Regardless where one lives in Europe (including countries where salaries are lower than those living in France or Germany for example: such as Hungary, Romania, Latvia or Serbia to name a few) yet they’re confronted with 89,99€ at release considering EVERYONE in Europe as wealthy (further from the truth since there are nations in Europe where people aren’t paid 8000€ a month, some are paid x10 less than that).
Regional pricing is indifferent in this case no matter as to their actual income, it’s weird since they count countries where Euros aren’t used (Czech Republic, Romania, Serbia) whilst people there aren’t earning high salaries, like this: a Romanian earns 815€ a month but are treated no different: a 90€ game at launch (about 10% of their wage), for some reason they don’t bother adjusting it based on a specific country.
It’s not an issue that needs to be fixed by us. It’s not impossible to price digital goods differently in different countries, but companies would rather close up shop than let you buy a product cheaper than in your region. At the end of the day - the lowest they can price it is how much it realistically costs and the rest is extra fees for living in more developed countries, but they are greedy and don’t care about consumers one bit.
Also the digital segregation you are describing is already rolling out anyway with ID verification, that won’t solve the problems you think it will however.
I assumed all of this was known, but seeing how simply you view the issue, perhaps not.
It is impossible to do that currently, though, isn’t it? You set 8 prices for 8 countries individually, based on how reasonably each country’s residents can pay through their cost of living. Then, residents of 7 of those countries use VPNs to just pay the price of the country with the lowest pricing.
Then, the publisher sees this is happening, and stops selling to the lowest-income country, or feels forced to inflate price there to account for price chasing. Everyone loses.
This is largely why publishers decide to ignore outcries from international customers pointing out ridiculousness of international prices.
I’m not going to speak towards a world that attempts to enforce digital ID verification, as I’d be a starch opponent to that my whole life, and I’ll only stop when ordinary citizens become pro-ID, which I have never seen one of. I still believe it’s possible to suggest technologies that provide partial forms of identity as needed without denying freedom of digital anonymity.
Steam pre-empts that by tracking payment methods and using all known connection locations to try and prevent VPN hopping (If you are using a VPN to Argentina, you better have a card from an Argentine bank and hope your VPN never drops).
Places like the Eurozone simply are screwed because of the legal circumstances. If people are using payment methods other than cryptocurrency (which is not accepted on steam), it is relatively easy to find their location and charge appropriately.
As for the partial form of identity thing, it is hard to create a system that would not be subject to abuse. I believe that Valve’s current telemetry practices are not unreasonable given the lack of restraint for the user. The only expectation is that attempting financial shenanigans will have consequences, and shall be traced from that data. That’s fine.