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Sales Data No More Robots' founder on manipulating eShop sales

SunnyDays

SunnyDays

Octorok
Founder
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they/she
I'm sure nobody in this forum is a stranger to developers being able to influence eShop sales, but Mike Rose of No More Robots has gone ahead and compiled all the ways he was able to both purposely and accidentally influence the sales outcomes of his games,

If you've not read his previous thread on eShop sales I'd highly recommend starting with it, as it's incredibly relevant.















Key takeaways, it's obviously incredibly simple to manipulate the Switch eShop into promoting a game as long as it's good, manipulation of metacritic scores is also quite easy, and due to regional eShops being representative of a broader population than region-specific pricing, this also can play a huge role in manufacturing success for your game, even if there's a loss in revenue per unit sales.
 
huhโ€ฆ this is very insightful, thanks for posting!
 
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Yavga said:
I too, learned a lot from this... Do I need a VPN to use another eshop store? asking for a friend. ๐Ÿ˜‡
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No, you can just create a new account on your current Switch and put one of those countries as your country. Just make sure you have a way to pay in one of those countries. Not all countries accept credit cards from other countries.
 
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In Argentina there are two (in fact various..) dollar exchange types: (and i include its relationship between argentine peso: usa dollar)

Official 159:1
Parallel/Unofficial (Blue) 287:1

There is a big difference, eshop prices as adjusted to official dolar relationship. Thats why its sometimes more cheap to buy something at Argentine eshop rather than usa
 
Isn't that bad for the people living in those countries where the games are cheaper though? Like doesn't it kind of mess up their economy.
 
Kitty Paws said:
Isn't that bad for the people living in those countries where the games are cheaper though? Like doesn't it kind of mess up their economy.
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It won't have a huge impact on the broader economy, but when publishers see their regional pricing is being taken advantage of by people switching their console over to Argentina, Mexico, or South Africa as some common examples, they may feel they need to increase the price in those regions, potentially pricing out people who actually live there.
 
Not related, but this reminds me of eShop region problem we had in Turkey with Nintendo of Europe.

Turkey didn't have its own eShop region on 3DS (they still don't on Switch), so people with 3DS in the country usually picked the cheapest region to buy games from: Australia. NoE found out about this and warned Nortec (Nintendo's Turkish distributor) to not manipulate cheaper eShops. Nortec put a warning in the new boxes of 3DS to use UK region for eShop but after a few months UK regions started to block foreign credit cards. Nortec asked NoE to lift the block or people will go back to Australian eShop and NoE's response was this: "We considered having a Turkish eShop region but that's not going to happen. You're way too poor than we first thought. You can use Australian eShop."

Now on Switch, there still isn't a Turkish eShop and people are picking the cheapest regions, like Canada, Argentina, Brazil or Colombia. UK, US and Ireland still block the credit cards.
 
9-Volt said:
. Nortec asked NoE to lift the block or people will go back to Australian eShop and NoE's response was this: "We considered having a Turkish eShop region but that's not going to happen. You're way too poor than we first thought. You can use Australian eShop."
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this is a joke, right?
wtf...

anyway, Nintendo games in Brazil costs over 30% of the minimum wage.
Switch OLED 2 times the minium wage.
 
Guaranรก said:
this is a joke, right?
wtf...
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That's not the exact wording but yes, they refused to start a Turkish eShop due to purchasing power of people. They did say "Turkey is too poor for that".

Even funnier thing is, Sony also initially rejected the idea of Turkish PS Store due to low Turkish purchasing power. Later they caved in and launched a price adjusted regional PS Store which eventually got abused by foreign users.
 
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This is enlightening. On one hand, I donโ€™t blame people for trying to save money however they can. On the other hand, this is abuse of the system.

SunnyDays said:
but when publishers see their regional pricing is being taken advantage of by people switching their console over to Argentina, Mexico, or South Africa as some common examples, they may feel they need to increase the price in those regions, potentially pricing out people who actually live there.
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Yeah, thatโ€™s one of the big problems. The data gets muddled and pubs can mistake the high number of sales as increased demand in that region, thus justifying raising prices.

Guaranรก said:
anyway, Nintendo games in Brazil costs over 30% of the minimum wage.
Switch OLED 2 times the minium wage.
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This is the sort of scenario where people should be using eshops of other regions.

