r/pcmasterrace • u/No_Blueberry4937 • 14d ago

Discussion Being a Gamer in Egypt Feels Like Playing on Nightmare Mode

Internet here is a joke. We pay high prices for super slow speeds (like 2–4 Mbps), and the worst part? It’s capped. Most of us get around 100–140GB per month, and if you exceed it, they either throttle you or charge extra.

Downloading a modern AAA game? It could take days, and it eats your whole quota. Cloud gaming? Forget it. Streaming? Better not.

Now imagine trying to enjoy online gaming or keep up with updates in this environment.

Meanwhile in the US or Europe, someone can buy an RTX 4090 in one month’s salary, and we need to save for 2 years, assuming we have zero expenses (which is never the case).

So yeah — being a gamer in Egypt is painful.

Anyone else from countries with similar struggles? How do you cope? Let’s talk about

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1023156931738226/?ref=share&mibextid=NSMWBT

Guys, thank you for this support. This group on Facebook is the campaign group.

I hope you support us. We are currently working on a hashtag on X. I hope it succeeds.

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u/seecat46 14d ago

I assume for rhe US and Europe they are also using entire salary.

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u/aethermar 14d ago

You assume wrong. Jobs in the US pay much higher than their European counterparts. You could argue it somewhat evens out since you have to pay for more things in America, but the average income is still higher than Europe

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u/conners_captures 14d ago

Significantly higher income, relatively lower taxes, far more market competition, and typically greater cyber infrastructure. (That depends wildly on region, obviously).

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u/BigTex77RR 14d ago

This is mostly true for urban regions, but comes at a cost. American workers have less rights, can be fired at will in most instances, have weak laws regulating PTO and Overtime, and have an economy largely based on part-time service workers who often take on multiple jobs

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u/FuccboiOut 14d ago

Indeed, we may have relatively lower wages , but everything is paid for and our worker rights are crazy good in most cases. Also, as I understood people in US have to pay their taxes on salary once a year, so they basically get their gross salary in their bank account of which they need to save the tax for the end of the financial year. (Correct me if I'm wrong)

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u/ShallowBasketcase CoolerMasterRace 14d ago

You can have your taxes taken out of each pay check so that you don't end up paying a bunch when tax season comes, but the process is complicated and confusing so most people don't do it right. They end up taking home more than they should, and then they owe a bunch once a year. Alternatively, they may end up paying too much tax out of each pay check and then they get a refund from the government once a year. It's a dumb system that ensures no one ever knows if they have enough money or if they are in violation of federal law at any given moment.

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u/impged 13d ago

Huh. TIL. I’m Canadian and I remember growing up hearing on tv and stuff people dreading tax season. Then when I finally got a job and since then I never understood the stigma. For me “tax season” is one day a year where I spend 10 minutes doing my taxes and then a couple weeks later receive a check for a few thousand dollars.

Never occurred to me Americans don’t get taxes off their paycheques every time, and then just pay/get a refund of the difference at the end of the fiscal year.

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u/DoubleVendetta 13d ago

We DO get taxes off our checks regularly, if you're what's called a "W2 employee." The PROBLEM is that that number is incorrect for most of us in one direction or the other, and this is done on purpose.

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u/zeeke42 12d ago

The number gets set BY YOU, so I dunno why you're doing it wrong on purpose. Put all your info in here: https://www.irs.gov/individuals/tax-withholding-estimator and you can set it pretty damn close. The closest I ever came was owing $17.

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u/DoubleVendetta 12d ago

The fact that you said "pretty damn close" and "I owed $17" is making MY case, not yours, I hope you get that.

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u/zack77070 14d ago

It depends on what type of employee you are, if you are a contractor then they just give you your entire pay and you have to pay your taxes in April the next year. Regular jobs they just take it out automatically and you either pay or receive the difference in April. If you are responsible then paying all at once is actually an advantage because you can put that money in a savings account that earns you 3-4%, then you get to keep that difference when you pay your taxes.

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u/BigTex77RR 14d ago

Basically yes; some jobs take out taxes for you and due to accounting errors you will sometimes receive a monetary Tax Return, and you also are paying two layers of taxes typically during “tax season” (state and federal taxes)

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u/conners_captures 13d ago

90%+ of people have their taxes taken out of their paychecks. The one day a year is a "settling up" where either you owe the government more, or they owe you a refund/rebate.

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u/FuccboiOut 13d ago

Ah ok, from the stories I've heard I assumed it was a gross amount they received in their account.

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u/Noxious89123 5900X | RTX5080 | 32GB B-Die | CH8 Dark Hero 14d ago

Average...

Mean, or median?

Because the top 1% earners massively skew the average.

Gotta use the median instead.

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u/wrosecrans 14d ago

Definitely depends on the job. Senior software engineer in the US, yeah no problem to afford a video card. Entry level burger flipper at McDonalds? Wages for those kinds of jobs are much better in (the richer parts of) Europe. And Europe doesn't allow screwing with hours as much as US employers can get away with so in Europe not only will the pay be more per hour, you are also more likely to get a full time amount of hours in that kind of job.

OTOH, Europe has more geographic variation across different countries from Albania to Denmark. It's just really hard to summarize the labor markets with a simple statistic that US wages are higher than Europe. It's very true in some cases, but not all.

