[KOTAKU] EA Hikes Up PC Game Prices, But Only On Steam

[Andrew]

Yesterday, EA raised the prices on a whole bunch of games across a whole bunch of regions on Steam, making some of them cost almost twice as much on Valve’s store as they do on EA’s own Origin marketplace.

 

While the price of EA games on Steam remains unchanged in the US, everywhere from the UK to South Korea to Singapore to Mexico to, well, most of Europe has seen increases.

 

Source

[ENTERPRISE]

A somewhat bold and obvious move to make sure people who want an EA game go to Origin to get it....

[Alex]

Well, thought they were doing better after the CnC remake coming soon but I guess this is a reminder that EA is still EA...

[Andrew]

Yeah, EA have been doing pretty good recently. The new Star Wars game as well as the C&C remake as mentioned. I am on the fence about them doing this though. On the one hand, it's not very consumer friendly but on the other Steam is charging them a fee and it is their IP so they can do what they want.

[ENTERPRISE]

Yeah, EA have been doing pretty good recently. The new Star Wars game as well as the C&C remake as mentioned. I am on the fence about them doing this though. On the one hand, it's not very consumer friendly but on the other Steam is charging them a fee and it is their IP so they can do what they want.

 

I guess it comes down to how much the fee is VS how many copies they want to sell. Obviously in order to have the best market penetration you would opt to keep prices the same across platforms...so one has to imagine that the fee STEAM imposes must be large. OR this is a move to get larger market share for Origin. The funny thing is that Origin is still IMHO in no shape to go ahead to head with STEAM.

[Andrew]

Yeah, EA have been doing pretty good recently. The new Star Wars game as well as the C&C remake as mentioned. I am on the fence about them doing this though. On the one hand, it's not very consumer friendly but on the other Steam is charging them a fee and it is their IP so they can do what they want.

 

I guess it comes down to how much the fee is VS how many copies they want to sell. Obviously in order to have the best market penetration you would opt to keep prices the same across platforms...so one has to imagine that the fee STEAM imposes must be large. OR this is a move to get larger market share for Origin. The funny thing is that Origin is still IMHO in no shape to go ahead to head with STEAM.

 

It's near enough impossible to find the fee Valve charge for using their platform to sell your games for larger studios, but I do know for smaller ones the fee is 30%. I imagine for a publisher like EA, the fee is going to be closer to 10% just because of the numbers they'll be able to push.

[ENTERPRISE]

30% is huge for a small timer, but I guess that's the trade-off if you want to be featured on such a popular platform. You just have to hope the number of sales made is worth it.