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Players hoping to pick up Horizon Zero Dawn before the release of its sequel, Horizon Forbidden West, were in for a big surprise this weekend. Some of them woke up one morning to an increase of double, triple, or even sextuple the previous price on Steam.
While you may not have noticed if you live in the United States, players in other parts of the world like India, Turkey, and especially Argentina are being forced to pay a real premium for Horizon Zero Dawn right now. The average price increase looks to be about double. India for example was 200 percent. Turkey was 327 percent. Argentina was an astounding 678 percent.
The news broke when a person going by the name of AshenOne posted a pricing chart on Resetera. “This was the first and only Sony game on PC to feature well done regional pricing by the company on Steam, but it's over the moon now regionally,” AshenOne remarked. “If you're from these other regions and haven't purchased Horizon Zero Dawn until now, then your luck just ran out.”
Commenters of course responded with fury. Some even pointed out that such a move on the part of Sony might just push people to piracy. “Hope that publishers realize that the only thing this will achieve is to increase piracy in developing countries,” one said. “Regional pricing is a way to bring parity to these titles in a way which is sensible to country specific economies and disposable income for customers relative to their country,” said another.
The underlying reason for this dramatic price increase remains unclear, but the move seems to be aimed at establishing consistent global pricing. The idea is basically that Sony gets the same amount of money in sales regardless of where the game is purchased. The pricing is in other words not a reflection of local market conditions or the strength of a given economy. The problem is of course that Horizon Zero Dawn became completely unaffordable to a lot of people around the world quite literally overnight.
The price increase unfortunately is not unique to Horizon Zero Dawn. This appears to be part of a new policy with respect to regional pricing at Sony. God of War for example just got a price hike and other games are likely to follow. The question at this point is whether anybody outside of the United States will be able to actually buy them.