Outrageous Sub and Crown Price Updates

deleted221205-002626 · August 2022

Kiralyn2000 wrote: »

sinnereso wrote: »

FeedbackOnly wrote: »

Knockmaker wrote: »

markulrich1966 wrote: »

Reason is, that TR has 80% inflation.

There is no denying that. However, 80% isn't 3X increase. This looks like front loading and it just isn't right.

It used to be 200 to 1 not even two years ago. It's 1800 to 1 now

Curious... are the "crown sellers" that are desperatly trying to high the ratio from specific regions? I'm beginning to think its likely.

There've been discussions about the crown seller rates in the past. Several contributing factors have been mentioned, including 1. the supply of 'un-used' ESO+ crowns drying up as subbers sold them, and 2. Steam closed some loopholes that let people buy Crowns from regions with much lower effective prices. So it's not just financiers trying to jack the rates.

Well ya it is.. It literally happened overnight in oct/nov and they FIGHT about it in zone chat like right away like THIS IS HOW IT IS NOW cuz they say so. It never was the buyers

deleted221205-002626 · August 2022

In any case theres no excuse or reason for crowns to suddenly be worth 5x what they were 6mo ago. Theyre simply just not even if a handful of countries are having economic issues, much of the world is not and theres no change or very little.

redlink1979 · August 2022

Article, dated June 24th 2022:

"President’s wrong-headed obsession with interest rates has cost the economy dear, as an inflationary spiral runs out of control.

Last week, the Turkish Minister of Treasury and Finance made an interesting statement. “We have preferred to grow, not to lower, inflation,” he said, adding: “We came to a crossroads; we preferred to grow with inflation. Otherwise, we could have taken very harsh measures to reduce inflation."

Nebati thus revealed his view of the relationship between inflation and growth. After this, the minister added that the target rate for inflation at the end of 2023 in Turkey is 19.9%.

A few months ago, he claimed that the country would go to the elections in June 2023 with single-digit inflation. He expressed this claim as surprising good news.

After these statements drew a lot of reaction from the public, Nebati stepped back following these reactions, and made various other statements.

The one that attracted most reactions was as follows: “We chose production and growth. Except for low-income people, manufacturers and exporters are making profits from this system. The wheels are turning. Since we prefer to grow, the growth figures are good, and this growth is being positively reflected in employment. However, we are making arrangements to increase the income of our low-income citizens, to protect them in the face of inflation”.

We should thank the minister for expressing this so clearly. The previous Treasury and Finance Minister, Berat Albayrak, President Erdoğan's son-in-law, had said that Turkey would develop with the Chinese model, and so it was not important if the US dollar gained value against the Turkish lira.

That policy also envisaged that goods and services produced in the country would become cheaper abroad because of the fall in wages. China entered its development process with a similar policy.

In my opinion, rather than expressing this economic policy with fancy sentences, the fact that the government is honest with its citizens about what we are facing works in the citizens’ favour.

What I have written so far may sound confusing. On the one hand, the government is trying to reduce inflation, on the other, it is trying to increase exports, and on the other hand again, it has growth targets, etc.

It is trying to do all of these things in contradiction to the basic rules of the economy.

As is well known, interest rates are one of the biggest obsessions of President Erdogan. At a press conference in January, Nebati expressed this. “You will talk about the independence of the Central Bank, there is no such thing,” he said. “Interest rates will no longer increase, forget it.”

Afterward, he stated again that Turkey would no longer use this most effective tool in the battle against inflation.

This all highlights how inconsistent Turkey’s economic policies are. It must be said here: Turkey cannot reduce inflation and increase the welfare of people with either these economic policies or actors.

Let’s look at the inflation data, and explain the situation in Turkey in terms of price stability.

In May, Turkey’s Consumer Price Index, CPI, was 73.5% higher compared to the same month last year. The biggest increase in consumer prices was in the field of transport – 107%.

The rapid rise in oil prices in the world, and the depreciation of the Turkish lira, were factors in this increase. The annual increase in food prices was 91%.

These two price groups played an important role in the rise of inflation. But while the CPI plays an important role for many citizens, it is necessary also to take a look at the Producer Price Index to understand future inflation trends.

The Turkish Statistical Institute TURKSTAT prepares different indexes on producer prices. The first is the Domestic Producer Price Index, DPPI. This measures the prices of the products produced in the national economy and subject to sale in the country. The higher this index is, the more expensive the manufacturer produces the final product. This is expected to be reflected in the sales price.

According to the May 2022 statistics, producer inflation is running at 132% a year. The most important factor increasing the inflation for producers is, of course, items related to energy. The price rise in this area is running at a very high rate of 320%.

