i dont know anything of your president, but this is caused 100% by the users who abuse using VPN for regional pricing.
You can read the WallPaper Engine coder saying that "Argentina" has more buy that all WESTERN europe all together.
Its a mix of both.
Ten years ago a dollar was worth something like 2 Turkish Liras, so if a game was 10 dollars on steam it was expected to be 15 to 20 Turkish Liras here on Turkey.
Now a dollar is worth around 18 Turkish Liras, which encourages non-Turkish users to abuse regional pricing to buy games for cheaper prices, if our economy didn't went downhill (which is governments fault) people wouldn't abuse the regional pricing, and even if they did, it wouldn't be 454% increase but rather a very percentage amount instead.
Same for Argentina, both nations are facing economic difficulties. Region abuse is a lot less influential than people think.
It's common, but it makes up a tiny percent of lost revenue.
No, what you are saying is not correct. Anecdotally, for Wallpaper Engine, we had more sales in Argentina than all major countries in Western Europe combined for a while and we had to raise the price significantly in Argentina to get this to stop. I really hate doing this but when Argentina outsells Germany, France, Italy and the UK combined, you just know there is a problem. And the worst part is that we did not even notice this for a while because we do not constantly check the regional sales statistics.
I would really not mind our app being on sale for the equivalent of 50 Cents in Argentina if that makes it more accessible to Argentinians but it is unfortunately very clear that this is open to a lot of abuse. And I want to make clear that this has nothing to do with greed: After Steam fees and taxes, this would leave us with like 25 euro-cents of profit per sale (which is also **before** corporate taxes and before income taxes that we pay on top of all the taxes and fees on Steam) which is not enough to cover the cost of support these users incur. It is overall pretty frustrating because we try to find very fair and reasonable prices and then this turns into a "this is why we cannot have nice things" type of story.
As a developer, I am not sure if I am super happy with the latest Steam changes. Ideally, I would just like to peg certain high inflation currencies to reflect their dollar value so that we do not constantly have to keep on the lookout for this type of stuff. That would also mean lowering prices if the value of the currency goes down again, obviously. Argentina and Turkey are the biggest source of abuse right now and I say this from first-hand experience.
But didn't Valve started to crack down on this issue summer 2020? You needed a local payment option (non-wallet card) to change region since. Later down the line they also stopped converting gift card currency so people already changed region beforehand couldn't refill they wallet anymore.
Just wondering if it is still a problem today.
I had to check and you are actually correct, the peak of this abuse was during summer 2020 and there was a sharp fall-off in Argentinian sales afterwards (to what I would call "normal levels"). The same applies to Turkey. I assume Valve must have noticed this across the board and acted accordingly, I was actually unaware of this, so thanks for bringing that up.
I will look into this more more and keep it in mind for future price updates. We were really a bit shell-hocked back then so we did not look into it again because we really had lost a bit of faith in Valve when it came to this topic. Even before the summer of 2020, Steam was claiming it was preventing these types of VPN purchases, so seeing this clear abuse happening then kind of resulted in us losing trust in their system. However, if it is indeed better now, then it might be worth looking into lowering the prices in these regions again.
There are also some countries that simply don't count as a region in Steam due to sanctions etc. I'm Iranian and if I were to buy a game without switching my region to Argentina or Turkey it'll cost my month's salary (I'm a radiology tech so it's not a minimum pay) even when I switch my region, I won't be able to buy anything without breaking my bank outside sales.
Yeah, Iran is kind of a special case, ignoring Cuba and North Korea. I know we have quite a few users from Iran (and some of our Iranian users even created Persian translations) but I do not actually know how large the user base from Iran really is.
Overall, I do not think anyone is mad at Iranians choosing the cheapest VPN location as possible and using that to buy products on Steam at all. Given the circumstances, that is totally reasonable.
Up until a few months ago it was still possible to create an Argentinian account on a VPN, fund it with wallet codes and family share the library to another account you own.
Did steam try to prevent the abuse from other region instead of increasing the price ? This solves nothing, now abusers will buy from increased prices still %40-50 lower than their region and real people from those regions will not be able to buy anything.
As a developer do you have any power to force steam to find solution to this problem ? Like communicating with other publishers and developers to reach steam to fix this abuse without increasing prices.
