Stranger Than Heaven's regional price creep on Steam is one more reason I'm feeling wary

The price of playing games is as relevant as ever coming out of the recent Summer Game Fest week, with far more new releases shown than most of us will have the time or money to accommodate. When I spied that Stranger Than Heaven, the new crime game from Yakuza team RGG Studio, had crept its price up from the standard in my region, it gave me fresh pause about just how far up my wishlist it should be. It’s not alone, either; Sega is making a similar move with Persona 4 Revival. I hope it’s not the start of a trend.

Summer Game Fest host Geoff Keighley was quick to call out the success of independent games and more affordable experiences on Steam during the big seasonal showcase. Of the 14 new games with over a million sales on the platform, he remarked that ten were from indie publishers, and even highlighted the desire for “games at different price points.” Budget will always be a consideration, but especially so when times are tough in the global economy. Low-cost indie games don’t skimp on value; some can last hundreds of hours, and keep you coming back for years.

Stranger Than Heaven is going in the wrong direction, however, at least in the UK. While both it and Persona 4 Revival boast the same $70 price tag in America that many other triple-A releases still maintain, here we’re looking at £65. That’s compared to the £60 that you’ll pay for the likes of other $70 games, including Gears of War: E-Day, Call of Duty Modern Warfare 4, and The Blood of Dawnwalker. It’s not a big increase, but it is a notable one, especially when the base price is already so high these days.

Interestingly, while those other games all land on or right by the ¥9800 mark in Japan, Stranger Than Heaven comes in under the gun at just ¥8990, while P4 Revival is ¥9900. Regional pricing on Steam is entirely in the hands of the publisher, although Valve recently changed its tools for figuring out the optimal number to set in different currencies. Quite what this suggests about Sega’s perception of how the two games will perform is up to speculation: does it believe P4 is a sure-fire hit in Japan, but isn’t sure how Stranger Than Heaven will fare?

As a UK dweller, an extra fiver on each game does impact my consideration of buying at launch versus waiting for a sale. It doesn’t help Stranger Than Heaven’s case that, despite how good it looks, it’s given me other reasons to be wary. The dev has made the bizarre choice to include rapper Tupac Shakur as a cast member in this tale of gang violence. It feels particularly tone deaf, regardless of RGG confirming that his likeness is being crafted “without the use of AI.”

Fortunately for now, Steam’s list of upcoming PC games only features those two names from Sega at a higher price. There are some other regional spikes – Modern Warfare 4 is notably more expensive in Norway than other games in the same price bracket, for example – but the good news is that not everyone is nudging the boundaries upwards. Bandai Namco’s Ace Combat 8, for example, is actually cheaper in the UK at just £55, despite being $70 or its standard equivalent across most other regions.

Other big names are standing firm at the $60 / £50 mark, including wishlist favorites like Control Resonant, Star Wars: Galactic Racer, Beast of Reincarnation, Halo: Campaign Evolved, and Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced. EA and Bit Reactor are going even further, offering the turn-based tactics of Star Wars: Zero Company for just $50 / £40.

Given the developer’s legacy with the XCOM series, Zero Company is already a game I was watching closely, but that lower cost of entry really does make it easier to say yes to on day one, especially with just how stacked August and September are looking. Everyone might be getting out of the way of GTA 6, but Rockstar’s latest still isn’t a consideration for PC players yet, and I suspect there’s room for some brave teams to capitalize on that, if the price is right.