Another index for manufacturing prices is the Service Producer Price Index, SPPI. According to the April data of this index, this is rising at 83%. A 180% increase in real estate and a 103% rise in transportation services pay a large role in the high rate of increase in this index.

Such high increases in producer prices show us also that, in a short time, domestic consumers will face yet higher inflation.

While these problems create a big burden for citizens, developments abroad do not offer much hope, either.

Globally, a decrease in inflation and in growth rates in general is about to turn into a problem. Fear of low economic growth plus high inflation – stagflation – is spreading all over the world.

In May, consumer price rises in the US reached their highest level since 1981, at 8.6%. But despite this relatively high inflation, industrial growth remain low in both the US, and the European Union.

Looking at inflation rates faced by Turkey, it could be said that this ratio means nothing. However, the situation is not exactly so.

Turkey needs to borrow from abroad both for industrial production and for household consumption. Savings in the country are low. Savers invest in real estate instead of banks, because they cannot get a real financial return from the banks.

So, instead of going to productive sectors, their savings go to non-productive sectors, such as real estate or cars. This leaves the banks unable to collect enough deposits from households. As a result, the state has to fund the banks by printing more money. This leads to more inflation, as it increases the circulation of lira in the market.

So, there is a complete spiral of inflation. As the dollar gains in value against the lira, the rising prices of semi-finished products and raw materials imported from abroad put pressure on inflation in terms of costs – and the increase in money supply in such an environment weakens the lira even more.

Turkey’s economy is now at a point where both costs and demand and inflation are all rising – and the tools that might have prevented this are still ignored by the government.

To conclude, Turkey has lost its war against inflation, due to a combination of reasons such as interest rate hikes not being made on time, savings measures not being taken on time, and deteriorating public finances.

Enes Özkan is the Istambul-based economist and Co-founder of Daktilo1984."

https://balkaninsight.com/2022/06/24/turkey-has-abandoned-the-struggle-to-tame-inflation/

lronclaw · August 2022

Prices more than doubled suddenly and I am cancelling my sub now

thanks for letting me know in game zone chat. As for crown prices, they were already incredibly high for everyone but now I wont be buying any crowns and wont be renewing my sub, might just outright quit the game if they dont fix it soon, there are other mmo's and even tho i prefer eso gameplay I wont be scammed over and over then be ok with suddenly doubled prices.

Dawnblade · August 2022

While I dislike many of ZOS' monetization strategies, currency exchange rates are beyond their control.

Could they ignore them and leave prices the same around the globe regardless of exchange rates? Sure.

Would it be good business? No.

All that would do is encourage more players or organized groups to arbitrage regional pricing differences (even with various restrictions and controls put in place, such arbitrage already happens today - see global key resellers).

dmnqwk · August 2022

lronclaw wrote: »

Prices more than doubled suddenly and I am cancelling my sub now thanks for letting me know in game zone chat. As for crown prices, they were already incredibly high for everyone but now I wont be buying any crowns and wont be renewing my sub, might just outright quit the game if they dont fix it soon, there are other mmo's and even tho i prefer eso gameplay I wont be scammed over and over then be ok with suddenly doubled prices.

What should they have done?

Either they raise prices and screw over one country, or keep Turkey as a special case and screw every other country in the world over. If your currency is worth 12% of what it was when ESO began but your prices only TRIPLE in that time... how is it fair on those who are paying 8 times what they do in turkey?

I'm sorry Turkey is struggling but so many other countries are too, it's not fair to give Turkey a break when everyone else is struggling too.

Knockmaker · August 2022

Tandor wrote: »

Inflation rates and affordability don't really have much if anything to do with regional pricing of global products and services, it's much more to do with currency exchange rates. The post from @dmnqwk offers a pretty good analysis of the situation.

I don't disregard the exchange rates. But purchasing power don't usually recover from such spikes overnight. We do not know how the prices changed historically on steam store for eso either. Maybe from that perspective alone, their newly set price tag is accurate on the paper. But, as it was mentioned earlier, this is a luxury purchase categorically, thus, jacking its price tag with a 1:1 ratio in accordance with the exchange rates is unlikely to sustain the sales, because in reality it is very expensive now and people tend to drop the luxurious expenditures as the first thing when things get more difficult. At this point, it comes to me thinking what is best for zos, and zos for sure should know this better themselves so I cannot make any more arguments to push it further without taking that road I think. But, from a sales perspective, more sales with slightly less elevated prices should yield more or at least similar amount of revenue compared to lower sales with damn high prices, especially if you are trying to attract more customers from a certain market. But, no one knows what zos is thinking in the end.

dmnqwk wrote: »

lronclaw wrote: »

Prices more than doubled suddenly and I am cancelling my sub now thanks for letting me know in game zone chat. As for crown prices, they were already incredibly high for everyone but now I wont be buying any crowns and wont be renewing my sub, might just outright quit the game if they dont fix it soon, there are other mmo's and even tho i prefer eso gameplay I wont be scammed over and over then be ok with suddenly doubled prices.

