Factorio Forums

Hi Wube Team and Community,

Following a helpful conversation on Discord, I’m posting here under Ideas & Suggestions regarding the current MENA-USD pricing tier on Steam.

As a high school student from Turkey passionate about robotics and systems engineering, Factorio is a masterpiece that heavily inspires me. However, the current price tag of $17.00 USD is prohibitive for students and average gamers in Turkey due to low purchasing power and extreme local currency devaluation.

After discussing this with the community, I wanted to outline a quick Pros & Cons / Risk Analysis regarding a potential price adjustment for the MENA-USD region:

Pros for Wube:

Reduces Piracy: Right now, high pricing drives a massive portion of local players toward cracked versions. A more realistic price point converts potential pirates into paying customers.

Increases Net Revenue: Earning $7–$10 per copy from a market currently paying $0 generates significantly higher net income overall.

Community Growth: Supports a passionate community that actively contributes to mods, blueprints, and discussions.

Cons & Risk Mitigation:

Risk of Region Abuse (VPN / Region Hopping): The primary concern with lower regional prices is players from high-income regions exploiting the system.

Mitigation: Steam’s MENA-USD framework requires regional payment methods and enforces strict account locks. With USD as the base currency and Valve’s current region-lock mechanisms, exploitability is drastically lower compared to the old native-currency store models.

For comparison, similar low-purchasing-power regions like Ukraine currently have the game priced around $6.70 USD. Adjusting the MENA-USD tier to a similar accessible range would be a win-win for both Wube and the local community.

Thank you for your time, consideration, and continued work on this amazing game!

Best regards,
Flink

Comparing Turkiye to Ukraine and arguing their economies should be categorized similarly(equally) is a bit macabre in my humble opinion.
But the core argument and everything else makes a lot of sense to me.

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102895 (Special mention: the only thread that has resulted in a change!)
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And a bonus: FFF-247

I hope that we don’t need any MORE threads on regional pricing.

Totally fair point, I get what you mean! I only mentioned it because of Steam’s pricing tiers, but you’re right. Thanks for your replies.

I really appreciate you sharing all those links. I took the time to read through them, and I can see that this topic has come up many times before—from G2A/GOG price differences to regional feedback from Brazilian players—and that Wube’s position on pricing has stayed very consistent over the years.

So I understand that it’s unlikely anything will change. Still, I wanted to share how it feels from the perspective of a student in Turkey. At the current regional price, the game is simply out of reach for many local players, and I think it’s still worth saying that accessibility matters to us.

Thanks again for taking the time to provide all that context.

Not this bs again please.

Don't worry anymore, I'm pretty sure this isn't going anywhere anyway. Maybe in another Universe, if I buy Wube Software one day, I will fix it...

have good day