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In order to have a conversation about this, we need to separate the different scenarios conflated here: 1. Actual second-hand reselling of bought games 2. Tac

In order to have a conversation about this, we need to separate the different scenarios conflated here: 1. Actual second-hand reselling of bought games 2. Tactically/strategically reselling keys legitimately acquired cheaper (giveaways, review keys, differentiated pricing between markets) 3. Fraud and money laundering (e.g. stolen credit cards) I think that the reasonable position and that of anyone not being incentivized to say otherwise would be that 1 should be allowed while 3 is already illegal and should be cracked down on. On the 2 my position is that this is not something that should be addressed by regulation but that it's the responsibility of the publisher. Don't want to see review keys ending up on second-hand sites? Put in restrictions (like limited time) on those licenses. If the second-hand market for keys you ave away for free ends up eating at your margins, maybe you gave away too many free keys or price too high. As for regional pricing, IMO it's both counterproductive and futile to keep national markets separated.

toyg 7y ago
> IMO it's both counterproductive and futile to keep national markets separated. I tend to agree in general (also for films, songs...), but for expensive items like games the problem becomes that you then have to charge, in developing markets, prices that are simply too high. That incentivises piracy, which then eats up profits from your developED markets too.
hazz99 7y ago
Not an expert, but surely regional pricing makes sense for countries with a much lower average income (or the reverse). I want people all round the world to play my games, not just those fortunate enough to be born where their dollar is strong enough to make it affordable. Disclaimer: I don't really know anything about exchange rates or value of money across borders. Cost of living and average income rates are complex!
- hedora 7y ago
  It has been proven again and again that price discrimination leads to better market efficiency (more people get to use the product, and the seller makes more), but it is also true that pretty much everyone viscerally hates it. Note that lowering the price during a sale, and lowering the price over time are other forms of price discrimination. (Here, the seller wastes the buyers’ time in exchange for a monetary discount, so people with less money and more time tend to get bigger discounts). Also, different regions have different costs of living, even when the currency is the same. In the Bay Area, a game on steam costs as much as renting an apartment for a few hours. In the middle of the country, that same game costs almost half a week’s rent for a comparable apartment. From that perspective, it really doesn’t make sense to charge the same amount, even in the same country. For physical goods, the solution is simple: just charge different amounts at different stores, and hope the cost of shipping prevents arbitrage. Also, for some reason people hate special discounts and coupons less than regional pricing. I wonder if steam could start selling points in the form of account-locked gift cards that are discounted differently in different markets. Maybe people would hate that less. They’d need better support for blocking mass game reselling across regions, but I’d guess that can be fixed with fraud detection.
  - aeorgnoieang 7y ago
    > ... price discrimination leads to better market efficiency ... but it is also true that pretty much everyone viscerally hates it. The same dynamic is true for markets generally and even economic thinking; truly sad facts!
Navarr 7y ago
The problem with review keys being done with limited time is that once the license expires, its the game and developer that get blamed and get poor reviews. One of the biggest problem with resellers is review-key fraud
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  I wonder why Steam and others don't support extra field in keys that's fixed, but affects the generation algorithm[0]? So instead of: 1234-5678-90AB-CDEF you'd have 1234-REVIEW-5678-90AB-CDEF and for regular keys (say, with language discrimination): 3141-PLLANG-5926-5358-9793 This way it would be clear at the point of sale whether or not you bought the kind of key that was advertised. Steam and others could spam the press to proliferate information about what "REVIEW" vs. "xxLANG" vs. "ANYVER" vs. whatever means, so buyers using reselling platforms would be educated and could push the problem back to where it was created in the first place. Similarly, sellers of keys couldn't cheat and pass review keys as regular ones. -- [0] - So that you can't derive a key of one type from the key of another type.
  - jay_kyburz 7y ago
    You can send a key out that will only unlock a Review "branch" of a steam game. The game itself can be clearly marked as a review copy and can even be a cut down copy of the game if you want. For Void Bastards we often have multiple branches going out to different groups for different things.
- RWSen 7y ago
  This seems easy to address: when the game is first started with a review key, show a pop-up informing the player that this is a review key with certain limits. This way, the player immediately knows he has bought an improper key, and can address this with the store it was bought. A journalist would not mind such a pop-up. If the game stops working without warning after a few months, angry reactions are to be expected.
