We are considering using itch.io as our primary store and not selling on Steam at all, however it seems itch does not support regional pricing, which blocks out a lot of our community as we come from developing countries.

We need the ability to set different prices per country or currency.

This is a brief overview of how this system works on steam – basically steam suggests some recommended prices for each region when the seller puts in their USD base price.

I understand that it is not difficult to abuse this – some of my friends still use their old credit cards on Steam for this reason even though they have moved abroad.

This will be opt-in by default, and if calculating good recommended prices is too difficult (note there’s purchasing power indexes for it) then just use the currency exchange rates to calculate recommended prices and let the developers change them as needed.

Please let me know if this is something you are working on, as this feature is a blocker for us using itch.io to distribute our games. From what we understand itch.io aims to be inclusive and indie-friendly and regional pricing is essential for this.

Best, Kotob

Interesting idea. So, yes, different countries has a different status of economic sytem. And USD prices can be extremely high. I even say that it should be at least half ot the world, if not even more. So USD is for USA direction. And some more, some more countries, people. But, this is a USA dev, so they do it for USA first. And yes you can be a guest here. A guest. And play the game. USD prices and so on. This is the way i see it. 

From other hand, you know, i have read article. And it tells, that if you are not from USA, you can be enough about 200-300 USD for minimum or normal, or have 500USD or more to be very cool about earning. So US residents i heard, they need 3000USD per mounth to have a minimum. 

So in result, it has some different points. 

Same here. We’re considering itch as a primary store, but we need regional pricing for two reasons:

• ethical: we want our products to be accessible to the largest amount of people
• financial: by making our products affordable to people in emerging markets, we can sell more

From a purely cynical and interested perspective, not having regional pricing leaves a lot of money on the table. A $80 product is simply out of the reach of half the planet; the same people would pay $40 or $20 happily though, and that can double, tripe, or multiply by ten your addressable market.

From an ethical perspective, regional pricing is necessary for justice and fairness. Otherwise, you send a “poors not allowed” message; this is always true, no matter what the price is. A $3 game on itch is cheap to me, but could really sting for someone in a poorer country. Putting it at 0.22c for them makes it cheap for them too, and they can make a purchase decision with the similar constraints to mine.

Further; regional pricing is challenging to implement, but not overwhelmingly so. You need to detect where people are from, show a banner that allows them to opt-in the regional price, and then create a coupon of sorts. The complicated parts are:

1. Deciding on the rate per country. There are databases and heuristics for this, and it could be a communal project. Alternatively, you could leave it completely open to creators. Creators decide which countries get which discount.
2. (optional) showing a control panel so creators on itch can decide which discounts to apply (if automatic) or a UI to set the pricing per-country (if manual).

Please consider it!