What should they have done?

Either they raise prices and screw over one country, or keep Turkey as a special case and screw every other country in the world over. If your currency is worth 12% of what it was when ESO began but your prices only TRIPLE in that time... how is it fair on those who are paying 8 times what they do in turkey?

I'm sorry Turkey is struggling but so many other countries are too, it's not fair to give Turkey a break when everyone else is struggling too.

I don't know about him, but I for one, never asked for concession in favour (I don't think he did either). The fault for this current economic outlook is mainly the decisions of the people in Turkey after all. Despite not having supported the current gov, I have been negatively impacted for years. Despite so, I am aware that it isn't rational to ask from others to somehow compensate for it. Politics aside, what I was saying was that this hike doesn't really match with the actual economic situation in Turkey in terms of purchasing power. They might want to reconsider that. We do not know how the prices changed historically on steam store for eso. I could only give 12 maybe 15-month history at best. But as I said earlier in this and some other posts earlier, they might want to take another look at that. That is all there is to say I think.

Dawnblade · August 2022

Knockmaker wrote: »

Tandor wrote: »

Inflation rates and affordability don't really have much if anything to do with regional pricing of global products and services, it's much more to do with currency exchange rates. The post from @dmnqwk offers a pretty good analysis of the situation.

I don't disregard the exchange rates. But purchasing power don't usually recover from such spikes overnight. We do not know how the prices changed historically on steam store for eso either. Maybe from that perspective alone, their newly set price tag is accurate on the paper. But, as it was mentioned earlier, this is a luxury purchase categorically, thus, jacking its price tag with a 1:1 ratio in accordance with the exchange rates is unlikely to sustain the sales, because in reality it is very expensive now and people tend to drop the luxurious expenditures as the first thing when things get more difficult. At this point, it comes to me thinking what is best for zos, and zos for sure should know this better themselves so I cannot make any more arguments to push it further without taking that road I think. But, from a sales perspective, more sales with slightly less elevated prices should yield more or at least similar amount of revenue compared to lower sales with damn high prices, especially if you are trying to attract more customers from a certain market. But, no one knows what zos is thinking in the end.

It doesn't work out that way.

Instead of picking up incremental sales at a lower price, individuals and organized groups will arbitrage the exchange rate differential, which will lead to less revenue for ZOS as more sales will shift to purchases using the devalued currency.

Knockmaker · August 2022

Dawnblade wrote: »

Knockmaker wrote: »

Tandor wrote: »

Inflation rates and affordability don't really have much if anything to do with regional pricing of global products and services, it's much more to do with currency exchange rates. The post from @dmnqwk offers a pretty good analysis of the situation.

I don't disregard the exchange rates. But purchasing power don't usually recover from such spikes overnight. We do not know how the prices changed historically on steam store for eso either. Maybe from that perspective alone, their newly set price tag is accurate on the paper. But, as it was mentioned earlier, this is a luxury purchase categorically, thus, jacking its price tag with a 1:1 ratio in accordance with the exchange rates is unlikely to sustain the sales, because in reality it is very expensive now and people tend to drop the luxurious expenditures as the first thing when things get more difficult. At this point, it comes to me thinking what is best for zos, and zos for sure should know this better themselves so I cannot make any more arguments to push it further without taking that road I think. But, from a sales perspective, more sales with slightly less elevated prices should yield more or at least similar amount of revenue compared to lower sales with damn high prices, especially if you are trying to attract more customers from a certain market. But, no one knows what zos is thinking in the end.

It doesn't work out that way.

Instead of picking up incremental sales at a lower price, individuals and organized groups will arbitrage the exchange rate differential, which will lead to less revenue for ZOS as more sales will shift to purchases using the devalued currency.

Yes, but this can be prevented. Doesn't steam has such measures on its own for example? It does as far as I know.

Ratzkifal · August 2022

Knockmaker wrote: »

Dawnblade wrote: »

Knockmaker wrote: »

Tandor wrote: »

Inflation rates and affordability don't really have much if anything to do with regional pricing of global products and services, it's much more to do with currency exchange rates. The post from @dmnqwk offers a pretty good analysis of the situation.

