Oh my...Old, bald and (most probably) white man complains about "racism via game prices".

smh

In fairness, if you took a user at random from the active population of the forums, you would have a reasonable chance at being correct on all three counts.

I think this is indeed the most sensible and fair way to think about that. Not perfect, obviously, but still better than all the alternatives I can think of.

You don't pay more because you are "from Switzerland". (That would be a political reason.)
You pay more because of economic power and average wealth.

This has nothing, absolutely zero to do with racism. And no one here is defending racism because it doesn't apply here. Shame on you for trying to twist the discussion in that particular direction. Making these kinds of insinuations is really low.

When i had to repair my car in Germany i did not notice your 19 EUR prices at all... it was around 75 EUR a hour the mech was asking me for. I do not know a single mech working for 20 EUR or lesser a hour, not even nearly.... it is usually several times that amount.

"Average stuff" is just meaningless... i know not a single case someone will work for 19 EUR a hour, at least not for the stuff i need... it seems fake. As well remember: In Germany the government taxes are already taken away, not so in Swiss.... who in average still need to pay around 20% government taxes.

You can not compare 2 single countries just by salaries... this is just ugly, because the system on what they STILL have to pay... or not to pay... can be very different.

Another thing you will need to consider: Dependable on location, even inside Germany the difference in salary can be huge. Munich got very high salaries; while... Saxon got very low salaries. It is just WAY more complicated than your "little maths".

Fact is: If we truly want to be "fair"; we will have to handle the stuff individually. Overall... the current economy is without fairness in mind, it is a myth trying to even guess "it could be fair, or we do need fairness". As long as we do not turn the system upward down, fairness is just a nice "fairy tale".

Yet it is in near every economical aspect related to any resources. The successful ones get almost anything and the one with low success they almost die trying to even get "a glimpse" of any resource available (no matter the resource).

I don't suppose using a VPN and virtually moving to Denmark would fix this?

Everything can be circumvented or manipulated, but this is not the point here. The point here, i do well understand, is simply the "official and systematical totally bloated up demand toward certain countries". Besides the term racism is surely unfitting, although it got the same basic roots which is linked to "discrimination" for whatever reason.

Simply putting someone in a clear disadvantage and/or artificially demanding more from someone because of a certain location. It is capitalism, this system never meant to be fair (not possible, i already told the reason)... instead simply trying to "leech" as much as possible from every single location.

However, GOG can not do much because the amount they want to charge (by each location) is set up by the publishers... not the shop. If anyone could bring prices down it would be the ones with the highest power, especially Valve/Steam. All the others kinda are following "their rule" because the publishers usually are adapting this economic approach toward any other place. GOG is lacking the leverage making any changes here.

On Steam at least there are in most cases many key shops able to provide a better offer, even toward high income countries. And of course, a friend from the US or another country could in theory buy a cheaper key and hand it over as a gift. There are some options in order to legally "avoid" many of the bloat but it surely does not feel good if it is in many cases nearly unavoidable for many oft the less wealthy gamers, which is possible in absolutely every country.

Could be lack of knowledge by GOG and steam.
Did you submit a ticket to explain why this is wrong?
I also don't know why it's wrong.

One more thing: No they do not hate people in Swiss, they are simply being guided by to much greed and the industry kinda was adapting this idea of sometimes a pretty harsh "regional pricing"... and somehow our country is in most cases "at the very top". It is a weird feeling... a mix between "honor" as they seem to have the impression we are the wealthiest ones the world has ever seen and "feeling somewhat disturbed" as it is in the end some form of discrimination... hard to say this.... difficult to explain... feeling.

Still have to take it sufficiently relaxed. I simply make some countermeasures because i can not afford to lose to much money... i simply need it as well for other stuff in my life, including better hardware.

It surely does NOT help Valve/Steam being a BIG lover of regional pricing and because of their strong support combined with monopolistic market-power they simply are "ruling" this price policy for the entire "digital industry".

Indeed... for me many physical games are cheaper than the digital game price, as a result of this pretty harsh "regional pricing".

I wasn't sure before, but now I can clearly see you're trolling, based on the mechanic comment.

But I'll humor you. So which prices are you aiming to pay to consider this fair, ideally? France prices or Poland prices? Polish people pay much less. How about Turkey prices? What ballpark are we looking at here? When does it start being fair to you? Should people in Brazil start paying Swiss prices for you to think this is fair?

Btw, you might wanna contact McDonald's, as well. They seem to have not gotten the memo, yet.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/big-mac-index-by-country

Start a crusade. I'll join ya! I pledge allegiance to your cause! You know that Aristotle quote? "The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal."? Let's do a 180° on that! We'll have to brainstorm on a good slogan. Email me at foolseverywhere@itneverstops.com.

Posting this in a different post, since I don't want others to see. It's between me and you.

I think I've found something that may be bad for our crusade.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_countries_by_average_wage

Switzerland scores much higher than all the other European countries in all the graphs. Even when adjusted for living costs.

