Imbalance and unfair advantage

GreekhitGreekhit Member Posts: 2,820 ★★★★★
edited June 2019 in General Discussion
# MCOC team
Just read the refund policy and I can say that’s seems fair and pretty reasonable.
I totally agree with the company on their efforts to prevent refunding exploit by some customers.
Now, that we are talking financially and we all agree we want a fair playground, how fair and balanced is that:
Prices for in game purchases for US are significantly lower than EU.
Example an Odin costs 100$ but in Europe costs 110€(~125$)
With the upcoming 4th July offers and my intention to spend on the game, my only concern that may prevent(as it does till now) me from doing so is the outraging feeling that I pay way more for the same product other competitors getting cheaper.
There are no excuses, of the type “Europe has more taxes” or so, if the company have the intention to keep the contest clear (and I want to believe they do), they have to have the same pricing globally. It’s that an unfair advantage for US players to the rest? It’s a competitive game, does that creates balance?
So, whether reduce the EU pricing to the US, whether increase the US to EU,
or find a pricing in the middle of their difference. That would be FAIR.
Thanks in advance for your time.
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Comments

  • Austin555555Austin555555 Member Posts: 3,048 ★★★★★
    Simple solution

    DON’T REFUND THE STUFF YOU BOUGHT
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  • GreekhitGreekhit Member Posts: 2,820 ★★★★★
    I can assume by the defending on the current pricing u are from the US. How about adjust their price tier regionally, so when the store does the final adjustment the final price would be the same across global?
  • GreekhitGreekhit Member Posts: 2,820 ★★★★★
    edited June 2019
    The same happens on android too. After all is that fair?
    And Kabam can always do something. If they can’t get pricing the same across two regions they can always attach 24% more units on the EU offers. As u can see there is always a solution.
    Now, do the game team wants a FAIR contest?
  • DNA3000DNA3000 Member, Guardian Posts: 19,677 Guardian
    Greekhit said:

    I can assume by the defending on the current pricing u are from the US. How about adjust their price tier regionally, so when the store does the final adjustment the final price would be the same across global?

    As far as I'm aware you're not allowed to do that, except for subscriptions.
  • SiriusBreakSiriusBreak Member, Guardian Posts: 2,156 Guardian
    edited June 2019
    @DNA3000 laid it out very well. Unfortunately, just the way of things.
  • HaminHamin Member Posts: 2,444 ★★★★★
    Greekhit said:

    I can assume by the defending on the current pricing u are from the US. How about adjust their price tier regionally, so when the store does the final adjustment the final price would be the same across global?

    Because it doesn't work like that.

    They set a price for a digital package. It's then adjusted.

    It has nothing to do with anyone being from the US. It's simple fact. My god, some people and their victim complexes.
  • HaminHamin Member Posts: 2,444 ★★★★★
    Greekhit said:

    The same happens on android too. After all is that fair?
    And Kabam can always do something. If they can’t get pricing the same across two regions they can always attach 24% more units on the EU offers. As u can see there is always a solution.
    Now, do the game team wants a FAIR contest?

    What? No. They set a goddam price for what a digital item is worth. That is set. Then it's adjusted. Adding 24% more to anything despite the region would up the price and then it would be adjusted.

    ...this isn't some complex conspiracy. This is simple, straight forward economics.
  • GreekhitGreekhit Member Posts: 2,820 ★★★★★
    edited June 2019
    “Because it doesn't work like that.

    They set a price for a digital package. It's then adjusted.

    It has nothing to do with anyone being from the US. It's simple fact. My god, some people and their victim complexes.”

    First of all, learn not to offend peaople u don’t know because u feel threat.
    Then, they can always attach the equivalent of 24% that is the difference in Units.
    Again, do the game team wants a FAIR contest?
  • HaminHamin Member Posts: 2,444 ★★★★★
    edited June 2019
    Greekhit said:



    Because it doesn't work like that.

    They set a price for a digital package. It's then adjusted.

    It has nothing to do with anyone being from the US. It's simple fact. My god, some people and their victim complexes.
    First of all, learn not to offend peaople u don’t know because u feel threat.
    Then, they can always attach the equivalent of 24% that is the difference in Units.
    Again, do the game team wants a FAIR contest?

    I'll learn to not offend when you learn reading comprehension. Deal?

    Edit: Simple HTML too.
  • GreekhitGreekhit Member Posts: 2,820 ★★★★★
    ^ keeps offending to stay out of the topic
  • DNA3000DNA3000 Member, Guardian Posts: 19,677 Guardian
    Greekhit said:

    The same happens on android too. After all is that fair?