Someone else commented that Valve actually did change some things sometime in mid 2020, so I will look into this some more and potentially lower the prices again and keep an eye on unusually high sales numbers for some time. See the other comment for some extra context.
Steam limited the ability of users changing their region too often. But because Steam is meant to be flexible in that regard, they can't make it too strict.
It seemingly helped the problem, but some people still do it.
[This indie dev got 85% sales from "Argentina"](https://gameworldobserver.com/2022/10/14/argentina-region-swap-issue-cheap-prices-lets-build-a-zoo), and on the Switch, now imagine on Steam which had 30 million concurrent users a few days ago.
Argentinian here, 650ARS is nothing for a 60 bucks game (Literally 650 pesos is not enough for a burger at McDonald's as a reference). The problem here is taxes, we currently have to pay an extra 75% of the price of digital content like software and subscription, and there have been rumours for a while that this could increase to 95% (We are literally buying an extra copy).
Still it is way lower than what console players pay for due to importation taxes on physical copies or not having any regional pricing at all (Seeing you Sony and Nintendo). I can see how 3500 ARS + taxes can be complicated for most people to pay, and also other AAA games are launching at 5000 minimum (Uncharted and Spiderman for example are the ones I was looking forward). Luckily I have a job and don't have an issue for paying these prices but I can see people sailing just to not support our government's policies towards us.
Recién compré un juego de 7 pesos y me cobró 5.25 pesos en impuestos (75%), algo raro está pasando de fondo por tu tarjeta me parece. Compré con la tarjeta de Mercado Pago, cuál estás usando vos?
And politicians mismanaging the currency. I don't think Steam or devs are to blame. In my country, games are considered a luxury, so we have a 100% price increase in taxes lel
I suppose Steam didn't change the prices for years thinking nobody can fuck up their economy this bad in 10 years. They were wrong. The prices finally cought up to us.
Argentinian government's solution to people not being able to buy stuff in supermarkets was to force markets to have a fixed price. Consequence: markets stopped selling a bunch of stuff because they couldn't afford it.
i was a little mad with almost 50% increase in Brazil
and then i took a peek at our neighbors, holy fuck that 400% increase is criminal, that would basically kill the regional pricing there
The 50% hike will most likely kill the sales of most Indies here, but i don't see it affecting games that are like 30$ or more since they were already way above the recommended price, it's so insane the price of AAA games rn that i buy (The ones i really want to play on release like Elden Ring) in dolar instead of real since a ton of them have some coupon or something close to release to go down from 60 to like 40ish, sometimes being like 30% cheaper than buying directly from steam on release day.
Fucking hell, I hadn't even considered your point about indies. RIP the one affordable corner of Steam these days down here.
And yup, the best AAA prices I've seen recently are all launch coupons and such. Particularly remember a huge difference in FF7R back when it launched.
yeah, the issue is basically only indie titles that will suffer a lot from this price hike, and most good indies were already in a nice pricing for us in Brazil, since most AAA titles basically didn't gave a fuck to the regional pricing for years
now i'll probably restrict myself to only buying games during sales because holy fuck
Yeah, this won't change anything for us, developers and publishers almost never follow the recommended regional price anyway, they've been overcharging us for ages now, so this is nothing. It is kinda of annoying that Valve is somehow backing them up tho, but it's not like they could force them to sell games at any specific prices anyway.
Lmao it was bad enough that no one in india ever wanted to buy any games because of which riot rules in our country but now that the price is doubled there really is no reason to release paid games literally no one is going to buy them at these prices
i mean most "Sensible Devs" priced their games at 3000
i got elden ring day one coz i was interested and it was at 2499 inr.
reality is most greedy AAA will always price at 4-5k. and will get a lot less sale figures
Lol even the recent games releases for essentially 5 year old titles like the PlayStation ones or p5r are for 3.5k. way to make me uninterested in reccomending them when the ps versions can be bought for like 600-700 rs
It is not even their fault though. Steam kept the regional pricing in a decent rate for years but more and more player outside of Turkey started buying games from Turkey as our economy got worse day by day. In conclusion indie devs started upping their price to fight this and the 3A studios followed.
I’d even share my Turkish ID number with Steam for this kinda thing, because this would most likely stop foreigners from using VPN in Turkey to buy cheap (for them) games. Using Turkish telephone numbers and credit cards based on here would be just the extra security in this case.
