It seems like the US has really cheap pricing compared to Western Europe, especially when you consider the poorer countries such as Portugal, Italy, Spain etc.
I wonder if they can get away charging higher prices in these countries because chess is more popular there.
Yes as the sales tax rules vary from state to state. The interesting thing is historically I think sales tax was only for physical goods if you download the software there is no sales tax but if you get a physical CD then its taxed. Some states have modified the laws but many like California still don't tax downloaded software.
For what it's worth VAT isn't uniform across the EU either. IIRC the EU specifies minimums, but countries are allowed higher rates and can manage their own exclusions too.
Chess.com is a scam anyway. Rather than comparing the price of Norwegian Chess.cok to Nigerian Chess.con you should be comparing to lichess.org. They have a better app and plenty of people to play with, without any paywalling or marketing or rent-seeking.
Fascinatingly deep study. It shows the hyperoptimization needed to build these businesses: from all the work needed to calibrate pricing for each country, to technical safeguards like the fingerprinting. A lot of work had to be done here.
> It is the goal of every business to maximise profits. As a business, it is your responsibility to price your products in a way that will yield the most profit.
This is how the article starts, and it might be somewhat off-topic, but I disagree. Plenty of businesses (at least privately held ones) have the goal of simply making enough for the owners to get by. Not to optimize for the absolute maximum. And why should they be responsible to do so?
Thank you for this. Have you heard about PPP (Purchasing Power Parity)? Some pages sell products -50% in Poland because we don't earn as much as in other countries.
Steam used to have (until 2016) a two tier regonal pricing in the EU (EU1 and EU2) but they had to stop it because it was discrimination that people in Sweden paid more for a game than people in Bulgaria. Now everyone in the EU pays the same as people in Sweden. And of course games haven't become cheaper either
Huh? Steam does have regional pricing. And they didn't update the suggested conversions for years, so they are rather outdated by now due to exchange rate changes.
Eh, the pricing should be tailored to the individual. Give each individual exactly the highest price point they can handle. Regional pricing is so yesteryear...
The game review is so weird. 1. e4. Comment: You have made a strategic move taking control of the center.....
Tell me something I do not know. So many generic comments, almost useless.
I’ve done the same thing for discovering cheaper billing profile on many services, e.g. Netflix or whatnot. Never thought to document it.
Finding it is a bit easy, processing the payment sometimes is geo locked by an account in that region (google/android) or having a form of payment in that country. Japan usually is paypay or a credit card with the BIN issued in Japan. There are many local payment providers though that do allow a foreign credit card so in the an China example:
It does get easier and very inexpensive if you do have foreign residencies and you can really rework purchasing.
Spotify for example is not sticky, but they are aggressive on if they aren’t sure you’re region specific to lock you into a monthly plan before allowing you to switch to yearly.
~
There was also great arbitrage for a while on providers that allowed switching to turkey residency and allowing foreign credit card billing but this ended due to the currency instability and now most software sellers anchor it to another region.
~
Also you’d be surprised about the minimum requirements to open up financial accounts in foreign countries. Linepay is pretty much open, but kinda sucks (Japan, Taiwan and Thailand) and it seems the LINE developers are maximizing at destroying their app and audience while WeChat and Alipay are amazing for what they are in general.
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 73.1 ms ] threadI wonder if they can get away charging higher prices in these countries because chess is more popular there.
1. US prices don't include sales tax.
2. All prices are shown in USD, which has fallen ~12% in the last few months.
Adjust for both of these and Western Europe gets the plans for 20% cheaper.
It irks me when we use “SKU” for SaaS.
Does SaaS has a limited amount of stock of products?
This is how the article starts, and it might be somewhat off-topic, but I disagree. Plenty of businesses (at least privately held ones) have the goal of simply making enough for the owners to get by. Not to optimize for the absolute maximum. And why should they be responsible to do so?
(I think I'm kidding. Am I?)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination
Or in any basic market where you have to haggle for everyday goods such as food markets in poorer countries.
£15 a month in the UK for an online chess game is crazy.
I've paid for 3 months but this is my last.
I'm only interested in Game review, but there are about 50 other sub-categories on their site that i don't use.
Only their top tier of membership provides game review and to be honest it's not even that good.
The game review is about the top 'computer' move, not what a human should do, and not one at my elo or to advance my elo.
Finding it is a bit easy, processing the payment sometimes is geo locked by an account in that region (google/android) or having a form of payment in that country. Japan usually is paypay or a credit card with the BIN issued in Japan. There are many local payment providers though that do allow a foreign credit card so in the an China example:
Download WeChat/alipay, add foreign credit card, Change region, ????, profit.
It does get easier and very inexpensive if you do have foreign residencies and you can really rework purchasing.
Spotify for example is not sticky, but they are aggressive on if they aren’t sure you’re region specific to lock you into a monthly plan before allowing you to switch to yearly.
~ There was also great arbitrage for a while on providers that allowed switching to turkey residency and allowing foreign credit card billing but this ended due to the currency instability and now most software sellers anchor it to another region. ~ Also you’d be surprised about the minimum requirements to open up financial accounts in foreign countries. Linepay is pretty much open, but kinda sucks (Japan, Taiwan and Thailand) and it seems the LINE developers are maximizing at destroying their app and audience while WeChat and Alipay are amazing for what they are in general.