Someone1234 7y ago
Market segregation is somewhat mitigated by selling per-language keys. For example, you can buy a Russian key for 50% off, but it is a Russian version of the game with the audio/text to match.
- wincy 7y ago
  Wow so if I learn Russian I can save a lot of money on video games?
  - AdmiralAsshat 7y ago
    I could save a ton of money on video games if I learned Japanese, considering the import copies tend to be way cheaper than the limited-production English runs of many niche JRPGs.
    - junar 7y ago
      Depends on the game and how you buy it. In general, buying digital is easier and cheaper in the US, due to more PC releases and aggressive price cuts and sales. Japanese digital stores have much less frequent and less generous sales, and older games don't get their base prices reduced by much. But if you buy physical copies, then the Japanese market might be cheaper simply due to the greater supply of older games, and potentially the currency conversion of newer games.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    Learning Russian just to save money on videogames is a pretty bad strategy when you account for opportunity costs - though I accept people sometimes find great amounts of motivation in silly things.
    - diegoperini 7y ago
      Well, it has the added benefit of "still knowing the language" after you finish the game.
forrestthewoods 7y ago
> Actual second-hand reselling of bought games No. This doesn’t make sense with digital goods. Everything is a copy. Nothing is being re-used. A second person is merely making an additional copy of bits. That person may not even download/copy the same bits as the first person if the game was updated. Taken to the extreme a middleman exchange with infinite resells and instant transfers of ownership could limit total sales to peak concurrent users. I mean why should an American and a European each buy a license? They could just share a license and instantly transfer it back and forth when they want to play! Gamedevs participated in bundles because it generated extra cash. Steam keys were an obvious way to distribute. A harsh lesson was learned. Going forward the fix is easy, don’t distribute keys. Assign the key to an account at point-of-sale. The other lesson is to stop selling games and go free-to-play. It solves this problem completely! I hate f2p. But there’s a reason the industry is moved in that direction. Le sigh. Downvote all you want. But digital goods which are infinitely reproducible and instantly transferable do not and should not follow the same laws as manufactured widgets. They’re covered by copyright law. And someone buying a copy of a thing does not grant them the right to let someone else make a copy of some vaguely similar thing 5 years later.
- m45t3r 7y ago
  > Taken to the extreme a middleman exchange with infinite resells and instant transfers of ownership could limit total sales to peak concurrent users. I mean why should an American and a European each buy a license? They could just share a license and instantly transfer it back and forth when they want to play! This can be mitigated by limiting transfer licenses by some days, i.e. after transferring you need to wait one month to transfer ownership again. However, this wouldn't even be necessary. Just a process that is boring enough to do would avoid most non-malicious abuse. For example, to transfer the user that current has ownership of the key must went to a process of disowning the key first. There is already better ways if you want to share your library with some trusted people: i.e. Steam's family share.
- sprayk 7y ago
  One isn't buying/selling the copy of the digital good, though, they are buying/selling a license to make copies for themselves from Steam's servers and to play said game.
fendy3002 7y ago
IMO regional pricing helps indie / smaller devs greatly rather than AAA studios. With regional pricing, the original price of 20$ game can be brought down to 15-10$, which can help middle class from developing countries. For AAA games, they may already have reputation and even at high price there are still fans that'll buy them.
shados 7y ago
> IMO it's both counterproductive and futile to keep national markets separated. And honestly, I think its a shame, because regional pricing makes a lot of sense. Selling a AAA game at 2 bucks a pop in the US doesn't make sense. You have to get back the 10s of millions of dollars you spent somehow (if the game is good!). But that locks out underprivileged markets, who can't afford 60 bucks games. They'll likely just pirate it then. Regional pricing is a nice solution to that. Unfortunately then people abuse it. That's why we can't have nice things.
- umvi 7y ago
  Regional pricing usually means the product is encumbered with region-locking DRM... and honestly it makes sense but I hate region locking DRM. "What the...? Why am I paying $60 for a game when I can buy the same game in Nigeria for $5!" vs. "Aw man, there's a cool Japan-only Fire Emblem game that I can't play because it only works on Japanese consoles..."
  - dkersten 7y ago
    I'd rather feel ripped off, but have access to a game, than to not have access to the game at all. Of course, its easy to say that now and in reality it probably drives people to piracy. Its a difficult problem.
  - filoleg 7y ago
    Wouldn't it make sense to region lock cheaper versions, while keeping the "fully priced" version for non-underprivileged markets unlocked? AFAIK that's how it is done, and it makes some sense. However, I admit, I thought through the scenario for a grand total of 5 minutes, so I probably have missed something.