I also wish we could get a regional e-shop, with adjusted prices. We follow US pricing for games and itโ€™s really expensive since the monthly minimum wage only amounts to a little over 300 USD.
 
meatbag said:
Yeah, thatโ€™s one of the big problems. The data gets muddled and pubs can mistake the high number of sales as increased demand in that region, thus justifying raising prices.
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I don't think it's even that. Publishers know when the region is being exploited by foreigners because they look up the game. Someone on Twitter posts "South Africa has Super Watchcraft for $13 instead of $40" that gets 500 likes? Developers will see that and be aware that foreigners are exploiting the regional pricing for savings, The only choices they're left with is to a) Take the L and lose hundreds or thousands of dollars on unit sales or b) Patch the loophole and disenfranchise locals to the country.
Mike Rose here is explaining that this relationship can be beneficial by giving more savvy customers the ability to use this loophole, driving the game up the eShop charts while all the eyes on eShop charts are not likely to even check if there's a better priced region, but I wouldn't expect big publishers like EA, Activision, Capcom, etc, to actually care about that.
 
meatbag said:
This is the sort of scenario where people should be using eshops of other regions.

I also wish we could get a regional e-shop, with adjusted prices. We follow US pricing for games and itโ€™s really expensive since the monthly minimum wage only amounts to a little over 300 USD.
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the sad part is that steam and Sony games are cathing up.
things are only getting worse for gamers around here.

For almost a decade, piracy rating was getting lower and lower due to very competitive prices, especially on Steam (but also on PS4 - Nintendo left Brazil and just recently came back), but since the new government devalued the local currency to favor agricultural exporters, things went downhill.
 
Bosintang said:
If you're from a first world country yet cheat to buy games at third world country prices, you're kind of an ass.
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What if you're a corporation from a first-world country, say Apple or Nintendo or Microsoft, but you buy labour at third-world prices. I know they're not exactly equivalent situations, but the idea corporations can exploit the global economy but consumers can't doesn't seem quite right.

I don't buy games from foreign eShops but I'm not sure if I'm morally against it or not.
 
While the thrust of your point regarding doing something other than using eshops from other countries was fine, suggesting that people just pirate the games is against the rules. -PixelKnight, Irene, Derachi
neil said:
What if you're a corporation from a first-world country, say Apple or Nintendo or Microsoft, but you buy labour at third-world prices. I know they're not exactly equivalent situations, but the idea corporations can exploit the global economy but consumers can't doesn't seem quite right.

I don't buy games from foreign eShops but I'm not sure if I'm morally against it or not.
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Then pirate the games, or better, boycott those games. Just don't fuck it up for people from poorer background than you.
 
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Very interesting, it worked out for them, but I bet it swings the other way for plenty of other developers.
 
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So ostensibly what this person is saying is: โ€œHey remember that eShop trick indies used to do where theyโ€™d price their game at like 30 dollars, then put it on sale for 99 cents so it said โ€˜98% Offโ€™ and shot up the Best Sellers and Great Deals list, then weโ€™d take it off sale but itโ€™d stay up there, getting us more sales? It still works, you just gotta coax buyers into changing their regions.โ€œ

Iโ€™m all for indies doing whatever it is they gotta do to sell their game, and Iโ€™m also all for video game players doing what they gotta do to get a good deal. But thereโ€˜s something about this whole set-up that feels manipulative, and, now that this dev is saying this outloud, I have to imagine Nintendo is going to step in and โ€œfixโ€ this before too long.
 
This is interesting, but what it amounts to is the discovery that all countries in North and South America (including the US and Argentina) are contained in the same eShop, which allows users to access storefronts in poorer countries, abusing the system, and ultimately benefitting the developers.

It's bad for people to abuse lower prices in poorer countries, and this developer is just describing the ways they benefit from it.
 
Derachi said:
So ostensibly what this person is saying is: โ€œHey remember that eShop trick indies used to do where theyโ€™d price their game at like 30 dollars, then put it on sale for 99 cents so it said โ€˜98% Offโ€™ and shot up the Best Sellers and Great Deals list, then weโ€™d take it off sale but itโ€™d stay up there, getting us more sales? It still works, you just gotta coax buyers into changing their regions.โ€œ

Iโ€™m all for indies doing whatever it is they gotta do to sell their game, and Iโ€™m also all for video game players doing what they gotta do to get a good deal. But thereโ€˜s something about this whole set-up that feels manipulative, and, now that this dev is saying this outloud, I have to imagine Nintendo is going to step in and โ€œfixโ€ this before too long.
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I think Nintendo set a minimum amount for an eShop game to be at $2 to crack down on companies discounting their prices down below $1 to boost them up to the top of the best sellers list. Let's Build a Zoo seems like a legit accident so it's not worth taking action over just instance but if there becomes a pattern of devs deliberately listing their games in the "wrong" region, then Nintendo will totally crack down on it.
 
