Steam: New Pricing Needed For Argentina and Turkey by November 20th
The Steam store in Argentina and Turkey will start using USD, along with new regional prices for LATAM + MENA regions
I suspect piracy will become increasingly popular in these countries
At first when I saw the title, I thought this was done to stop people who VPN swap stores. The article however paints a different picture: Developers do not want Lira or Pesos since they are too unstable. Doesn't make sense to price a game at X Argentine Peso if next month X is now 30% less valuable. If you have too much inflation, no one wants your currency. Even the Argentine government or presidential candidates said something along the lines of wanting to swap to the USD too.
There's a running candidate that said that, but that's the same candidate that said so many crazy shit and lies. So, you can take it with a grain of salt. Even if that candidate won the upcoming elections, I hope that dissolving Argentina's central bank is not going to happen because of many reasons, but also because the country has a parliament... They shouldn't allow it.
Which wouldn't help much, because then they would depend on the dollar, the properties of which are developed for the US economy, not Argentina's. But for steam? Whatever, charge in dollars, it's easier.
Trust me it’s better than depending on the peso
turkish here, piracy is already a big thing for any kind of media/games here, but steam almost ended piracy for gaming. i've not pirated a game since like 4 years, but i suspect i'll go back to it after this change, i'd like to support the devs but i just can't afford it,sorry.
Same. I guess we will both install the game and also listen some cool music 😄
The prices are still regionalised, they’re just in USD/Euro instead of the equivalent local currency
same, I can no longer buy a game from steam at this point.
As someone from a developing country, I'm painfully aware of how most big publishers choose to ignore recommended prices and just go with a straight USD conversion most of the time so I can only hope this doesn't screw them even further.
I really wish it was viable for Valve to enforce a ceiling on suggested prices or something along those lines, it's about the only way I see that ever changing. Well, that, or everyone just becoming a full-time sailor, I suppose!
As a Turkish person this fucking sucks. I was a pirate anyway but guess I will never get to buy games
Forgive my ignorance, but what does it do to your experience practically speaking? Are the prices going up? Is it difficult to purchase things in USD because of having to convert currency?
The game prices are scaled to our "purchasing power" to some extent before the change, meaning they're still expensive but steam is making the games more affordable for us to some extent, the change to USD means the scaling is not up to steam, there is recommended prices and if companies abide to those some games might even get cheaper but big studios tend to not do that meaning we almost get games at the price of a cheaper gaming PC before our economy went to shit.
I hope they don't expect people to actually pay in usd and instead offer the conversion themselves. Because I can't imagine people maintaining usd credit cards just to purchase games from steam.
Otherwise, this could be a positive change as publishers can now set prices without the "what if the currency loses half its value tomorrow" insurance margin.
Edit: steamdb has a chart of the new regional pricing. It's 50% higher than the current one for tl and 150% higher for peso.
You can purchase in foreign currency with any international card, there's a bit of a fee though.
I mean... If the currency is that unstable... I would expect people doing that and having accounts with dollars or euros, saving money in a currency that moves more than a rollercoaster it's not great.
They have savings accounts in dollars or pinned to the dollar, not spending accounts. But looking it up it seems tl credit cards can pay in usd + maybe a conversion fee so I guess it wouldn't be such a deal breaker
Please login to Steamworks to add your USD pricing for your game(s) in the new LATAM-USD and MENA-USD pricing section of the Price Management Tool before November 20th, 2023. If you do not add a USD price to these columns for your game before November 20th, we will default to the standard USD pricing you already have in Steamworks.
Los precios de steam se están por ir a la recontra mierda.
La concha de la lora
Massa la puta que te remil pario
It's understandable why they did this, but now on all those countries game piracy will start anew, people won't buy legally if they can't afford it
The prices are still regionalised, they're just in USD instead of the equivalent local currency
Wow fuck them
6000 is the cost of a aaa game on sale = 5 usd, 80 dollars is almost half of a salary, no more original games I guess
whats steam to do? adjust the price every week?
Yeah idk why people are salt at steam. It should be fuck my government for not being able to run a economy and currency.
We are implementing this with two new pricing regions: LATAM-USD (which includes Argentina) and MENA-USD (which includes Turkey)
The prices will be denominated in USD. But unique to the region. Unless the developer is lazy and doesn't set a price for the newly created regions.
Not Steam's fault. They got fucked by the EU for having regional pricing.
Yk I've always wodnered what starting a charity to donate computers to countries with the worst steam pricing would do for piracy
Expecting Colombia, Peru, Chile and South Africa to be next on the pumping
This doesn't necessarily increase prices, if anything it makes it easier for publishers to offer games in these regions.
Welp back to the seas 🏴☠️
Meh idk. Heard everyone say piracy was going to increase after Netflix increased its prices. Well guess what, it may have a little (but I quite doubt it), but clearly not enough as it’s doing it again. They know what they’re doing.
This isn't a small increase in price, not for the Turkish. They're already struggling to get by.
Relatively speaking, games already were practically free in those countries to begin with, so it's not like piracy would make a difference to the vendors.
You have completely misunderstood the premise of regional pricing. Games were "practically free" in these countries because the average income is much lower than in e.g the US or Western Europe. The augmentation in pricing means that many Turks and Argentinians can no longer afford AAA games.
I was involved with an Indie game that was priced at roughly $15. It literally sold for 10 cents in those regions with Steam's recommended pricing, mainly due to the accelerating inflation, and within hours of release, 20% of the sales came from these regions because of people abusing VPN. The pricing was quickly adjusted before that percentage could grow any larger.
When people can just get a freshly released game at a 99.5% discount, you might as well not sell the game at all in those regions.
May all regional pricing end. I do not want to subsidize development costs for third world nations.
I suspect you'll gladly accept their seriously undercharged labor though
I'd rather force companies to not use third world labor so they stop suppressing our salaries and pushing down investment in first world labor productivity.
Do you really think they're going to make more revenue by making the pricing more than they're willing/able to pay?
Because if publishers did, they wouldn't offer regional pricing.
Wow. That's definitely a take.
I'm sure you'll be pleased to hear that you aren't subsidizing anything. Lower regional pricing in developing nations has absolutely no effect on the price in developing nations for games. There is no subsidizing because there aren't any costs to subsidize.
there aren’t any costs to subsidize.
Literally the entire development cost. Games don't appear for free. They are developed with the money you pay.
Regional pricing is basically saying that for some reason video games should cost more because you have more money to spend on them.
That's just asinine. Every other industry that tries it gets widely criticized for it. If you want to get more money out of people with more money, give them more stuff. Don't arbitrarily decide something costs more in one country than it doesn't another even though the distribution costs are identical and the development costs are identical between them.
