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Depending on where you live in the world, you're bound to see different prices for games than you would do in another country, but one Steam and game sales expert warns devs and publishers that ignoring regional pricing – as well as localization – is a surefire way to make players "hate you."
Speaking in a talk about how to price games at Digital Dragons 2026 – attended by GamesRadar+ – Tom Kaczmarczyk, founder and CEO of business intelligence company IndieBI, discusses why devs shouldn't just be thinking of their prices in US dollars. While he considers it "good practice" to start there – after all, "you have an understanding of what is a $20 game versus a $40 game versus a $60 game" – he notes that "you have to be mindful" that this price might only relate to "often less than half of your entire players."
He brings up the example of Polish game prices – which tend to be comparatively higher compared to other countries – as he brings up another slide with a clear warning: "Ignore regional pricing and entire nations will hate you." Kaczmarczyk adds: "If you don't fix your prices in Poland – which many, many publishers and developers still don't, they still haven't figured out that they should be doing that – you do see a substantial suppression of sales, and when you fix it, you see a boost in sales."
Later in the talk, Kaczmarczyk also brings up the importance of game localization, which "for some regions, is critical," but it has to be done well. Countries like Thailand, Vietnam, and China are good examples of this, he says – not only will you "never sell a substantial amount of units" without localization, but crucially, "if the Chinese localization is bad," then some players "will roast you in the reviews."
Another slide Kaczmarczyk shares talks about localization issues, and notes that for one unnamed but "very popular online party game," the devs saw "over 60% of all units purchased in China" refunded "due to networking and localization issues." His slide also warns that "your audience may hate you in a language you don't understand," giving the example of players in China sharing complaints in reviews and refunds, while noting that "the language barrier makes it hard to spot."
We've seen prominent examples of both of these things in the last year. Hollow Knight: Silksong's Steam review rating plummeted after players in China began pointing out how unsatisfactory its initial Chinese localization was, with Team Cherry quick to promise improvements which were implemented a couple of months after launch.
More recently, Slay the Spire 2 has seen waves of negative reviews coming from players in China with complaints about changes implemented in updates. This prompted Mega Crit co-founder Casey Yano to say that it's "kind of unfortunate that they feel that the only way to be heard is through Steam reviews," and saying that it's made the devs consider "how can we improve a communication channel between the developers and players in China who have a very restricted communication channel compared to the other players."
Kaczmarczyk acknowledges Slay the Spire 2's waves of negative reviews in his talk. "The review score dropped to the floor, to a point where in any other case you would say this game is dead, it's unplayable. Clearly, nobody likes it," he says. However, even though its review rating fell so hard, he says "sales in China did not fall that much," so it doesn't sound like it was too detrimental from that standpoint.