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Apple App Store has been doing this for years. Itโ€™s like one of first the application stores. Country swapping or whatever is an industry standard and as it should be.

Why would you want region locking? How does that benefit the consumer?
 
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eli said:
Shaming consumers cheating the system on multi million dollar companies and corporations is not a good look.
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Screwing the prices for local markets is even worst. You already have sales in your own country, use those!

There is only one endgame here and it's fucking up prices for the people that can only buy games with those regional prices and then publishers and developers hiking up the prices, and the cycle repeats going to a different countries, and in the end the only one really affected were the people living in these countries. Already happened here in Mexico, of course everyone noticed and now we get pretty much a conversion USD to MX, with small publishers / indie games (some big publsihers just say fuck it and make it 80 usd). Of course once people noticed these they jumped to the Argentina eshop and the process WILL repeat screwing up them.
 
fiendcode said:
I generally agree with the sentiment but if this behavior ends up bringing back region locking, the shame will be deserved.
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Again. Not a great look. I'm more of an advocate to lower prices in more regions so people don't feel obliged to change regions than to put the burden of change on consumerism. Because let's be true. People want stuff for the lowest amount of money unless it's too much hassle + consumers have never influenced business behaviour for the better. You can boycot all you want, buy full priced stuff all you want, pre-order all you want but corporations will always find a new way to fuck you over.
 
If prices rise that falls on the publisher, not the consumer using an โ€˜exploitโ€™ thatโ€™s never been resolved.
 
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eli said:
Shaming consumers cheating the system on multi million dollar companies and corporations is not a good look.
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Can we please as a society stop making arguments in the form of "this doesn't make you look good" and just start making actual points?
 
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Yeah, not a fan of people abusing the ability to swap regions like this. It just makes it worse for people living in those countries and using the typical 'it's a multi billion dollar company' line doesn't really fit. Especially if it's the game of a small dev. Ultimately it causes price increases in these countries even if you think you're sticking it to Nintendo.

But people can do whatever they want.
 
Bosintang said:
If you're from a first world country yet cheat to buy games at third world country prices, you're kind of an ass.
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If first party titles were cheaper in 1st world countries and the difference after conversion was minimal, almost no one would even bother doing it. I'm pretty certain no one would go through the hassle of changing their nintendo acc. country to save 3~8$ on a title (even more so considering they can't use their gold coins and credit balance across different regions). According to the eshopprices website, sometimes the difference can be well above 10-15$ which to some is well, enough to justify the action.

Also, you're forgetting how many people who exploit this aren't even aware about the consequences.
Oh, and the most important part: there's a BUNCH of games available in the american and japanese eshop stores that aren't present in eshops from other countries.

Like, it's not even a matter of paying less, it's about being able to buy the game AT ALL.

To my knowledge, stores like EGS and Steam don't have this issue. And honestly, I can't see why the hell nintendo can't consolidate all stores into one and then, just display the price converted to your country's currency. The store page for the game's not translated to your language? then leave the interactive bits of the page (purchase button, download demo etc...) in the user's language and the description for the game untranslated or, use a decent-enough tool to automatically translate said page.

I know it sounds janky, but I'd rather have that than the current solution of not even allowing access to the page unless the user changes location.

And before someone asks about wallets, gift card redeeming and gold coins: I mean, I can't see why not just let people redeem any country's gift card and then convert the value to the user's current location setting. Same for gold coins. Adding funds to the wallet/making a purchase in another currency is already handled by your credit card so...
 
niconiconick64 said:
To my knowledge, stores like EGS and Steam don't have this issue.
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Steam does have regional restrictions but theyโ€™re a lot laxer. There are games I canโ€™t purchase on my local Steam account.

KC Hazel said:
Especially if it's the game of a small dev
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I think thatโ€™s the scenario where it bothers me. Like if itโ€™s a multibillion dollar corpo youโ€™re cheaping out on, go ahead, theyโ€™re still gonna make a ton of money at the end of the day anyway. But when itโ€™s small devs itโ€™s kindaโ€ฆ eh.
 
I really want to give the post a shot but it starting with "Let me tell you the story about how a little country called "Argentina"" gives me such bad vibes that I seriously can't.

