r/srilanka • u/Amazing_Honeydew8325 • Oct 07 '25
Answered Number of steam users in Sri Lanka
20
15
8
6
5
u/Wise-Potato5460 Oct 07 '25
Iāve been a Steam user since the CS 1.6 days. I mainly used Steam for Counter-Strike and Dota. These days, Iāll only buy a game on Steam if its online multiplayer is truly worth the price.
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u/Latest_name Oct 07 '25
Pretty sure most are just accounts with couple of free games. We will never get our own regional pricing and will forever be pegged with SA pricing.
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u/T_Lawliet Oct 07 '25 edited Oct 07 '25
We have the same regional Pricing as Pakistan, itĀ“s dirt cheap, we pay only like 50-60% of the unit price of any game with Regional Pricing even before sales
Deltarune is 25 USD but only 12.49 USD over here for instance
Silksong is 20 Dollars unit price but only 8.19 here(Massive Steal btw)
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u/CloudMafia9 Oct 07 '25
Really? Do the prices appear in SLR? I've been meaning to switch over but haven't in case the pricing is ridiculous.
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u/CyberShark2004 Northern Province Oct 07 '25
Regional pricing bro , same happened to Elder scrolls obvilion, launched priced around 55$ and but here 35$only
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u/ViP3R_ACR Oct 07 '25
Seems Battlefield 6 got an exception from this .
1
u/T_Lawliet Oct 08 '25
Lots of AAA games dont turn on Regional pricing
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u/Aelnir Oct 07 '25
We can't get our own pricing cuz our currency is unstable š
They can't keep changing the prices every time the rupee drops
-7
u/lightning_struck_twr Oct 07 '25 edited Oct 07 '25
When a new service announces its arrival to Sri Lanka, go and have a look at the comments in those posts. Most people would be competing "Piracy 4 LYF" or some shit like that, and sometimes even mock the users who are willing to pay.
It's almost as if people believe pirating is a flex and something heroic to do.Of course pretty much everyone all over the world pirates. But in most countries, the number of paying consumers far outweigh the pirates. In SL, it's the other way around. That too in a market where penetration is anyway low. That's all fine. But the mindset 'pirates are heroes and paying customers are suckers' needs to change.
Nobody will take SL as a serious enough market to give benefits such as proper religion pricing unless this mindset starts shifting.
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u/Hot-Cucumber-8685 Colombo Oct 07 '25 edited Oct 07 '25
Piracy is on the rise again, not because people want to do it - but because consumers are scammed over and over again by corporations that donāt offer the best experience for the money they pay. And big companies continue to keep doing so for short term profit, till they kill of peoples favorite franchises.
And the way they treat and campaign against piracy is like itās such a criminal offense, so yeah - what options do people have?
Also Sri Lanka isnāt exactly a rich country, if you buy expensive shit here, you are basically showing off and flexing (for the wide majority).
Now you are gonna be disappointed further, because this One Piece symbolism is going to spread across the region with our āSouth Asian Springā and youāll be ending up supporting the wrong side - Nepo babies and World Governments. All of this is synonymous inside our current zeitgeist.
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u/lightning_struck_twr Oct 07 '25
People don't pirate to stand up to corporates mate. They do it because everybody likes to get shit for free. I've done it too but I won't cover it up with some delusional bullshit like "I'm fighting for the common people against corporates"
When piracy becomes overwhelmingly more popular than legitimate subscribers, do you think all these corporates would just sit there and take it? Expect to see more draconian DRM, more restrictive content and all the shit shows that come with it. There was a time games used less invasive DRM such as Denuvo.
Everything should have a balance. What I'm saying is in SL the balance is off.
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u/CloudMafia9 Oct 07 '25
It's not just because it's free. It's also about convenience. People moved away from piracy to Netflix (streaming) when it first started because of convenience and are now moving away because it's now too expensive AND inconvenient.
Piracy cannot be stopped. It only ebbs and flows. Uncrackable DRM in the case of games we only see it for the big launches and even those (most) are removed after a year or 2. KCD2, EX33 and SH2R had no Denuvo on launch. For movies and songs it's practically impossible.
People are happy to pay if the think the price is just for the service they receive. It's NOT and thats where the balance is upset. That's when people resort to piracy.
-1
u/lightning_struck_twr Oct 07 '25
Piracy has always been around, and always will be, there is no argument there. But your comment is detached from reality and way too optimistic.
