EA Raises the Price of Old Games on Steam

With how much hate Blizzard has been getting for its handling of Blitzchung, Warcraft 3: Reforged, and Heroes of the Storm (yeah, remember how they screwed that up?), it’s easy to forget that EA is also a bag of dicks, and it seems they thought they could use the increased spotlight on Blizzard as an opportunity to sneak another floppy one straight into their sack.

As you may or may not be aware, EA has kind of “given up” on Origin, their client and digital storefront. While it’s still around, they’ve also gone ahead and offered their games on Steam once again, making it easier than ever before to play some of their well-beloved classics like Mass Effect, Dragon Age, and presumably games that haven’t been made by Bioware. Like Dead Space.

Well, if that interests you, you’d better prepare to pay a little extra: because Reddit user MJuniorDC9 has noted that EA has increased the prices of their old games on Steam. And, to make it even more complicated, how much it’s gone up hinges entirely on what region you’re in.

For example: For SimCity 4: Deluxe Edition, in Brazil, it’s gone up from R$34,99 to R$79,99, whereas in Russia it’s gone from 399 ₽ to 999 ₽. Crysis 2: Maximum Edition has gone up 10 euroes in Europe, but in the ol’ UK it’s only gone up five pounds. And in some regions, the price of certain games hasn’t gone up at all.

It’s a bit of a mess, is the point. It’s not entirely unlikely that EA is just trying to test which “price” makes the most money (this is called “AB Testing”) and they’ll adjust the prices everywhere else accordingly at a later date, but even if that was the case this is an incredibly awkward way to do it.

But since when has EA ever needed to make sense to make money.