    - crankylinuxuser 7y ago
      The companies have no issue in using labor from "underprivileged" markets, so why shouldn't we customers be able to buy from wherever? Good for the goose, good for the gander.
hedora 7y ago
For the case of credit card fraud, I wonder how hard it would be for developers to band together to provide a service that automates chargebacks against g2a, and maybe offers a discount code for each successful chargeback. That would rapidly kick G2A off the credit card processing networks, assuming the allegations in the article are true.
gameswithgo 7y ago
There is a complicating factor in that the way credit card companies operate, combined with how key sellers operate, allows for money laundering, such that the keyseller is not exposed to risk but the game seller is.
username444 7y ago
Thanks for this insight. It's a good reminder that reality is nuanced and complex.
vectorEQ 7y ago
i agree on your points. how option 2 would come about could imo only be a self inflicted would, like you said, give away too much, then complain later it hurt your margins, and even asking people to boycot a service due to your own misjudgements, that would be bad move from indie devs. (let's hope its not that :-))
ridgewell 7y ago
>2. Tactically/strategically reselling keys legitimately acquired cheaper (giveaways, review keys, differentiated pricing between markets) Key reselling from giveaways could be mitigated if we somehow figured out a way to make keys expire shortly after the giveaway period (ie, keys expire 5 days after the giveaway ends). I'm not aware if Steam or other marketplaces have this functionality yet.
- wolco 7y ago
  a simple datestamp? Not sure I've seen coupons without this functionality why would keys be different?
  - ridgewell 7y ago
    I would be surprised why game developers and publishers don't cancel out old keys from free giveaways to prevent hoarding and reselling then.
    - nearbuy 7y ago
      Steam has a page that lets developers query whether a key has been redeemed, but it only lets you query one key at a time. This makes it a pain to discover unredeemed keys. You also have no way of knowing if an unredeemed key is held by a legitimate potential player or someone trying to hoard and resell.
ggggtez 7y ago
>IMO it's both counterproductive and futile to keep national markets separated. So, developers in the USA should simply not sell their games overseas then? Let's say an indie game costs $10 in the states. In Thailand, the average monthly income is ~$220. So someone in the US could work 1 hour and buy the game, but someone in Thailand would have to pay more than a day's salary for the same game! The game is supposed to be affordable! Regional pricing can help a developer charge less for a game in a country that has lower standard of living. Maybe $1 instead, so it's more like 1 hour of work for the average person. But if US consumers can buy the game for $1, why would they spend $10? If US consumers did that, the developer would suddenly be making 10% or less after fees. There is no way they could profitably develop games after taking that kind of hit. I'm not saying you're not wrong with it being futile to keep separated, but there is a very good reason for it.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- esotericn 7y ago
  Well, whether you can afford something or not doesn't have to be a matter of nationality. This is ultimately the reason I used to pirate software as a young person. I grew up in a poorer northern UK town. Chucking 50 quid at a PlayStation game was, let's call it "highly impractical". So me, and most of my friends, would burn CDRs and mod the consoles. I think the correct answer to this, ultimately, if you care about having the widest audience, is charging for the product, but not putting _too much_ effort into piracy being impossible. The middle classes will still buy your stuff because it's the polite thing.
  - asdff 7y ago
    >The middle classes will still buy your stuff because it's the polite thing. Not only polite, but easy. If you could afford the game, you buy it, it downloads, you play. Piracy is more work, but if you value that time spent as less than the price of the product, of course you will pirate. I used to pirate a lot of music. I'd have to find the title on some tracker, download the album for a couple hours (shit internet at the time), import it, deal with metadata, deal with album artwork, import into my device. It was a lot of work, but I couldn't afford $1 a song! I definitely can afford $10 a month though, and spend probably 2 seconds finding a track on spotify to play it on any and all devices. Worth it. Easy. Affordable. But if you charge too much, don't be surprised when your users are willing to take the long way and get your stuff for free. Nothing will ever be uncrackable, so why waste expensive engineering salary on the digital equivalent to the war on drugs?
cmroanirgo 7y ago
>IMO it's both counterproductive and futile to keep national markets separated. One thing that many comments here aren't mentioning is that some regions have differing requirements to be able to sell in that zone. A common issue is the rating (MA, PG, R, etc). Once, when about to release in Germany (mid 90's) we had to change red blood to green in order to not get rated as R. So it's not as though the developers can publish without strict regional forethought, so they may as well use a pricing model that satisfies the cost of living.

