| > People with lower incomes aren't as willing to pay high prices for games. It's a bit deeper than that, let me share my perspective of purchasing software in a developing country. Growing up I remember that video games only picked up in popularity when you could "buy" pirated games. For reference, I'm talking about the Nintendo Wii era and those were about 1-3 USD each for a CD with the pirated version of the game.
Also for reference, right now a Nintendo Switch game (that costs $60 MSRP in the US) sells for about $90 due to taxes and stuff [1]. To me, there's two significant issues with that:
1. People don't feel like they are stealing when buying pirated goods. They are spending their hard-earned cash into something they want/like, and that's as far as their reasoning goes. This happens for other software like Photoshop too, and even physical goods. I remember buying fake yu-gi-oh cards knowing they were fake, but that's the only ones that were available and that I could afford. I had a few legit ones and I treated them as a treasure, in the same way you treat your fancier clothes better than your normal ones.
2. You can have a full meal in a diner for about $3 in my country, desert and all. If you want to sell food, that's how low you have to go because that's what people can afford. A $10 dollar meal is normal in the US, but here it would be a luxury. Now, that combination is very problematic as you can expect. People do want to pay for stuff, and to their minds that's what they are doing. To me, selling pirated goods is as scummy as it gets, but I cannot blame someone for buying it when it's their only choice. So for most companies, having "regional" prices on this markets is the difference between selling or not. [1] Not exagerating at all, google `700 GTQ to USD` and then this https://www.max.com.gt/juego-nintendo-switch-pokemon-violet-... |
Yes. That's because they aren't stealing. It's completely normal to feel like you're not stealing when you're not stealing.
The copyright monopolists would very much prefer that you felt bad when you "steal" their imaginary property but the truth is nobody other than the politicians they lobby cares about their opinion on anything.