    Whether it is fair or not, it is something Kabam cannot change. You would have to complain directly to the companies that control this: Apple and Google. They will tell you that the prices are different because their costs for doing business in different regions is different. In fact, if you look at the chart there are regions that have different tier costs that use the same currency, so it isn't just about currency exchange.

    To see even more into what's going on, check the chart again. The chart doesn't only show the price conversion, it also shows "proceeds." That's what the app developer gets. So in the US the customer is charged $49.99 and the developer gets $35. That's about 70%, reflecting the standard 70/30 split. But in Germany, the customer is charged 54.99 Euros and the developer gets 32.35 Euros. At today's exchange rates that's about $36.79, which is slightly more than they'd make in the US. But it is also just under 60% of the price. In US dollar terms, Apple is giving the developer about $1.79 more, and keeping about $10.74 more.
  • HaminHamin Member Posts: 2,444 ★★★★★
    Greekhit said:

    ^ keeps offending to stay out of the topic

    It's offensive to bluntly tell the truth?

    Several people have laid out empirical, objective fact that refutes your suggestion and you keep saying the same thing. That's either illiteracy or a reading comprehension problem.
  • DNA3000DNA3000 Member, Guardian Posts: 19,677 Guardian
    Greekhit said:

    Then, they can always attach the equivalent of 24% that is the difference in Units.

    No, that's not possible. They don't know where you are or in what currency you purchased the item. Apple doesn't forward that information to the developer. All Kabam is told by Apple is that someone, somewhere, bought a unit pack. The unit pack with item code ABCDE. The game then gives you the amount of units that pack contains.

    And if they tried to circumvent the system to give different customers different things, they could be banned for violating the in-app purchase parameters. App developers have been asking for ways to "localize" prices for a very long time. Apple only recently caved on subscriptions, because the media companies pushed hard to reflect territorial media subscriptions outside the app store in their in-app purchases.
  • GreekhitGreekhit Member Posts: 2,820 ★★★★★
    Nice clarification but there’s always something the company can do to balance that. They can sell different products across regions.
    Example productA for US 100$ 3100units
    productB for EU 110€ 3870units (base+24%)
    As u can see there is always a solution.
  • GroundedWisdomGroundedWisdom Member Posts: 36,573 ★★★★★
    Greekhit said:

    The same happens on android too. After all is that fair?
    And Kabam can always do something. If they can’t get pricing the same across two regions they can always attach 24% more units on the EU offers. As u can see there is always a solution.
    Now, do the game team wants a FAIR contest?

    Everything within their power, they already do to ensure equanimity with pricing. Their prices are the same throughout. What differs is individual area Taxes and Duties, which are applied via the platforms (Apple and Google), and depend on the local legislation of where you live. What you're suggesting is not only creating an unfair advantage based on the costs of the area you're in, but it also opens up a whole host of issues like potential exploiting and conflict with local governments. Which is highly unlikely to be an option any company wanting to adhere to all regulations would take upon themselves.
  • DemonzfyreDemonzfyre Member Posts: 22,059 ★★★★★
    Greekhit said:



    First of all, learn not to offend peaople u don’t know because u feel threat.
    Then, they can always attach the equivalent of 24% that is the difference in Units.
    Again, do the game team wants a FAIR contest?

    This is how many things work that are for sale across the world. Even in the US, right now I am paying $2.25 for a gallon of gas in Texas. In California, that same gallon of gas is $4 or more. Every bit of retail that sells is dictated by the seller, in this case it's Google and Apple and the wholeseller, Kabam, gets a cut after the sale.
  • FingfangfoomfanesFingfangfoomfanes Member Posts: 1,102 ★★★
    Lols. Let me get my pitchfork.
  • HaminHamin Member Posts: 2,444 ★★★★★

    So the OP’s author decides to not address the awesome work that other members have laid out to explain the price difference because the community reaction he wanted was one where we attack kabam for being unfair and support him
    Makes sense... seems like a legit reaction

    That's the gist.
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  • HaminHamin Member Posts: 2,444 ★★★★★
    Greekhit said:

    Nice clarification but there’s always something the company can do to balance that. They can sell different products across regions.
    Example productA for US 100$ 3100units
    productB for EU 110€ 3870units (base+24%)
    As u can see there is always a solution.