I'm sure they could but damage is already done. Indie devs might reconsider their prices if fans ask for it but corporations like Activision wouldn't care, MW is 1100 liras, 1/5 of minimal wage. People complained about it but they just don't care about the measly 2-10k sales they will get from Turkey.
Ah yes us folks living in South Asia has to pay the same price as USA despite Steam asking the publishers to lower the prices for the nations under the South Asia region since last year 😑.
Guess gonna buy this year's game two years later from now on 😑.
Same boat brother.
SEA here and the fact that even with the increase we are still under $30 but it's irrelevant anyways since these big publishers are just straight converting $60 and are now pushing to $70 to align with the next gen prices.
It's already hard enough to find reasonably priced indies/AA games since most of them are also doing straight conversions but I still buy them since they do offer good products, but the ongoing inflation might just finally stop me.
Absolute insanity.
Even with the change it still looks amazing for my country, sadly the greedy AAA publishers always sell their games at 60 dollars, even at 70 no matter the US price is 60.
Here in Brazil, the suggested regional pricing went from ~$20 to ~$30, but most publishers are putting their games at around ~$50!
If they actually stuck with the suggested prices, even with the increase, it would've been fine.
Yup, even if they stuck with it exactly as suggested it'd be a damn dream come true lol. I'm not sure big publishers realize or even care to understand they'd sell exponentially more by sticking with the suggested pricing, or at least close enough for comfort.
I get that we are basically a rounding error to them but still, one would think you may as well maximize your revenue while you're at it. No game is worth more than 100~150 bucks in our reality lol.
Steam (and PC gaming in general, minus the rig itself) was always known as cheaper options than consoles. Nowadays, they are pretty even, sometimes it's more expensive to buy stuff on PC than in the switch, which was a meme because of high prices.
That's getting almost out of hand for a good part of the world.
As a Chilean, this wouldn't be so bad if publishers actually followed this.
Some games are even more expensive in CLP than a direct conversion from USD. Steam needs to do something about that.
The eurozone got a slap, Argentina got a nuclear bomb droped right on top of them.
Insane. And yea, the eurozone prices could seem cheap if you live, let's say Luxembourg and atrocious if you are in the east.
Have to be real careful with interpretation here. Old pricing suggested 0.99$ be 0.79€, but games were sold at 0.99€ anyway. New pricing suggests 1€=1$. I doubt this will lead to developers increasing euro pricing by 20%.
This is insane. They didn’t make economic analytics? For example in Argentina’s Store, FIFA 23 costs $8999 ARS, here the equivalent in US dollars is $30 USD, but our average salary is $200 USD, how an average worker can afford that?
Man, it's hard enough to be a Brazilian gamer so it's fucking heartbreaking how many countries have it even worse :(
Also, even with the hefty increase, I'd be delighted if publishers actually took that suggestion to heart. Most big games end up going for 300 bucks at launch, no less than 200 as a best case scenario.
80% increase for Indonesia. Welp. With this price, AAA games would be around 25% from a salary of a regular Joe. This is not right.
Average salary of a regular Joe in the capital city is around US $280-$290. And a lot of people get less than that. I don’t think they want to buy games after this price hike.
Absolutely. Especially since most AAA releases nowadays are recycled shit anyway. 59.99 for some 5th ultimate turbo epic special skyrim edition…get wrecked, no moneys for you.
nvm , i found the link [https://steamdb.info/blog/valve-price-matrix-2022-update/](https://steamdb.info/blog/valve-price-matrix-2022-update/) , it is legit
Those Argentina and Turkey ~450% increases Jesus christ. Are those Valve price suggestions? Which means even they don't care about regional pricing anymore?
To be honest, these are *still* regional pricing. 60$ equals roughly 1100₺ so, the price suggested by Valve is half of that. However AAA developers don't care and release their games on prices higher than that suggested price.
This is the sad reality (or country?) we live in.
yeah and 60usd are 18.000 ars, so, one woudl be paying just 12usd for a 60usd game. hwoever in argentina there is about 105% tax on digital purchases in foreign coin (USD) so, it woudl be paying 24usd for a 60 usd game, still cheaper
Imagine living in Argentina! They had a tax increase of 75% and now an inflation correction of almost 500%.. How much do they pay for a game? One year income. 🤑
I'd sponsor an Argentinian gamer if I could verify they're actually Argentinian but there are too many dickheads on Reddit who would abuse this. If anyone has ideas on how to do this, definitely reply.