toyg 7y ago

> IMO it's both counterproductive and futile to keep national markets separated. I tend to agree in general (also for films, songs...), but for expensive items like games the problem becomes that you then have to charge, in developing markets, prices that are simply too high. That incentivises piracy, which then eats up profits from your developED markets too.

hazz99 7y ago

Not an expert, but surely regional pricing makes sense for countries with a much lower average income (or the reverse). I want people all round the world to play my games, not just those fortunate enough to be born where their dollar is strong enough to make it affordable. Disclaimer: I don't really know anything about exchange rates or value of money across borders. Cost of living and average income rates are complex!

hedora 7y ago
It has been proven again and again that price discrimination leads to better market efficiency (more people get to use the product, and the seller makes more), but it is also true that pretty much everyone viscerally hates it. Note that lowering the price during a sale, and lowering the price over time are other forms of price discrimination. (Here, the seller wastes the buyers’ time in exchange for a monetary discount, so people with less money and more time tend to get bigger discounts). Also, different regions have different costs of living, even when the currency is the same. In the Bay Area, a game on steam costs as much as renting an apartment for a few hours. In the middle of the country, that same game costs almost half a week’s rent for a comparable apartment. From that perspective, it really doesn’t make sense to charge the same amount, even in the same country. For physical goods, the solution is simple: just charge different amounts at different stores, and hope the cost of shipping prevents arbitrage. Also, for some reason people hate special discounts and coupons less than regional pricing. I wonder if steam could start selling points in the form of account-locked gift cards that are discounted differently in different markets. Maybe people would hate that less. They’d need better support for blocking mass game reselling across regions, but I’d guess that can be fixed with fraud detection.
- aeorgnoieang 7y ago
  > ... price discrimination leads to better market efficiency ... but it is also true that pretty much everyone viscerally hates it. The same dynamic is true for markets generally and even economic thinking; truly sad facts!

Navarr 7y ago

The problem with review keys being done with limited time is that once the license expires, its the game and developer that get blamed and get poor reviews. One of the biggest problem with resellers is review-key fraud

TeMPOraL 7y ago
I wonder why Steam and others don't support extra field in keys that's fixed, but affects the generation algorithm[0]? So instead of: 1234-5678-90AB-CDEF you'd have 1234-REVIEW-5678-90AB-CDEF and for regular keys (say, with language discrimination): 3141-PLLANG-5926-5358-9793 This way it would be clear at the point of sale whether or not you bought the kind of key that was advertised. Steam and others could spam the press to proliferate information about what "REVIEW" vs. "xxLANG" vs. "ANYVER" vs. whatever means, so buyers using reselling platforms would be educated and could push the problem back to where it was created in the first place. Similarly, sellers of keys couldn't cheat and pass review keys as regular ones. -- [0] - So that you can't derive a key of one type from the key of another type.
- jay_kyburz 7y ago
  You can send a key out that will only unlock a Review "branch" of a steam game. The game itself can be clearly marked as a review copy and can even be a cut down copy of the game if you want. For Void Bastards we often have multiple branches going out to different groups for different things.
RWSen 7y ago
This seems easy to address: when the game is first started with a review key, show a pop-up informing the player that this is a review key with certain limits. This way, the player immediately knows he has bought an improper key, and can address this with the store it was bought. A journalist would not mind such a pop-up. If the game stops working without warning after a few months, angry reactions are to be expected.

