking losses, and I don’t think CCP is big enough to do it as well. If you find a way to implement a regional pricing system that users can’t game - you’ll be rich (if you make a service out of it). No one managed to do that so far. Not even Netflix.
Google 100% loses potential income anytime they offer regional pricing, but youtube premium isn’t their real product its advertising, they offer it for the people too lazy to install an adblocker
Like i said there basically isn’t a way to prevent it, VPN’s exist and paypal exists, they aren’t going to start collecting ID’s in order to attempt to decide who should or shouldn’t have regional pricing because only the big players who can afford to absorb the losses actually bother with regional pricing
but as i said before CCP gets close to nothing from these countries right now, don’t you think they might actually get something worth while instead if they do this?
No, because the net amount of income will drop as a result of people now all using the lower regional pricing, from a company perspective there isn’t any net gain here, yes they gain a few new players buying omega, but then they lose a bunch because the rest of the world uses VPN’s or sets their account region to egypt in order to get the same cheaper prices, the benefits do not outweigh the unpoliced costs
Like i said i feel for people who can’t afford to pay for omega and it would be great if we lived in a world where it was possible to do proper regional pricing that couldn’t be exploited, but sadly this is not the world we live in
taking all that in consideration it is very hard to implement such a system i do know it’s not impossible to prevent cheating specially repeated cheating and i do think at first they would take some loses but the gain i do think it might be worth it as the game is quite good and the future plans like vanguard and such are also extremely good prospects which will set CCP pretty good so while i don’t know 100% that CCP can take it and it would be a risk and an investment but i do think the return will be actually pretty good if they do achieve it preventing cheating.
it might take some odd measures to prevent cheating this system and it might be not worth it at the end but if they do it just right i believe it’s possible.
I think at this point it’s up to CCP to decide whether to take or not take that risk.
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