The majority of traffic and engagement I’m seeing for my Steam page, and on social media, is predictably from the US, UK and Canada - but after those three I’m seeing a consistent engagement from Brazil. I’m wondering if this is a general thing, or it’s just something about my game or marketing approach that’s particularly relevant to the Brazilian market in some way?
In any case, it’s certainly got me seriously considering the possibility of Brazilian Portuguese localisation!
Brazil is not emerging as a mage market, brazil is and has been a HUGE game market for the last 10 years. The problem is that since the countrie’s money is undervalued buying anything here that the price is just a conversion from dollars is too expensive and this sets up a huge piratry problem, but brazillians are more than willing to pay for something we can indeed pay, so localized prices are a great idea. For exemple see Thor from the pirateSoftware YTchannel and his game heartbound, he localized prices for brazil setting it to almost half the direct conversion from dollars, and now brazil counts up to 20% of all his revenue
Less ‘emerging’ and more ‘emerged’. Brazil is a large market, although it’s worth saying that a lot of Portuguese (BR) localizations over the years have been pretty bad, so a fair number of the audience there is used to playing games in English.
That being said, Portuguese is often in the second or third tier of loc (below EFIGs and CJK) for exactly this reason. If you’re spending on localizing at all it’s not hard for this one in particular to be worth your time.
Localization is easy for the basic translation, at least surface level. Thing is not to stretch yourself out too thin. Some games have a hard time hitting every audience. If you think Brazil/Portuguese will have a good return on time spent, then go for it. My advice, while you should set up the best Localization system you can, see where interest is in your game type first. Maybe be in a location or audience you did not expect.
people abusing VPN to buy cheaper in Brazil?
Some can do that, as a brazilian, I have a friend that uses VPN to buy games as Argentina or Turkey, because it’s even cheaper.
But I don’t think it’s a big problem, i have only one friend that do that. First of all, steam doesn’t allow this, and there’s always a chance of being caught and being banned. For me, the risk is high enough for me not even trying.
But you all can’t even imagine how it helps when the prices aren’t just direct conversion. A $10 dollar game isn’t just a R$50,00 game, even if R$ 50,00 is the conversion for $10, but in our daily life, it has a lot more value.
I highly recommend to study the market and adapt the prices here, because not only we want to buy nice games, but brazilians have a nice community in general, when we love some game, we LOVE IT.
Just a VPN isn’t enough most of the time, you would need a credit card / virtual card with matching country code.
Possible but not that easy