Someone1234 7y ago

Market segregation is somewhat mitigated by selling per-language keys. For example, you can buy a Russian key for 50% off, but it is a Russian version of the game with the audio/text to match.

wincy 7y ago
Wow so if I learn Russian I can save a lot of money on video games?
- AdmiralAsshat 7y ago
  I could save a ton of money on video games if I learned Japanese, considering the import copies tend to be way cheaper than the limited-production English runs of many niche JRPGs.
  - junar 7y ago
    Depends on the game and how you buy it. In general, buying digital is easier and cheaper in the US, due to more PC releases and aggressive price cuts and sales. Japanese digital stores have much less frequent and less generous sales, and older games don't get their base prices reduced by much. But if you buy physical copies, then the Japanese market might be cheaper simply due to the greater supply of older games, and potentially the currency conversion of newer games.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  Learning Russian just to save money on videogames is a pretty bad strategy when you account for opportunity costs - though I accept people sometimes find great amounts of motivation in silly things.
  - diegoperini 7y ago
    Well, it has the added benefit of "still knowing the language" after you finish the game.

forrestthewoods 7y ago

> Actual second-hand reselling of bought games No. This doesn’t make sense with digital goods. Everything is a copy. Nothing is being re-used. A second person is merely making an additional copy of bits. That person may not even download/copy the same bits as the first person if the game was updated. Taken to the extreme a middleman exchange with infinite resells and instant transfers of ownership could limit total sales to peak concurrent users. I mean why should an American and a European each buy a license? They could just share a license and instantly transfer it back and forth when they want to play! Gamedevs participated in bundles because it generated extra cash. Steam keys were an obvious way to distribute. A harsh lesson was learned. Going forward the fix is easy, don’t distribute keys. Assign the key to an account at point-of-sale. The other lesson is to stop selling games and go free-to-play. It solves this problem completely! I hate f2p. But there’s a reason the industry is moved in that direction. Le sigh. Downvote all you want. But digital goods which are infinitely reproducible and instantly transferable do not and should not follow the same laws as manufactured widgets. They’re covered by copyright law. And someone buying a copy of a thing does not grant them the right to let someone else make a copy of some vaguely similar thing 5 years later.

m45t3r 7y ago
> Taken to the extreme a middleman exchange with infinite resells and instant transfers of ownership could limit total sales to peak concurrent users. I mean why should an American and a European each buy a license? They could just share a license and instantly transfer it back and forth when they want to play! This can be mitigated by limiting transfer licenses by some days, i.e. after transferring you need to wait one month to transfer ownership again. However, this wouldn't even be necessary. Just a process that is boring enough to do would avoid most non-malicious abuse. For example, to transfer the user that current has ownership of the key must went to a process of disowning the key first. There is already better ways if you want to share your library with some trusted people: i.e. Steam's family share.
sprayk 7y ago
One isn't buying/selling the copy of the digital good, though, they are buying/selling a license to make copies for themselves from Steam's servers and to play said game.

fendy3002 7y ago

IMO regional pricing helps indie / smaller devs greatly rather than AAA studios. With regional pricing, the original price of 20$ game can be brought down to 15-10$, which can help middle class from developing countries. For AAA games, they may already have reputation and even at high price there are still fans that'll buy them.

shados 7y ago

> IMO it's both counterproductive and futile to keep national markets separated. And honestly, I think its a shame, because regional pricing makes a lot of sense. Selling a AAA game at 2 bucks a pop in the US doesn't make sense. You have to get back the 10s of millions of dollars you spent somehow (if the game is good!). But that locks out underprivileged markets, who can't afford 60 bucks games. They'll likely just pirate it then. Regional pricing is a nice solution to that. Unfortunately then people abuse it. That's why we can't have nice things.

umvi 7y ago
Regional pricing usually means the product is encumbered with region-locking DRM... and honestly it makes sense but I hate region locking DRM. "What the...? Why am I paying $60 for a game when I can buy the same game in Nigeria for $5!" vs. "Aw man, there's a cool Japan-only Fire Emblem game that I can't play because it only works on Japanese consoles..."
- dkersten 7y ago
  I'd rather feel ripped off, but have access to a game, than to not have access to the game at all. Of course, its easy to say that now and in reality it probably drives people to piracy. Its a difficult problem.
- filoleg 7y ago
  Wouldn't it make sense to region lock cheaper versions, while keeping the "fully priced" version for non-underprivileged markets unlocked? AFAIK that's how it is done, and it makes some sense. However, I admit, I thought through the scenario for a grand total of 5 minutes, so I probably have missed something.
  - crankylinuxuser 7y ago
    The companies have no issue in using labor from "underprivileged" markets, so why shouldn't we customers be able to buy from wherever? Good for the goose, good for the gander.