I imagine Mike Rose is using that phrase as a sort of attention grabber headline but come on, Argentina is nowhere near a "little country" so it just sounds demeaning.
 
eli said:
Again. Not a great look. I'm more of an advocate to lower prices in more regions so people don't feel obliged to change regions than to put the burden of change on consumerism. Because let's be true. People want stuff for the lowest amount of money unless it's too much hassle + consumers have never influenced business behaviour for the better. You can boycot all you want, buy full priced stuff all you want, pre-order all you want but corporations will always find a new way to fuck you over.
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Outside 1st party, digital prices fall and have steep sales with frequency in 1st world nations. Price shouldn't reasonably at issue anyway, at any given moment there are 800-1000+ games on sale in the US eShop, most of them under $10.

What this will result in though is prices raising beyond affordability in other nations, geoblocking (a la Steam) or even just going back to the dark ages of full region locked hardware we suffered through on previous Nintendo consoles. I'd just prefer not going backwards in all those areas and I don't really care how that looks.
 
this way, everyone who does the Argentina region swap can be reminded that this is not a good thing to do
 
meatbag said:
Steam does have regional restrictions but theyโ€™re a lot laxer. There are games I canโ€™t purchase on my local Steam account.
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They're laxer but depending on your region you can get some really frustrating restrictions as an attempt to prevent people cheating with regions. Like "cheaper" regions being unable to gift to friends at all, or "expensive" regions not being allowed to receive gifts. They won't even give you the option to pay the more expensive price for it, you're just completely locked out ๐Ÿ˜ญ

jnWake said:
I really want to give the post a shot but it starting with "Let me tell you the story about how a little country called "Argentina"" gives me such bad vibes that I seriously can't.

I imagine Mike Rose is using that phrase as a sort of attention grabber headline but come on, Argentina is nowhere near a "little country" so it just sounds demeaning.
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Mike Rose sometimes makes decent points (and has a large enough following for people to see those points) but yeaaaah this is a consistent issue with him, he's super condescending to both players and other devs. Back when I was more active in the indie scene he wasn't especially well-liked.
 
9-Volt said:
Not related, but this reminds me of eShop region problem we had in Turkey with Nintendo of Europe.

Turkey didn't have its own eShop region on 3DS (they still don't on Switch), so people with 3DS in the country usually picked the cheapest region to buy games from: Australia. NoE found out about this and warned Nortec (Nintendo's Turkish distributor) to not manipulate cheaper eShops. Nortec put a warning in the new boxes of 3DS to use UK region for eShop but after a few months UK regions started to block foreign credit cards. Nortec asked NoE to lift the block or people will go back to Australian eShop and NoE's response was this: "We considered having a Turkish eShop region but that's not going to happen. You're way too poor than we first thought. You can use Australian eShop."

Now on Switch, there still isn't a Turkish eShop and people are picking the cheapest regions, like Canada, Argentina, Brazil or Colombia. UK, US and Ireland still block the credit cards.
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This is really fucking shitty (and also is probably why countries like India still donโ€™t have their own eShop). Nintendo needs to fucking get over themselves.
 
Bosintang said:
If you're from a first world country yet cheat to buy games at third world country prices, you're kind of an ass.
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There are far worse things than this. People flat out pirating games is far worse. Looking for a deal in another country is fine since the game is still being purchased.
 
kimbo99 said:
There are far worse things than this. People flat out pirating games is far worse. Looking for a deal in another country is fine since the game is still being purchased.
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"hey, we are going to make publishers make expensive the games in low income countries permanently, BUT THAT 10 USD DISCOUNT WAS WORTH IT!!"

Again, the problem with this is that in the end the only one fucked up are the people living in those countries once publishers start to note they are abusing those country prices. There is nothing wrong in looking for offers, but at least use the one in your own countries
 
eli said:
Shaming consumers cheating the system on multi million dollar companies and corporations is not a good look.
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Are you purposely ignoring the fact that this is not about a multimillion dollar companies?

Is your motto: I can do anything I want because somehow everything is owned by a big company. Developer of all kinds should give me their games for free!
 
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The "multi million dollar company" argument is such a neat and tidy way to not feel bad about the fact that you're essentially taking advantage of the fact that you're lucky enough to live in a rich country. I live in a first world country and for a while I took advantage of these sorts of loopholes, and I stopped doing it because I'm concerned about companies raising prices in those areas. I don't want to be responsible for that. If I can't afford a game, I'll wait for a sale. If there aren't any decent sales, I just won't buy it. I've had to skip out on a few Nintendo games (since they never get any good sales lol) ever since I stopped using the loophole, and I'm fine with that. Games aren't a necessity, and buying a new game isn't worth screwing less fortunate people over.
 
I've yet to read an argument that actually implies that prices will go up in countries with lower prices vs. nothing is gonna change at all.