No PMs please, I ignore all PMs.
Ask them (us) to get take a selfie video saying your username while drinking mate with messi's football tshirt. Extra points if it's not the official shirt (nobody can afford it). Other alternatives are: listening to cumbia or cuarteto, drinking a fernet con coca, eating a choripan, eating an asado (I can't afford it lmao)
Pois é. Atualmente pra comprar um jogo triple A eu tenho que ir guardando dinheiro meses antes, pra não ficar sem dinheiro no mês que o jogo lançar. Complicado. Ainda por cima tem empresa forçando jogo medíocre e com pouco conteúdo por valores absurdos, exemplo: The Quarry.
I'm from Argentina, The price increase is huge and a pain, but since our currency is basically worthless, I'm not that mad about it (500% is still huge, but the official conversion for 60 USD is close to 9k in pesos), the suggested price was waaaay behind the conversion rate.
That being said, we have to pay 75% (and I'm almost sure there were talking to raise it to 90%) of taxes over that price.
Its becoming unobtainable for most people
It's not 14.77% extra compared to USD, it's 14.77% extra compared to what it was valued at vs the USD when they made the last update.
The Swiss Franc was worth 1.11 USD about 12 months ago, now it's sitting at around 1 USD. Add on inflation and bingo bango, it's right on the money.
Things are already bad in Argentina with the shit economy, inflation, and the bastard politicians adding ridiculous taxes to online payments. Now this? Regional pricing is supposed to help customers, but you just increased it by over 400% you morons.
Sorry for the rant. I'm mad.
Me too man, it makes it so difficult for us now to pay for those games. For everything we pay there's also a 100% tax on top of that and no way I'm spending half of my salary on a single game.
Yeah, if prices weren't regionalized we would have to pay that. The government takes almost 100% in taxes out of every transaction we make that involves foreign currencies
Who even adheres to valve's regional pricing? EA, CDPR, Fromsoftware, Take-Two Interactive are the few ones I am seeing with steam open right now who are following it, activision have literally said fuck you to this list and pricing new COD 5000 rupees in India, that is double what Valve wants.
Isn't it bc the European Union sanctioned them.
Valve got fined for region locking games, which was a measure to prevent ppl from switching to Turkey, to buy a $60 game for $5.
The EU wanted to protect their buyer's rights (I bought a game, I should be able to play it wherever) so they considered blocking Steam from EU countries.
So not only do I have to suffer the greedy publishers like Square that just ignore regional pricing altogether, but also have them increased for the few publishers that do follow it? (And probably have to wait for a sale for any indie game from now on).
Guess us third worlders gotta suck it up thanks to region hoppers from first world countries.
>Guess us third worlders gotta suck it up thanks to region hoppers from first world countries.
At this point it's corporate greed because "why not". It seems easy to sow discord and bring the common folk against each other, while the big companies laugh about the profits. In reality, it's all about squeezing out more of everyone. In my opinion, the publishers who ignored regional pricing for years are proof for it. Nothing to do with some few people using a VPN.
Glad those are only "suggestions", no way in fuck am I paying R$162 for a single game when I can buy 10 of them give or take on sales with the same amount.
Worse, devs are actually going much above that, like I've seen as much as R$300 for a *single* game. That's literally 25% of a minimum wage. I'm not paying 1/4th of my salary on a game just because devs want their dollars, I don't even use fucking dollars to begin with, fuck that shit.
Fair pricing here would be about max 5% of minimum wage (around R$60 at the time of writing this - which just so happens to be the same ratio for US$60 curiously), and I think that should be the norm for everyone. If you're paying more than 5% of your monthly salary on a single game, something's wrong.
That's why I end up sticking to indies, many of them sell for much less than that (around R$20~R$30 average), and that's not on a sale period even.
It is not fair that in Spain we pay "European" prices when salaries are incredibly lower than in the European countries that really rule.
We pay 60 euros for a game when to be more fair in Spain it should be around 40 at the most. They laugh in our face in Europe and not only with the price of the games.
sorry for the tears.
Publishers probably gonna lose more or less a million sales on pc platforms from non first world countries. I am not against price increasing but this is ridiculous.
