F1 2021 marks the first game released by EA Games since the Codemasters acquisition earlier this year. EA Games now owns Codemasters and it seems the company is on a mission to make the money back that they spent buying the developer. So much so that they are now price hiking F1 2021 by tripling the retail price of the game in certain regions.
Twitter user Lasman spotted the listing for the upcoming racing simulator and thought its price tag was a bit high. It seems that is indeed the case. According to SteamDB, F1 2021 is available to pre-order for almost triple the price of F1 2020. While the price tag has not increased in every region, multiple countries are selling the game on Steam for much higher than before.
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For example, in South Africa, F1 2020 cost R329. F1 2021 now costs R999. In India, F1 2021 is available for pre-order for RS. 3,499 compared to F1 2020 at Rs. 1,299. However, in the US, it still sells for $59,99. The same price as F1 2020.
Some regions have even seen the price of F1 2021 increase by five times. In Argentina, the previous game is listed at ARS$ 649 with F1 2021 listed at ARS$ 3599. That is quite a massive jump.
EA wasting no time to make sure all the poor nations get fucked over properly pic.twitter.com/madaVOJi85
— lashman (@RobotBrush) April 15, 2021
Keep in mind that while the new pricing does align most regions with the standard $59.99 price tag, Steam also tries to adopt a fair regional pricing structure for its games. This means that publishers can often lower the price tag of certain games in countries where they don’t sell all that well or perhaps the region’s spending power is much lower. This is most likely the case with Codemasters who previously had this system in place.
It seems that since EA Games have come on board and taken over the company, they are determined to set all upcoming games at the same price regardless of the region’s spending power. In addition, countries, where the game does not sell that well, will have to fork out more money than ever to buy the game.
Source: Twitter
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