Online videogame retailer Green Man Gaming has some big news for South Africans as it now not only supports Rands as an official currency in the store, but also favourable localised pricing.
Customers who have registered on the site from South Africa in the past may receive an email confirming this today.
“We’ve got exciting news for our South African customers – starting today, the currency you shop with changes from US Dollars to South African Rand!” the email reads.
“This means a simpler shopping experience for you, and enables us to give you our very best prices. In some cases, you’ll even save a little extra. Any existing credit balance will be converted to local currency, which may take up to 24 hours.”
Many online stores and services also offer Rands as a supported currency but this is usually just a direct conversion of an overseas currency and it ends up simply being a cosmetic change on a webpage.
For Green Man Gaming this doesn’t seem to be the case as favourable localised pricing is in place to properly reflect the economy of the country.
To test this out we looked at the top 15 games recommended to us in the PC section of the site, and we then compared that to the pricing in America. This offered up a decent mix of both indie and AAA titles, both new and old.
Before we look at the numbers it is worth mentioning that Green Man Gaming is currently running a Summer Sale. For some reason many of the games in America are discounted while the South African prices are not.
For the fairest comparison below we used the non-discounted prices for each country.
| Game | Localised Price | US Price |
Rand price conversion
|
| Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge | R150 | $24.99 | R428.57 |
| God of War | R590 | $49.99 | R857.32 |
| Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance | R319 | $29.99 | R514.32 |
| Outlast | R130 | $19.99 | R342.82 |
| Neon White | R165 | $24.99 | R428.57 |
| Outlast 2 | R175 | $29.99 | R514.32 |
| Horizon Zero Dawn Complete Edition | R599 | $49.99 | R857.32 |
| Endling – Extinction is Forever | R299 | $29.99 | R514.32 |
| The Jackbox Party Starter | R130 | $19.99 | R342.82 |
| Bloons TD 6 | R79 | $9.99 | R171.32 |
| 7 Days to Die | R269 | $24.99 | R428.57 |
| No Man’s Sky | R599 | $59.99 | R1028.82 |
| Overcooked! 2 | R319 | $24.99 | R428.57 |
| Coromon | R130 | $19.99 | R342.82 |
| Builder Simulator | R130 | $19.99 | R342.82 |
For literally every game we looked at the South African pricing was lower which is exactly what we like to see. It’s still rather unbelievable when companies expect South Africans to pay the same – or sometimes more – for digital products.
In the past we have seen these kinds of programmes start out strong and then get worse with Steam being the biggest example. Back in 2015 Rands were finally added as a supported currency complete with localised pricing that was very favourable, but this pricing has steadily gotten worse over the years, mostly for new games were publishers don’t get the memo and charge higher prices.
With Green Man Gaming starting out so strong here we can only hope it continues.