  • GreekhitGreekhit Member Posts: 2,820 ★★★★★
    Do any of the replies comes outside the US? U guys seem pretty much threatened (except DNA300 and groundedwisdom that they just constructively posted). Don’t worry u won’t have to pay more. How peaople are triggered, when they feel they will lose an advantage is hilarious. lol
  • DNA3000DNA3000 Member, Guardian Posts: 19,677 Guardian
    Greekhit said:

    Nice clarification but there’s always something the company can do to balance that. They can sell different products across regions.
    Example productA for US 100$ 3100units
    productB for EU 110€ 3870units (base+24%)
    As u can see there is always a solution.

    Nope, that is actually forbidden by the terms of Apple's app store developer guidelines. You are not allowed to restrict usage or purchases that way. If you put "productA" for $100US, the only way to do that is to list the item as a tier 60 item ($99.99 US) and you must offer that item everywhere that Apple does business. That means "productB" that costs 110 Euros and contains 3870 units would have to be a tier 60 item (109.99 Euros) and must be sold everywhere as well. US customers would of course buy product B, since it has more units.

    If Kabam did what you described, everyone would see two unit offers, one for 3100 units and one for 3870 units, both costing $99.99 US and 109.99 Euros. Only dumb people would buy the first one, everyone else would buy the second one, and you'd be back to where you started.

    I think you are operating on the assumption that this is something a developer can just make up. It isn't. There's an in-app purchase API that Apple publishes that app developers use, and this API is extremely limited in what Apple allows you to do. There's no way to even *tell* Apple you want something to only be sold in one region. You can't do it, because Apple gives you no way to request it. You can't tell Apple "I have something for sale, and here's how I want you to sell it." You tell Apple "I have something for sale" and Apple tells you "I'll take it from here." You're involvement ends when you create the package for sale. If Apple decides to sell it on Pluto for gold-pressed latinum, all you can do is get your cut at the end of the month.
  • GreekhitGreekhit Member Posts: 2,820 ★★★★★
    edited June 2019
    So seems like the only solution can be personal. Use another person to purchase it for u, or a TOR to buy the offer in $. Now I start to understand people that already doing it.
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  • DNA3000DNA3000 Member, Guardian Posts: 19,677 Guardian
    Greekhit said:

    So seems like the only solution can be personal. Use another person to purchase it for u, or a TOR to buy the offer in $. Now I start to understand people that already doing it.

    As far as I'm aware, the only way to get US pricing is to buy through the US iTunes stores. A VPN could let you do that, but the legality of that is somewhat of a grey area. I cannot personally recommend it. In either case, the developer would have no control over this.

    You would probably be surprised how much thought has been put into this. One way developers dreamed up to figure out a way to do this (and other things Apple forbids) was to make multiple versions of their app, all of which were restricted by territory. One thing you can do is you can restrict who can get your app at all. That's how regional limited beta tests work. You release the app in Mexico, but nowhere else.

    If Kabam made a hundred different versions of MCOC, each of which was released in a different country, they could then release in-app purchases specific to each specific different copy of the app (since they are different apps). They could all then have different contents and different prices, effectively giving control to the developer on who gets what for what price. Except Apple caught on to this little trick and banned developers from uploading "substantively identical" copies of the same app to the app store, to prevent this kind of thing from happening (among other things, like ratings manipulation).
  • ItsDamienItsDamien Member Posts: 5,626 ★★★★★
    DNA3000 said:

    Greekhit said:

    So seems like the only solution can be personal. Use another person to purchase it for u, or a TOR to buy the offer in $. Now I start to understand people that already doing it.

    As far as I'm aware, the only way to get US pricing is to buy through the US iTunes stores. A VPN could let you do that, but the legality of that is somewhat of a grey area. I cannot personally recommend it. In either case, the developer would have no control over this.
    It's funny when I mentioned in another post recently about using a VPN to buy units and stating that it seems like a fast way to get banned, people disagreed with me. It just seems like you would get banned since its cutting into profits.

    I won't lie, there have been times where I've considered trying this as the price difference between the UK and the US is relatively large. I haven't tried it because I wouldn't want the money that I've already put into the game to be completely lost if I were to get banned.
  • CliffordcanCliffordcan Member Posts: 1,341 ★★★★
    Y’all EUers are paying Apple back for that 16.7 billion from Ireland’s taxes they had to pay. Maybe you should write your gov’t and tell them to stop suing these American tech companies. Once they do I’m sure prices will go down.
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