hedora 7y ago

For the case of credit card fraud, I wonder how hard it would be for developers to band together to provide a service that automates chargebacks against g2a, and maybe offers a discount code for each successful chargeback. That would rapidly kick G2A off the credit card processing networks, assuming the allegations in the article are true.

gameswithgo 7y ago

There is a complicating factor in that the way credit card companies operate, combined with how key sellers operate, allows for money laundering, such that the keyseller is not exposed to risk but the game seller is.

username444 7y ago

Thanks for this insight. It's a good reminder that reality is nuanced and complex.

vectorEQ 7y ago

i agree on your points. how option 2 would come about could imo only be a self inflicted would, like you said, give away too much, then complain later it hurt your margins, and even asking people to boycot a service due to your own misjudgements, that would be bad move from indie devs. (let's hope its not that :-))

ridgewell 7y ago

>2. Tactically/strategically reselling keys legitimately acquired cheaper (giveaways, review keys, differentiated pricing between markets) Key reselling from giveaways could be mitigated if we somehow figured out a way to make keys expire shortly after the giveaway period (ie, keys expire 5 days after the giveaway ends). I'm not aware if Steam or other marketplaces have this functionality yet.

wolco 7y ago
a simple datestamp? Not sure I've seen coupons without this functionality why would keys be different?
- ridgewell 7y ago
  I would be surprised why game developers and publishers don't cancel out old keys from free giveaways to prevent hoarding and reselling then.
  - nearbuy 7y ago
    Steam has a page that lets developers query whether a key has been redeemed, but it only lets you query one key at a time. This makes it a pain to discover unredeemed keys. You also have no way of knowing if an unredeemed key is held by a legitimate potential player or someone trying to hoard and resell.

ggggtez 7y ago

>IMO it's both counterproductive and futile to keep national markets separated. So, developers in the USA should simply not sell their games overseas then? Let's say an indie game costs $10 in the states. In Thailand, the average monthly income is ~$220. So someone in the US could work 1 hour and buy the game, but someone in Thailand would have to pay more than a day's salary for the same game! The game is supposed to be affordable! Regional pricing can help a developer charge less for a game in a country that has lower standard of living. Maybe $1 instead, so it's more like 1 hour of work for the average person. But if US consumers can buy the game for $1, why would they spend $10? If US consumers did that, the developer would suddenly be making 10% or less after fees. There is no way they could profitably develop games after taking that kind of hit. I'm not saying you're not wrong with it being futile to keep separated, but there is a very good reason for it.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
esotericn 7y ago
Well, whether you can afford something or not doesn't have to be a matter of nationality. This is ultimately the reason I used to pirate software as a young person. I grew up in a poorer northern UK town. Chucking 50 quid at a PlayStation game was, let's call it "highly impractical". So me, and most of my friends, would burn CDRs and mod the consoles. I think the correct answer to this, ultimately, if you care about having the widest audience, is charging for the product, but not putting _too much_ effort into piracy being impossible. The middle classes will still buy your stuff because it's the polite thing.
- asdff 7y ago
  >The middle classes will still buy your stuff because it's the polite thing. Not only polite, but easy. If you could afford the game, you buy it, it downloads, you play. Piracy is more work, but if you value that time spent as less than the price of the product, of course you will pirate. I used to pirate a lot of music. I'd have to find the title on some tracker, download the album for a couple hours (shit internet at the time), import it, deal with metadata, deal with album artwork, import into my device. It was a lot of work, but I couldn't afford $1 a song! I definitely can afford $10 a month though, and spend probably 2 seconds finding a track on spotify to play it on any and all devices. Worth it. Easy. Affordable. But if you charge too much, don't be surprised when your users are willing to take the long way and get your stuff for free. Nothing will ever be uncrackable, so why waste expensive engineering salary on the digital equivalent to the war on drugs?

cmroanirgo 7y ago

>IMO it's both counterproductive and futile to keep national markets separated. One thing that many comments here aren't mentioning is that some regions have differing requirements to be able to sell in that zone. A common issue is the rating (MA, PG, R, etc). Once, when about to release in Germany (mid 90's) we had to change red blood to green in order to not get rated as R. So it's not as though the developers can publish without strict regional forethought, so they may as well use a pricing model that satisfies the cost of living.