I don't disregard the exchange rates. But purchasing power don't usually recover from such spikes overnight. We do not know how the prices changed historically on steam store for eso either. Maybe from that perspective alone, their newly set price tag is accurate on the paper. But, as it was mentioned earlier, this is a luxury purchase categorically, thus, jacking its price tag with a 1:1 ratio in accordance with the exchange rates is unlikely to sustain the sales, because in reality it is very expensive now and people tend to drop the luxurious expenditures as the first thing when things get more difficult. At this point, it comes to me thinking what is best for zos, and zos for sure should know this better themselves so I cannot make any more arguments to push it further without taking that road I think. But, from a sales perspective, more sales with slightly less elevated prices should yield more or at least similar amount of revenue compared to lower sales with damn high prices, especially if you are trying to attract more customers from a certain market. But, no one knows what zos is thinking in the end.

It doesn't work out that way.

Instead of picking up incremental sales at a lower price, individuals and organized groups will arbitrage the exchange rate differential, which will lead to less revenue for ZOS as more sales will shift to purchases using the devalued currency.

Yes, but this can be prevented. Doesn't steam has such measures on its own for example? It does as far as I know.

How can this be prevented? Even on Steam? It works for buying games and codes, but not for crown microtransactions.
For this to work they would have to ban Turkish players from participating in crown store gifting, whether that is giving gifts or receiving them. Perhaps Turkish players would be allowed to continue gifting and receiving gifts from other Turkish players but it'll essentially segregate the ingame community.
At the end of the day, once you log in, crowns are crowns and how you obtained them doesn't matter anymore, which is why ZOS is making a loss if they don't raise crown prices in Turkey or exclude Turkish players. There isn't any other option. If they don't do anything then Turkish players could crown sell very cheaply to the rest of the playerbase, which we would love of course, but ZOS would make a loss as purchases from other countries drop.

lronclaw · August 2022

Nope

dmnqwk wrote: »

lronclaw wrote: »

Prices more than doubled suddenly and I am cancelling my sub now thanks for letting me know in game zone chat. As for crown prices, they were already incredibly high for everyone but now I wont be buying any crowns and wont be renewing my sub, might just outright quit the game if they dont fix it soon, there are other mmo's and even tho i prefer eso gameplay I wont be scammed over and over then be ok with suddenly doubled prices.

What should they have done?

Either they raise prices and screw over one country, or keep Turkey as a special case and screw every other country in the world over. If your currency is worth 12% of what it was when ESO began but your prices only TRIPLE in that time... how is it fair on those who are paying 8 times what they do in turkey?

I'm sorry Turkey is struggling but so many other countries are too, it's not fair to give Turkey a break when everyone else is struggling too.

Prices have been going upwards slowly as it was supposed to be, they could have continued to keep it that way and maybe, if so needed, a %50 price increase and it would be reasonable, but not tripled prices put of nowhere.

Edit: mistakenly quoted twice.

lronclaw · August 2022

Ratzkifal wrote: »

Knockmaker wrote: »

Dawnblade wrote: »

Knockmaker wrote: »

Tandor wrote: »

Inflation rates and affordability don't really have much if anything to do with regional pricing of global products and services, it's much more to do with currency exchange rates. The post from @dmnqwk offers a pretty good analysis of the situation.

I don't disregard the exchange rates. But purchasing power don't usually recover from such spikes overnight. We do not know how the prices changed historically on steam store for eso either. Maybe from that perspective alone, their newly set price tag is accurate on the paper. But, as it was mentioned earlier, this is a luxury purchase categorically, thus, jacking its price tag with a 1:1 ratio in accordance with the exchange rates is unlikely to sustain the sales, because in reality it is very expensive now and people tend to drop the luxurious expenditures as the first thing when things get more difficult. At this point, it comes to me thinking what is best for zos, and zos for sure should know this better themselves so I cannot make any more arguments to push it further without taking that road I think. But, from a sales perspective, more sales with slightly less elevated prices should yield more or at least similar amount of revenue compared to lower sales with damn high prices, especially if you are trying to attract more customers from a certain market. But, no one knows what zos is thinking in the end.

It doesn't work out that way.

Instead of picking up incremental sales at a lower price, individuals and organized groups will arbitrage the exchange rate differential, which will lead to less revenue for ZOS as more sales will shift to purchases using the devalued currency.

Yes, but this can be prevented. Doesn't steam has such measures on its own for example? It does as far as I know.

