World of Warcraft's subscription is about to get almost 3,000% more expensive in Argentina—and it'll 'only get worse with inflation'
World of Warcraft's subscription is about to get almost 3,000% more expensive in Argentina—and it'll 'only get worse with inflation'
Now they have to pay (with tax) around 19,936 ARS a month to keep playing a game they already own. That's a 2,967% increase.
It's always been a subscription game, and never been "something they already own". If you do subscription shit, this is what you're subject to.
Abandoning support for fucked up trash currencies is something perfectly reasonable that a lot of companies have recognized they need to do. The fact that you have an insane government that tacks a 60% fucking tax on transactions in actual money isn't their problem.
It’s always been a subscription game, and never been “something they already own”.
Yeah, the idea has always been that you pay for the base game (and any expansion you want to play) to unlock access to the content, then you pay a subscription for the time you want to play. The base game pays for the writers, artists, etc. to make a game, the subscription pays for the servers, the ops people, etc. that allow you to play it live with thousands of other players.
Abandoning support for fucked up trash currencies
This is the real problem. I don't understand how anybody does business in Argentina. Inflation must make it almost impossible to have a profitable business. But, if you live in Argentina you just have to adapt. But, international businesses must look at it and say it's not worth it.
Before this change, US WoW players were paying about $15/month for their subscription, but in Argentina they were paying 650 ARS, the equivalent of about $0.75 with today's exchange rate. At that rate, I assume Blizzard was losing money on each subscription. The new price is $15 USD. That's way out of reach for a lot of Argentinians, so they'll lose almost all of their Argentinian subscribers. But, like anywhere, Argentina has some rich people, and some of them will keep playing.
I'm sure there are some people at Blizzard who are upset that they had to cut off their Argentinian subscribers. But, I assume there are a lot of bean counters who are relieved that they're no longer exposed to the shitshow that is dealing with Argentina's currency.
I'm not really a fan of the subscription model, and want no part in WOW (also because the single game life suck is definitely not my thing), but WOW has been doing it for a long time, and in a way that they actually do have meaningful recurring costs per user to provide.
But yeah, hosting isn't magically cheaper because you're in a country with a broken economy, or a lot more stuff would already be hosted there. And the absurd tax rate doesn't pay any of their costs, so basically doesn't matter to their pricing. Supporting a broken hyper volatile currency is just not worth doing.
Argentina turning into a land of private servers wouldn't surprise me, and once you lose these people to private servers they aren't coming back.
Don't even have to pay for the base game (which is everything except the current expansion) now. The game is free for the first 20 levels (with social interaction restrictions) and with the rescaling at the end of the last expac meaning you can play those 20 levels in pretty much any part of the world (of warcraft).
The current xpac is a one off cost still, with the sub required to access the end game levels and remove all the social restrictions.
When I played Classic, my guildmate was Argentinian. I wanted to make a summoner army so I sent him like $20 on PayPal and he set up 3 accounts for me with a couple months of playtime with a few bucks to spare
Guild wars 2. No subscription. Excellent competitor
Completely different style of game though. The one thing that WoW has going for it is really good end game dungeon/raid content. Other games like GW2 and FFXIV have end game dungeons and raids, but the difference in quality is extreme. GW2 focuses on open world content, while FFXIV focuses on social content.
So what is good to try different things , right ? But they are still mmorpg so.