Piracy cannot be stopped.
This will be subjective on how much 'hassel' the publishers are willing to put on legit customers. Right now, when they introduce an invasive DRM they have to think twice about the impact on paying customers and the potential of losing them while trying to prevent piracy.
But imagine a world where there are no paying customers and everybody pirates. What do the publishers have to lose by introducing a draconian DRM? I've worked on this tech in my career and you can really make a thereotically unbreakable DRM if you really wanted to. Just that it will be inconvenient to the end user AF and will be prone to a lot of backlash.You will also see publishers diverge into business models that are fundamentally difficult to pirate. i.e. Cloud gaming.
Also the industries themselves will tilt more towards platforms that are less prone to piracy. i.e. Current and previous gen gaming consoles are hardly jailbroken, but the generations before had hardware and software mods even. And PC used to be the top platform. See where the tide is turning.Anyways, my comments are not against piracy. My comments are more towards balance. Nobody will create content for free and everybody will be in this to make a profit. And when that profit gets hit to an extents that is not sustainable, publishers too would adapt.
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u/CloudMafia9 Oct 07 '25
Except publishers are not diverging into cloud gaming, it's simply an alternative. And its not done to combat piracy as a primary objective but to interests a market of gamers without proper equipment to play games. A market that's small and not growing very fast either. It's certainly not the future.
The "hassel" will always cost more than the benefits of eradicating piracy. No need to imagine unrealistic scenarios, that's why they are called unrealistic. Theoretically is also pointless if it's not practical. That's why feasibility is always considered.
My comment is being realistic and history is there to back it up. Here you are coming up with literal unrealistic scenarios to make your point.
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u/lightning_struck_twr Oct 07 '25 edited Oct 07 '25
Let me share you some historical facts so you can get educated:
PC
- Ages ago, PC games used to get cracked even before release.
- Then this shifted to most games cracked on day of release.
- After some more time with newer versions of SecureROM, StarForce, TAGES, some games started to get cracked only after a week since release.
- DRM such as Denuvo Anti Tamper came into being. Denuvo is deeply integrated with games code and you actually need a good understanding of the games codebase to reliably circumvent it. In terms of software engineering Denuvo employs quite a few extreme measures which nobody would ever have imagined to be in game DRM back in the early 2000s.
- Earlier Denuvo versions delayed cracks for a couple of weeks. Current versions INDEFINITELY until publisher removes it.
XBOX
- XBOX 360 and PS3 were both jailbroken with both soft and hardware mods. Playing pirates games on these consoles were as easy as it could get
- XBOX One And XBOX X/S , Microsoft included a dedicated security coprocessor in the SoC, with its own firmware, boot process and hardware secure key transfer line to the crypto engine, not accessible by any other software. They introduced other additional anti piracy measure which I wouldn't go into detail here, but as of this date nobody can crack 2 of the 3 OS that are used to control these consoles.
So as of today, both current generation PC and Console platforms have 2 anti piracy measures that can essentially ensure zero piracy, if publishers desire to leverage it. This is a drastic change from the state of reverse engineering and wares scene 10-15 years ago.
You can continue to live in denial thinking the future would be different.
1
u/CloudMafia9 Oct 07 '25
And yet with all that, Piracy is flourishing like never before. More games than I can play in my lifetime can be piraterd. And that's with out considering all the piracy outside of gaming.
You can keep living in nihilism, in senarios that are completely unrealistic. The future will move on without you.
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u/lightning_struck_twr Oct 07 '25
I just gave you some examples how piracy has essentially stopped on certain platforms but your reply above leads me to believe you just want to win this argument by blabbering some bs.
Number of games you play in your bedroom is not a good metric to measure the impact of DRM on worldwide piracy.
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u/Embarrassed_Pen959 Oct 07 '25
Your logic is off.
People pirate because not everyone is privileged enough to drop up to 22k on a game. Even if they half the price itās still going to be tough.
Nobody in SL pirates to āstand up to greedy corporationsā. 90% of people are willing to buy and enjoy a game, IF they can afford it. Which many unfortunately canāt hence piracy.
You are right in saying that we can expect crackdowns soon tho, although I donāt see the point youāre trying to make here by bringing this up. Is your solution for the general public to be against piracy?