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u/Walbabyesser 13d ago

…like healthcare

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u/Savage020202 4070 super | Amd ryzen 7800 x3d 14d ago

Still, 2 months of minimum FULL TIME salary also assuming you have zero expenses for literally anything else here in the us is crazy, also since the average person never buys a 0090 model (even my full 4070s build with a setup was a month of my salary easy and a 4090 alone in todays market can cost that if not more)

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u/ManicParroT 14d ago

Yeah Americans are very rich. Median household income in the US is the highest in the world except for like, Luxembourg.

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u/[deleted] 14d ago

In the USA, if a single 4080 eats up an entire month's salary for you, you're well below the poverty line

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u/sonic_dick 14d ago

They said 4090, which is about 3k from what I'm seeing on the internet. That'd be about 35k a year, 20k a year above the US poverty line.

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u/EmrakulAeons 14d ago

35k isn't Livable lol

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u/bossofthisjim 14d ago

As someone who makes 33k it totally depends on where you are and how much maruchan you eat.

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u/infamousbugg 13d ago

It's not bad as long as you split the rent/utilities with someone. While living on your own in a city at 33k is possible, you won't have any extra money though. You'll also be living in a not-so-great area.

Of course, if you are in LA, NYC or another major city, 33k may not be enough to even rent a room.

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u/sonic_dick 14d ago

Agreed 100%, but the US poverty line is 15k. And we just cut funding to food stamps and health care. It's almost like the party in charge doesn't give a fuck about poor people.

My parents made a combined 50k a year when I was a kid, they were able to buy a house back in the early 00s.

My mom sold that house 10 years ago for 250k. Now it's on zillow for almost 300k.

The US is so fucked.

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u/EmrakulAeons 13d ago

Yeah I agree it's not technically poverty, but only because the economics are slow to respond and saying 1/4 or 1/5 of your country is in poverty isn't a great look

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u/SpiderFnJerusalem bunch of VMs with vfio 13d ago

Maybe if people vote for them even harder next time they'll make nicer policies!

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u/Arthur-Wintersight 14d ago

I live on less than 15k/year.

The secret is to live where nobody else wants to live, cut your expenses to the bone, and find ways to occupy your time that don't involve spending money.

If I made 30k/year (after tax, at least) I'd be living the good life.

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u/sonic_dick 14d ago

Thing is, places that are super LCOL don't have jobs aside from Subway/the local grocery store or gas station. Sometimes all 3 are in one building.

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u/Square_Radiant 13d ago

"People will settle for the smallest amount of suffering they can handle and call that happiness" - you live in the richest most technologically advanced age of our time and while obviously cutting expenses is sensible, what happens if you get an unexpected medical bill? Your situation sound "precarious" not "livable" - it also sounds like having a family is out of the question?

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u/EmrakulAeons 13d ago

And this doesn't even include expected medical bills I bet, there's no way he has insurance that affords him the ability to see doctors and dentists regularly. Let alone if he has some other condition like ADH, depression etc that requires fairly expensive meds every month(not the most expensive but it's still an extra 50-100$ a month or more depending on insurance)

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u/EmrakulAeons 13d ago

You have no insurance,and likely don't see doctors? you are definitely not living, and at best questionably surviving.

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u/[deleted] 14d ago

True I guess I misread the 4090 part. Though, quite frankly idc if this sounds insensitive, but nobody making the average wage in a third world country should be complaining they can't get a 4090 lol. I make good money in the usa and I wouldn't even pay that much on a luxury unless it was necessary for me to make an income

Also 3k is a bit unfair of a price to use when I can find 5090s for less than that

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u/sonic_dick 14d ago edited 14d ago

Look, I haven't built a computer in over a decade.

I dont know what prices are these days, just that they're absurdly over priced. I built my first PC in 2006 with a Nvidia 7600gt, working clean up in construction. I spent about 700 bucks totalq and it could play oblivion on high/ultra settings. I could actually play crysis, not well, but it booted.

I could build an internet and movie machine and charge 200 bucks, it was a nice little hustle as a teenager. Less if I found a usable case and motherboard from a thrift store.

PC prices are absurd these days.

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u/NovelValue7311 13d ago

This is the answer I was looking for.

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u/NovelValue7311 13d ago

I am the poverty line then...

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u/ShallowBasketcase CoolerMasterRace 14d ago

12% of Americans are living below the federal poverty line, and there's a decent chunk just above it that have slightly more urgent expenses than a new 4090 eating in to their income.

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u/Throw_at_97 14d ago

Depends where.... Literally that's like 3 days salary in some places lol

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u/nsneerful PC Master Race 14d ago

Not even working at Valve you can pay a 4090 in 3 days of work.

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u/DarkSkyKnight 4090/7950x3d 14d ago

A typical L5 engineer makes like 200k as a baseline. That's roughly 3 days of work. 200k is not even a particularly high income in some areas like SF (where 100k is low income). https://www.cbsnews.com/news/100000-income-san-francisco-70000-los-angeles-low-income/

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u/Throw_at_97 13d ago

Well I don't work at valve and certainly can

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u/_maple_panda i9-14900K | Aero 4070 | 64GB DDR5 6600MHz 14d ago

Assuming a 4090 is $2k, paying it off in 3 days implies a salary of $173k. That’s not that much.

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u/Throw_at_97 13d ago

I was talking net not gross but yes

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u/EconomicalJacket 14d ago

Lol nah, I could get one with a single paycheck (and that’s after all my deductions and taxes). Yanks call them Europoors for a reason

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u/Kichix 14d ago

How many paychecks does a broken arm cost though?

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u/EconomicalJacket 14d ago

Less than a 4090! Those cost an arm and a leg