I’m personally not smart enough to even speculate about what’s happening in the global economy, but apparently Turkish and Ukrainian fans of SMITE are going to be facing a harder bite on their wallets from developer Hi-Rez Studios, as it announced regional price hikes related to Turkish lira and Ukrainian hryvnia “to account for recent economic forces and abuse from players living outside these regions.”
“We know that changes to pricing and currency are impactful to our communities,” read the announcement tweets. “We apologize for any inconvenience this has caused and will continue to monitor global conditions around these currencies.”
Unsurprisingly, players are not too pleased about the update, with many of them calling out the hamfisted approach to the problem of player abuse; one player suggests some manner of account-based tracking, while another points out methods that other games used to mitigate the problem. It’s a crappy blanket solution for an even crappier problem, but it’s the one Hi-Rez is going with.
We know that changes to pricing and currency are impactful to our communities and wanted to confirm that regional pricing for both Turkish Lira and Ukrainian Hyrvnia has been increased to account for recent economic forces and abuse from players living outside these regions.
— SMITE (@SMITEGame) October 11, 2022