You guys know this has been a thing for over 5 years now right? Xbox has been allowing this since the One.
 
eli said:
I've yet to read an argument that actually implies that prices will go up in countries with lower prices vs. nothing is gonna change at all.

You guys know this has been a thing for over 5 years now right? Xbox has been allowing this since the One.
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Steam. It happens constantly.
 
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While itโ€™s fine to object to westerners using these loopholes, please avoid needlessly dismissive snark such as accusing others of โ€˜simp for first worldersโ€™. You have been threadbanned for a week. -PixelKnight, Irene, Red Monster
kimbo99 said:
Yeah one who grew up in Nigeria for half his life. Better luck next time chap.
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As if people from third world country couldn't behave or simp for first worlders' views. I would even argue that when they do, they are the worst.
 
eli said:
I've yet to read an argument that actually implies that prices will go up in countries with lower prices vs. nothing is gonna change at all.

You guys know this has been a thing for over 5 years now right? Xbox has been allowing this since the One.
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No one is making an argument because it happens all the time and there is well documented proof.

https://www.resetera.com/threads/ca...-on-steam-for-some-low-income-regions.617259/
https://www.gamepur.com/news/sony-t...eam-to-match-exorbitant-prices-of-other-games
https://www.windowscentral.com/gami...abuse-of-steam-pcs-regional-pricing-structure
https://www.pcinvasion.com/thronebreaker-witcher-steam-regional-pricing/

It would be easy to keep going here, and Argentina is usually on the list of regions cited as being abused.
 
KC Hazel said:
No one is making an argument because it happens all the time and there is well documented proof.

https://www.resetera.com/threads/ca...-on-steam-for-some-low-income-regions.617259/
https://www.gamepur.com/news/sony-t...eam-to-match-exorbitant-prices-of-other-games
https://www.windowscentral.com/gami...abuse-of-steam-pcs-regional-pricing-structure
https://www.pcinvasion.com/thronebreaker-witcher-steam-regional-pricing/

It would be easy to keep going here, and Argentina is usually on the list of regions cited as being abused.
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Now see, that would have been good stuff to start with, instead of going off all personal and calling people 'kind of an ass' like others in this thread have done.

I feel like that link for Horizon is a bit out of context as one of the steepest price increases was actually in the US with 100% (double). CDPR's comments are dubious but they've always been sketchy.

I think the only way to 'stop' stuff like this is to make it harder to change countries. That doesn't mean region locking games themselves or consoles. Instead they could make it so that it's not possible to have accounts from multiple regions on one console or something. Just spitballing here but there are other solutions than to blame consumers.
 
eli said:
Now see, that would have been good stuff to start with, instead of going off all personal and calling people 'kind of an ass' like others in this thread have done.

I feel like that link for Horizon is a bit out of context as one of the steepest price increases was actually in the US with 100% (double). CDPR's comments are dubious but they've always been sketchy.

I think the only way to 'stop' stuff like this is to make it harder to change countries. That doesn't mean region locking games themselves or consoles. Instead they could make it so that it's not possible to have accounts from multiple regions on one console or something. Just spitballing here but there are other solutions than to blame consumers.
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Well yeah, I always agree that we shouldn't put each other down via name calling or otherwise.

As for how to solve this, it seems like there is no way to do it without hurting some set of consumers, or the companies themselves that make the decisions. Few companies will choose to harm themselves here, but the dev in the OP apparently didn't raise prices despite being concerned about the practice. Big companies like Sony or Nintendo should just take the hit.
 
eli said:
I've yet to read an argument that actually implies that prices will go up in countries with lower prices vs. nothing is gonna change at all.

You guys know this has been a thing for over 5 years now right? Xbox has been allowing this since the One.
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Nintendo increases South African eShop prices by 24%

The SA eShop used to be a place where Europeans in particular were able to buy Nintendo 1st party games for 10 to 15 euros off. Well, until Nintendo "fixed" the prices.

You can find a lot of news like this, especially on Steam. It happens all the time.

The simple truth is that sales in 3rd world or developing countries are merely a "nice to have" for the multimillion dollar companies. They can offer their games for cheaper in those countries solely because their actual investment gets recouped in first world countries at first world pricing. If too many people abuse this system it falls apart and publishers will increase their regional pricing in a heartbeat to secure their investment. "Just make games cheaper everywhere" is not an argument, it's simply not feasible.

So, yeah, you can abuse regional pricing to save a couple bucks. That's up to you, no one is stopping you. But don't portray it as some kind of anti-capitalist act of sticking it to the man. The man doesn't care, the victims are solely the people who are largely struggling to afford new games to begin with.
 
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