How can this be prevented? Even on Steam? It works for buying games and codes, but not for crown microtransactions.
For this to work they would have to ban Turkish players from participating in crown store gifting, whether that is giving gifts or receiving them. Perhaps Turkish players would be allowed to continue gifting and receiving gifts from other Turkish players but it'll essentially segregate the ingame community.
At the end of the day, once you log in, crowns are crowns and how you obtained them doesn't matter anymore, which is why ZOS is making a loss if they don't raise crown prices in Turkey or exclude Turkish players. There isn't any other option. If they don't do anything then Turkish players could crown sell very cheaply to the rest of the playerbase, which we would love of course, but ZOS would make a loss as purchases from other countries drop.

We do not earn in dollars or euro, it is not "cheaply" gifted to other players. And, if you are referring to the real currency excahnge for crowns from other players, I am sure it is already illegal. As a partial solution, they could have kept eso+ price in a more reasonable range and only drastically increase the crown prices if they HAVE to do it. It would be much more reasonable to increase sub prices by about %40 or %50 while increasing the crown prices x3.

Edit: Added a suggestion to fix the problem.

belial5221_ESO · August 2022

It's not ZOS increasing prices per se,it's to do with exchange rates,and sounds like your country's currency is tanking,and you're feeling the effects.If they tried adjusting currencies for better rates,then people in other countries would try getting crowns from that country using different means.You can still get crown items for ingame gold,if you find trusted people.

dmnqwk · August 2022

lronclaw wrote: »

We do not earn in dollars or euro, it is not "cheaply" gifted to other players. And, if you are referring to the real currency excahnge for crowns from other players, I am sure it is already illegal. As a partial solution, they could have kept eso+ price in a more reasonable range and only drastically increase the crown prices if they HAVE to do it. It would be much more reasonable to increase sub prices by about %40 or %50 while increasing the crown prices x3.

Edit: Added a suggestion to fix the problem.

A few months ago, there was a lot of players suddenly playing in Argentina because the crown and sub prices were so low, people were using VPN and pre-paid cards from there to save tons on their ESO.
If they did anything similar with Turkey, giving them concessions because the inflation in the country was crazy then people would simply find a way to exploit the cheap Turkish cheapness of the sub and do something similar. Giving a single country a discount opens it up for many people to exploit that loophole, as was proven with Argentina suddenly paying 250% more for crowns.

Now, what's interesting is comparing Turkish Lira to Argentine Pesos.

August 2014: 1 Turkish Lira was worth 3.8 Argentine Pesos
August 2017: 1 TRY : 5 ARP
August 2018: 1 TRY : 5 ARP still
August 2021: 1 TRY : 11 ARP
August 2022: 1 TRY : 7.3 ARP

Now, I added the August 2021 comparison because Argentina Crown Prices went up when their currency spiked a couple of months before the comparison, but the point is since their spike, the Turkish Lira has fallen against their currency 33% in the year - meaning it would open up a whole lot of trouble to give individual countries discounts or preferential treatment in an age where we can be from any country we like online.

Again, nobody wants to see Turkey suffer but the minute a company tries to be nice to a single country is the moment they risk losing millions of dollars each month from people taking advantage of their generosity. It's not fair Turkish currency is devalued so much atm but unless everybody suddenly becomes honest in the world, this is how things have to work.

ZOS_Hadeostry · August 2022

Greetings,

After further review we have decided to move this thread to a category we think is more appropriate for this topic.

Thank you for your understanding

woodsielord · August 2022

I doubt we are here to discuss regional pricing. It exists. It is a fact. It has a rationale behind it. And for all intents and purposes, ZOS botched Turkish regional pricing.

I am all too familiar with the knee jerk reactions towards regional prices. People, usually writing from better economies and paying 2-3 cups of coffee's worth for the sub--superficially jealous that they still seem to pay more--pile on to say "it's just business" and "publishers know at what break point they profit". Regardless of this shallow read, pricing remains tricky, bad business decisions are made all over the world, and this is a particularly bad one. ZOS will realize it. Whether it will care is another issue altogether, but they will see how stupendously bad it is.

Let's go by some comparisons (because if ZOS can't profit where others can, it's a ZOS problem): ESO+ sub is now locally more expensive than Netflix/Disney+/Prime combined. It's more expensive than WoW, which does *** poor regional pricing. That's more than Game Pass Ultimate + PS Plus Deluxe + EA Play (if Game Pass didn't already include it). It's nearly x4 Steam's suggested regional price. It's utterly insane.

Now my only hope is Game Pass Ultimate including an ESO+ sub of sorts, otherwise, bye-bye once my yearly sub wears off. Like the OP, I stopped buying crowns this year (because that tripled overnight too), and I will have to quit altogether soon. I don't see ZOS retaining many regional players if the exchange rate persists (or worse, retracts in favor of the Turkish Lira, which is likely in the not-too-distant future, and we all know prices won't be adjusted back that easily).