Why does the same cost less in Kazakhstan for example but it’s overpriced in the US for American players

There is an optimal price for a market to produce the biggest return for the publisher.

If I make a widget and then sell it for one cent above what it costs me to make, then I will probably sell a lot of units. But I won’t make much profit on each.

If I make a widget and then sell it for ten thousand dollars a pop above what it costs me to make, then I will probably sell few units. But I will make more profit on each.

There is a point where a seller maximizes their return. They’ll try to price their product at that point.

An input to that price at which one maximizes their return, as @[email protected] points out, is the price elasticity of demand in each market.

People in Kazakhstan are not as well-off as people in the US. They’re more price sensitive, will just not be willing or able to buy something at a given price than people in the US. That means that that optimal price for the seller to set is going to be higher in the US than in Kazahkstan.

What you’ll probably also see — because a digital download of a video game has a marginal cost of production that’s basically zero — is prices slowly decreasing over time, approaching zero. Once a publisher has sold it to everyone willing to buy it at a given price, they’ll probably lower the price to try to sell it to more people who wouldn’t have bought it at the higher price. It’s why you can often get old games sold at lower prices — for example, Doom and Doom II are currently selling on Steam together for $3.99, much less (especially in inflation-adjusted terms) than they originally sold for. So down the line, that game may be selling for less, in both the US and Kazakhstan.