Should we keep quiet about this? What if we edit the page, and also remove the citations? We need to act fast on this.

P.S. I've changed my email to avoid detection. You can now reach me at lecharmediscret@bourgeoisie.com

Sample size n=1, LOL. Not to mention that the rate you pay to a mechanic at a car dealership usually is inflated because they have overhead to pay for. So what's the take home rate for that mechanic at that shop? And is that indicative of the average person? The stats I used were net after taxes and average isn't meaningless because I'm comparing average people to average people in each different country. Average. Average. Average, do you stats? I really don't want to hear this from a person with a 3000 CHF = 3230 EUR = $3380 USD PC who is finding every single straw to grasp to justify how you deserve to pay less even if you pay significantly less in time compared to everyone else.

My PC? Nah... the X670E Ace MB was inflating now with a price of 1179 CHF in my county, because extremely rare already; out of stock almost everywhere, even in the US. The new generation of MBs just sux, so my nearly 2 year old board is considered a Rolls Royce or "Apple" by now.

The GPU surely dropped a little but it still goes for around 1000 CHF on the "used-market". It still holds up well vs. a 7900 XTX and alike with high quality components. Considering i was using it for over 2 years already it was well worth the investment... because it only got about 20-30% drop in value in over 2 years.

Hardware is "hard currency", many people may forget... it is not something that can be bloated up near endless... there is a pretty hard limit related to the amount.

So, over 2000 already... adding all the other stuff, of which the SSDs and HDDs are around 1300 as well, still without CPU, RAM, Case and water-cooler, i would say the actual value is more like 4000 CHF.

Okay, now to be even more nasty... my personal situation got NOTHING to do with the situation of a entire country and i could still be below average in salary earned, which is actually true... but for me certain things are simply a "good investment" so i am not to stingy by handing out the cash in such a case... even if i barely could afford it.

You are full of judgement and are trying to extract every little bit of arguments you are able to find in order to improve your own flawed position. I already told... the world is NOT fair and it was NEVER about fairness nor ethics related to the regional pricing. Ok, i tell it again because people ONLY see the stuff they want to see and are backing up the stuff they want to see with anything they are able to throw at it. No, the world nor the economy... was never about fairness and it was never meant to be fair!

The only reason why we have huge differences in pricing related to the regional pricing is because "it seems to work" and "they can get more coins out of it by trying to reach every countries average pain threshold"... i use average now as you seem to enjoy this word. In general the industry rather is enjoying the term "median" so they can avoid the extremely wealthy and the extremely poor... in order to work with the "middle class" which is the main target when it comes to "consumer products".

It is purely pragmatic the entire situation... no one cares ethics or other kind of moralistic views related to the economy. This is just the explanation some individuals are handing out, so they feel relieved if some "unfair entities" are becoming leeched, kinda some kind of revenge feelings without any solid background.

I actually enjoy the word "overhead", and if you take this word MORE serious you may finally notice that your income-comparisons are trash... exactly because of the "high overhead" many people in some countries are facing!

One step closer to the truth, grats on that!

No one was trying to make something "equal", this is the thing so many people fail to understand.

The economy is based on 2 main factors, actually even 3 factors "availability... on software not the case unless artificially forced, for example FOMO mechanics", "success, simply if there is any demand for any product given, no matter the availability" and "capitalism, which simply means trying to reach the biggest cash-flow possible and trying to ask the highest price possible on any location given... in which regional pricing got a use for. As the software is not really bound to regions (highly movable) this regions are as well "artificially created". A shop may still have to pay taxes to the government, yet the prices are only marginally affected by it (at least on countries with less than 20% VAT, i know... many countries got hilarious taxes already).

Not that hard to understand... a bit of logical thinking goes a long way already.

Besides: The Mechs price may involve overhead but NOT the full overhead because i still have to pay for the material and the recycling of any material (including fluids) separately... and the MWST/VAT is as well not included... so this is still not the "full overhead". Anyway, simply a good example that no one can work just by using a "average salary..." totally useless.

Your other stuff you can keep for yourself; if you are taking it more serious with a good attitude you can still ask me again.

How much "someone" have to pay in relation to their income or "working time spend" is completely individual, wold wide, so it is actually useless talking about. Unless we are completely evening out, leveling, any income on any given country and are accepting that every humans time is the same value like any other humans time. The economy is not working like this... as you may have realized it. The peoples time got a "different value" and based on this value, combined with success, the difference can be drastic. A major culprit of many issues but it gets to political now... which is actually not allowed (this is a gamer forum after all).

I do not feel that i deserve any "special treatment" other than getting the love any human should be getting, just for being a human and being valued for nothing else than their sheer "existence" and because "life is valuable", including everyones time. So, just treat me the same... thats fine for me.

Yes! It's becoming more absurd by the hour!
"The Truth", "The Economy works this way"...

Prime entertainment!
Encore, encore!