We need to talk about this, this pricing is absolutely ridiculous

[jagholin]

Ok I was made aware of this in the steam forums
Apparently, Factorio is currently priced in Russia at 10000 Rubles. I didn't believe this at first and went to steam.db - and sure, the price is exactly this(https://steamdb.info/app/427520/). This is more than €170,00 by the way.
I thought for a second that this is might be due to some technical difficulties like currency conversion, so I decided to check other similar titles and what they currently priced at. Surely others would be faced with similar problems?
Satisfactory (https://steamdb.info/app/526870/) - 599 Rubles or €10,25
Rimworld (https://steamdb.info/app/294100/), the dev of this game also believes in a "no sales ever" policy or similar, I have never seen this game or its DLCs at discount - 619 Rubles or €10,59.
Captain of Industry (https://steamdb.info/app/1594320/), a newcomer, released in May this year - 999 Rubles or €17,09
Dyson Sphere Program (https://steamdb.info/app/1366540/) - 686 R or €11,73

So what conclusion can I possibly draw from this? This looks to me petty, resentful action from someone that I previously thought to be of better moral character. I understand that you want to help another side in the ongoing conflict, but tweaking regional pricing to such a ridiculous degree is not an action that will help anybody, or achieve anything positive. I have to say what you did is, to put it mildly, not OK

[aka13]

The official position here as well as in the EU is literally "it's okay to discriminate based on ethnicity, if you discriminate the right people".
It's just the times we live in, don't take it personally.
See the only unmoderated topic for bashing on everything russian on this forum.

[Koub]

I'm sure there's an error somewhere. The price went from 500 to 10000 in a single day today :

2022-07-14 20_55_22-Window.jpg (35.64 KiB) Viewed 16152 times

The official position here as well as in the EU is literally "it's okay to discriminate based on ethnicity, if you discriminate the right people".
It's just the times we live in, don't take it personally.
See the only unmoderated topic for bashing on everything russian on this forum.

No, it's not. Neither moderators here discriminate anyone based on ethnicity. The unmoderated thread is what it is : an unmoderated thread were people from both camps throw pointlessly arguments to the opposite camp. Apart fro that thread I refuse to moderate, there is no discrimination here whatsoever, except maybe for trolls, people who try to throw oil on fire on polemic topics, people who insult the others, you get the picture.

[aka13]

I appreciate your work over all the years Koub, no hard feelings . I was too emotional, you are right, but sadly this is the impression I am getting from my day to day life. I would prefer that topic closed and not unmiderated. Let's hope you are right, and that it is an unintentional oversight of some sort.

[morse]

Let's hope you are right, and that it is an unintentional oversight of some sort.

Let's also hope the official statement is made soon. There is a real shitstorm gathering in the steam discussion right now.

[quyxkh]

Let's hope you are right, and that it is an unintentional oversight of some sort.

Let's also hope the official statement is made soon. There is a real shitstorm gathering in the steam discussion right now.

Please don't feed the trolls.

[ziyandechengguan]

I've noticed that quite a few currencies have gone up in price，and the price of a large number of currencies has exceeded the price of factorio on the official website.This is obviously not normal, but I don't see the wube devs explaining this.Maybe they haven't figured out what's going on yet?

By the way，about russian price，I understand the anger of Russian players, but I also understand wube's approach.I hope gamers should be the purest group in the world，but humans are animals that are easily dominated by emotions.I had assumed such a scenario：If Japan went to war with Korea，as a Chinese，I would be very happy to see pricing for Japan go up.I would be ashamed of my double standard.

[garrotte]

Gaben turned off all means of paying for anything in roubles. What this talk is all about??? Who cares now? Is that an important problem now for anyone?

[juggernaut]

Gaben turned off all means of paying for anything in roubles.

Then what's the point in raising the price?

[Wrxstfwr]

Hello there, I'm a passerby steam user.

Gaben turned off all means of paying for anything in roubles.

He didn't turn off all of t hem, Russians has been buying games from steam all that time.

Is that an important problem now for anyone?

It is, because Russians who supported the game for a long time kinda want to know what this is about and whether they should blacklist all future Wube products or not. So an explanation from the devs would be in order.

[Shogal]

Gaben turned off all means of paying for anything in roubles. What this talk is all about??? Who cares now? Is that an important problem now for anyone?

Nowadays, most russian Steam users top up their Steam accounts using the gray scheme: RUB > KZT > USD > [Steam balance in RUB]. It costs ~25% commission due to multiple currency conversions (1000 real RUB result in ~750 steam RUB). To Valve the money comes in USD currency anyway, i doubt they keep localized steam account balances in local currencies.

[mmmPI]

price increase.png (32.75 KiB) Viewed 14404 times

Look this is the wheat price increase, because of this people are dying. I think this is absolutly ridiculous and not ok. Maybe at Wube they eat pasta everyday and need to plan their budget accordingly. They probably don't risk starvation, it's only poorer people that wouldn't waste their time complaining on the internet. My other idea was that now the main supplier of gas for EU only accept rubble as currency and Czech republic is a landlocked country that is pretty cold in winter, where you need to heat your place not to freeze to death.


Maybe though it's just an error. in all cases it has nothing to do with ethnicity, which is not similar to geographic pricing ( there are diverse ethnic group using rubble as currency in the Russian federation i'm sure everyone is well aware).

[Wrxstfwr]

Well, what I can say. There's total flustercluck going on on steam forums with a massive fight between Russians and Ukrainians and there's no official statement yet.

This is probbaly the worst decision Wube did to the date. I do hope it is an error, but at this moment I have doubts about that.

If it is not an error, then... was it even worth it?

[mrAndersen]

Before official statements are made by Wube, i just wanna clear out something.

I am Russian, and I play Factorio for a very long period of time, in addition to that i play more Polish and Ukrainian games in general, because i love witcher series very much for example. And i lot of my friends also do.

IF this is not a mistake, and indeed is a discrimination from Wube, based on country of origin, this is very sad, although even considering that ru players can not anyway buy anything from Russian steam in rubles, because steam is basically closed for RU atm, this is a clear statement, a very grim statement. Why?

Because gamer community is the most peaceful community across any country, and "punishing" that community by doing that kind of things or statements are defiantly very wrong, because nor me, nor any of my Russian or especially Ukrainian friends never wanted this war, nor we can do anything with that, because nobody wants to go to prison for 15 years, or get killed, even if we were able to do something realistically with that.

This is crystal clear that Putin or any of his friends or basically anybody who is connected to the decision making stream in Russia never played steam and never will play steam, and will never even care about that. So IF this is an official statement and not a mistake, by doing so u are basically "punishing" people who trusts you as a developers and love your products.

This is also crystal clear that vast majority of gaming community in Russia does not support that war and never will, so by doing such things you are "punishing" people who are already on your side, if we speak in that kind of terminology.

You can not stop aggression by discrimination. If you want to help Ukraine, you instead should lower the price as much as you can and redirect your income from Russian gamers to support Ukrainian people.

[Defman]

After all, that was a mistake. The price is 1000RUB now which follows the pattern of x2 price in some regions.

[Koub]

OK so it was a mistake after all, there was one '0' in excess, it's back to 1000 Rubles, which is in the 17€ price tag.
I can't tell if it's expensive or cheap for the average russian player, but it's a somewhat OK-tier price compared to other games I see.

[Koub] Also locking the topic before it turns into yet another Russia vs the world argument.