The Bordeaux-based video game company Motion Twin had to change its pricing policy in Turkiye and Argentina, due to potential buyers abusing the low prices in these two countries. The French studio said people are changing their region to purchase the game at a nearly 90% reduced price.
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Dead Cells maker published an announcement on its official Steam page, stating that they didn’t take the decision to increase prices lightly, but they simply had to do it. The firm shared a logical explanation that’s hard to argue against:
“The percentage of our total sales from a given country will roughly equal the percentage of our total players from that country. For Argentina and Turkiye, their % of total sales is 3-4x the amount of the % of their total players.
“By no coincidence, the price of Dead Cells and DLC in these two countries are by far the lowest in dollar/euro terms, so it is extremely likely that people are changing their region to take advantage of a 70-90% reduction in price.”
The gaming entity also says they regularly discount Dead Cells by 40 to 50%, and priced at $25, it’s already a relatively cheap game. The company says people are regularly buying the game via changing their region and combining it with a discount, and adds that this impacts the company’s revenue in a negative way.
Being a small independent studio, Motion Twin can’t exactly tolerate losing this much revenue, especially on one of their heavy hitters. The company apologizes to legit users from Turkiye and Argentina, but once again underlines that this was a decision they had to make and won’t be pulled back.
Dead Cells was priced at 40 Turkish Liras prior to the pricing change, the game is 180 Turkish Liras now.
Similarly, it was priced at 280 Argentine Pesos, but its new price on Steam is 1350 Argentine Pesos.
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