News of EA’s first F1 game as the new owner of Codemasters was sour after a massive disparity in regional pricing became clear.
Overnight, Codemasters announced F1 2021, this year’s version of its official long-running Formula 1 racing game. The game is scheduled for July 16 on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X / S.
Watch on YouTube
The announcement is quite exciting. First, this is Codemasters’ first game under EA Sports, which recently finalized a $ 1.2 billion acquisition deal. Some F1 2021 features revealed so far are also interesting. This year’s game introduces a two-player co-op for career mode.
F1 2021 will also expand the game’s off-track management meta game, bringing in some of the (often more interesting) human dramas.
Unfortunately, what would normally be a reason to celebrate for F1 fans quickly became sour, as players from a significant number of countries saw the price of F1 2021 compare to last year’s game. Codemasters has often offered fair regional prices for its games in poor and developing countries, so these new prices have been a shock to many.
As seen by Lashman on Twitter, the price of F1 2021 increases significantly in over a dozen countries. In Argentina, F1 2020 cost ARS 649.99 (USD 7), while F1 2021 is priced at ARS 3599.00 (USD 38.80). Although both prices are still below the standard US price of $ 60, the price was more than five times.
It is a similar story for Turkey, Russia, Kazakhstan, Indonesia, India, Brazil, Ukraine, Malaysia, Colombia, Vietnam, Costa Rica and a few other places. Inexplicably, some countries – such as South Africa, the Philippines and others – will end up paying more than $ 60 or more than $ 70 for South Africa, although the exchange rate is 1:14 in favor of the USD.
Placing the pages of the Steam database for F1 2020 and F1 2021 side by side is illuminating. Effectively, this year’s game is not available to many people in those places. Regional prices are extremely important for entering these markets. And, as I said before, sometimes it’s just the real game of publishers against piracy there.
When asked to comment, EA provided a standard statement. “F1 2021 prices are in line with the approach of both EA and industry publishers for each region,” reads a statement to VG247.