This year, the publisher’s not even selling its PC games on disc in the country. EA stuck to its guns and didn’t sell much of anything. This resulted in a slew of angry Indian consumers taking to the internet to voice their discontent. In no small part thanks to Australian consumers finding a way to bypass Origin to get a better deal on Simcity V with Indian prices. Those who didn’t, like Electronic Arts, ended up hiking prices. Eventually, better sense prevailed and publishers region-locked their games. Customers like myself would be questioned at certain store counters if purchased more than two copies of a game on PC like Company of Heroes 2.

Some of them welcomed this additional business, while others tried cracking down on it.

It reached a point where customers would wonder why games weren’t on the shelves and distributors would question why small, hole-in-the-wall stores with next to no foot traffic were ordering humongous quantities of PC games. (See: Awesome costumes: Thailand’s Onnies rocks Bayonetta and League of Legends)Įvery day used to be a Steam sale in India. And if the game had Steam support, they’d simply email keys to resellers on marketplaces like Kinguin. Game stores would take advantage of the low pricing and sell games for a higher profit to overseas clients.Ī lot of them would order a hundred or two hundred units of a game, with the bulk of them exported to countries like Thailand and Brazil. In hindsight, it was a wise move.īut the other games, the ones that did get priced lower, came with a side effect: re-export.

Bethesda and Activision Blizzard continued pricing their games on par with, if not higher than, their prices globally. The low price point for GTA IV allowed distributors some bargaining power with publishers for subsequent game releases, arguing that if they want their games to have a chance of selling, the price had to be low. In those days, you could get The Sims 3, Batman: Arkham Asylum, and Borderlands at launch on PC for a grand total of INR 2997 (around $50). And it set a tone for a generation of cheaply-priced games.

You see, when GTA IV released on PC in December 2008, India had it at INR 499 ($8). $41) it’s a shade lower than what US gamers have to pay, what with Gamestop listing it at $59.99, but it’s still steep compared to other triple-A games in India. GTA V‘s PC pricing went live last night on Games The Shop, a retailer owned by the game’s distributor.Īt INR 2499 (approx.

Gta v key sellers