It’s always a hassle when you have to pay in dollars or euros to avail of services. This mounts up costs unnecessarily because of currency conversions, as foreign currencies have a greater value than rupees. The general lack of awareness about the existence of a PC gaming scene in the country and the overall small size of the population who can afford to indulge in gaming means there is a lack of interest from companies as a whole. Steam managed to mitigate this way back in 2016 when they managed to put together a deal with Nodwin Gaming for putting in local payment methods in their store. It seems that the Epic Games Store would be going in the same direction.
On Twitter, an Indian with the username ‘sadcat’ asked Sergey Galyonkin, one of the main developers of the Epic Games Store (and the one who built SteamSpy). about supporting purchases in Indian rupees as well as adding local payment methods like payment wallets as well as UPI payment services. Interestingly, Sergey outright said that they had plans of expanding to India next year. This is definitely an interesting development at least for Indian gamers, most of whom got to know about the Epic Games Store following the free giveaway of Grand Theft Auto 5. Epic’s sales do offer games (especially Epic exclusives) for quite cheap – something many gamers in the country have their keen eyes on.
https://twitter.com/galyonkin/status/1273258367780347905
There isn’t any clarity on how this will be executed at the ground level – that’s definitely something to ponder about. Regional pricing has always been a thing on the Epic Games Store – almost all games are cheaper here.
Thanks, Mako Reactor.