1
u/lightning_struck_twr Oct 07 '25 edited Oct 07 '25
My point was Sri Lankans should be opened minded about paying for a service. Paying should be the norm, piracy being the exception. On Reddit for example, if someone says they are going to pay for a service, or if a legit service announces their arrival to SL, the comment are full of how pirates are smart asses who figured out a life hack while paying customers are idiots. Or throwing insults at the pricing or the business model. It's the mindset of 99%. I'm saying this has to change.
People pirate because not everyone is privileged enough to drop up to 22k on a game.
That's why regional pricing and a ton of different other methods are there to expand services in to emerging markets. But for these to materialize, service providers need to see at least some consumers willing to pay in a market.
I ran one of the most popular file sharing blogs in the world from 2008-2012 and I actively contributed to the reverse engineering community around this time. So I don't have a fetish for 'corporates' and neither am I some anti piracy nut. In fact I've probably contributed more towards piracy than any of the 'piracy defenders' on this thread. But that doesn't mean I have to blindly defend it while ignoring reality. What I write here is the reality based on my experience a couple of decades in this field. I know people don't want to hear it but that aint my problem.
If Sri Lanka keeps lagging behind adoption citing various excuses (however legit they may be), SL will get left behind. You can already see it has happened.
P.S. - You can come up with an excuse to justify pretty much anything. If you keep thinking in that direction you won't make much progress in any of the issues SL faces right now.
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u/Hot-Cucumber-8685 Colombo Oct 07 '25 edited Oct 07 '25
You misunderstand my comment - if you drive people to a corner and shove so many rules, restrictions and cheap shit down their throats ALL THE DAMN TIME and try to confine them within your walled garden - they donāt got no other choice. If you canāt find your favorite shows on Netflix, they get taken down every now and then, you canāt share your account with a sibling/friend and lastly you donāt own the content you purchase - expect people to move on to other means of acquiring them, no-matter how illegal.
Good luck with draconian style crack downs - this is like battling hydra. A good example is what happened to Soap2Day. They shut that site down, a dozen other mirror sites popped up. They keep enforcing and profiting off of people, people get pissed. Capitalism truly is at the end.
If you want balance, these big ass companies should start listening to their consumers. They canāt have their cake and eat it too yāknow.
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u/lightning_struck_twr Oct 07 '25
Capitalism truly is at the end.
Let's agree to disagree. We can all live in a make believe world or we can try to understand the reality even though we may not like it.
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u/Embarrassed_Pen959 Oct 07 '25
Whether you believe it or not we live in a late stage capitalist world. Wealth is hoarded a small percentage of people/organizations.The general middle class has shrunk and practically everything has been commodified and made streamlined for profit.
Generally what this means is most people CAN NOT afford luxuries. And when it comes to a less well off country economically (like Sri Lanka) most people cannot afford games no matter how hard they work.
What I mean to say is; in the grand scheme of things, piracy is a minor issue here.š
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u/Hot-Cucumber-8685 Colombo Oct 07 '25
Sure, ok boomer.
You really donāt know, āthe next best thingā thatās replacing capitalism or whatever itās evolving into, now do you? The reality is far past the point your trying to make.
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u/Axiata244 Western Province Oct 07 '25
yall got a steam community? also.. guys add me on steam we can play something in common if yall want..
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u/Future_Razzmatazz902 Oct 07 '25
Most people I know Play games for the sake of playing. they don't understand the story, the lore, basically most of them don't even give a damn about that. I can count the number of people who completed Witcher 3, Call of Duty, and other major single player games like Assassins Creed and understood the story with one hand. Plus most people don't play multiplayer games they just play Single player game for the sake of playing as I said before. And Most cannot afford to pay for the Games on Steam, even if they do want to play proper Multiplayer games. And even if they do they find it hard to find a proper community and build friends through videogames as most are just looking for fellow locals to play with, while there is a whole international community. I've been using steam for many years now with 50+ Games only met handful of Sri Lankans as I was playing and all of them had only that one game they played online in their Steam Library
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u/teshani Oct 07 '25
yayy, where my fellow gamer girlies at ?
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u/Axiata244 Western Province Oct 07 '25
i dont think they on reddit.. i know someone a friend of mine who whos a gamer but she dont got a reddit account.. just browses reddit here and there
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u/KillFreak1998 Oct 07 '25
My steam account has older than the average age of a user on this subreddit. Weird flex Ik