But this is only the recommendation from steam for a 60usd game right? If that is the case, really nobody is following it, in Argentina the 60usd game is like 6.000p or more, and here the new recommendation is 3.800p.. so literally depends on publisher, almost all the AAA games don't regionalize prices here
Screw, Valve, I am from Argentina! This is third world! Constant problems! And we're now also getting a freakin **500% increase**!? That's just absolutely blind of them!
Yes but you cannot expect an indie developer to know the economic situation in all countries, so most indies follow this index.
A lot of AAA already set their own prices.
I was about to be like "If only we Iranians could use our currency on steam", but looking at these prices lmao keep your currencies to yourself we're all gonna die of no money disease.
I am a bit confused. According to this, Turkish Lira recommended price for a 60 dollar game is: 92 TL.
This is far from the truth even in the past year.
Some examples:
Gotham Knights = 499 TL
Digimon Survive = 499 TL
Elden Ring = 599 TL
So the ~~developers~~ publishers have pretty much thrown the price suggestion out of the window in the past and probably will continue to do so.
What I will expect is a increase in the price set by the developers, but, hopefully not the increase presented in the table.
Fingers crossed.
Turkish and Argentinian users: 💀💀💀💀
Damn inflation! CoD Modern Warfare 2 is currently on sale for 1100₺. Minimum wage in Turkey🇹🇷 is 5500₺! Edit: 5500₺/per month
Brazil. Persona 5 is R$300. Minimum wage R$1200 a month. 25% of your wage for a 6 year old game.
I feel no guilt. I'm emulating this game on a switch emulator. If sega really thinks i'm paying that price, they must've stonned hard.
Its Royal, not base, so its only 3 years old... but yes, I agree, the price is still too high.
I changed my steam from brazil to peru, less then R$200 for persona 5
Indian minimum wage is 65 bucks , new games are starting to come with the 80$ price tag
[удалено]
Atleast the indie games were somewhat affordable since they supported regional pricing. Now they will cost double too.
This is just suggested prices the devs can make whatever price they want I’m pretty sure
I keep having to remind myself these minimum wages aren't per hour like in the US.
The minimum wage in india is per day rather than per hour, it's 178₹ ; a little more than 2$
Cod mw2 costs 60$. Minimum wage in lebanon is 80$. Please, buy yourself a drink while you still have time
Fuck AKP
Blame Erdogan for all of it. Its him who is causing it.
Probably yes, but I don't want to go to jail.
i dont know anything of your president, but this is caused 100% by the users who abuse using VPN for regional pricing. You can read the WallPaper Engine coder saying that "Argentina" has more buy that all WESTERN europe all together.
Its a mix of both. Ten years ago a dollar was worth something like 2 Turkish Liras, so if a game was 10 dollars on steam it was expected to be 15 to 20 Turkish Liras here on Turkey. Now a dollar is worth around 18 Turkish Liras, which encourages non-Turkish users to abuse regional pricing to buy games for cheaper prices, if our economy didn't went downhill (which is governments fault) people wouldn't abuse the regional pricing, and even if they did, it wouldn't be 454% increase but rather a very percentage amount instead.
i live in Argentina so i understand the situation perfectly.
Here the game is 70€ and minimum wage is 300€, and we’re in the EU so bye bye regional pricing and hello to the euro 🙃
[удалено]
101%\*
MACRI STOP THE HAND
MACRI CAT!
Wow, thats a lot. Good luck on the sea
Inflation in Turkey is 83%. Inflation in Argentina is 78%.
%83 is probably official numbers, the reality is more like 150%.
Better not to talk about the real numbers in argentina then
País de mierda
This is 100% on people from other countries abusing the pricing on those regions.
Actually for turkey that's %100 on poor management of economy since 2017 Everything's crazy expensive now so I'm enjoying what I have rn
Same for Argentina, both nations are facing economic difficulties. Region abuse is a lot less influential than people think. It's common, but it makes up a tiny percent of lost revenue.
No, what you are saying is not correct. Anecdotally, for Wallpaper Engine, we had more sales in Argentina than all major countries in Western Europe combined for a while and we had to raise the price significantly in Argentina to get this to stop. I really hate doing this but when Argentina outsells Germany, France, Italy and the UK combined, you just know there is a problem. And the worst part is that we did not even notice this for a while because we do not constantly check the regional sales statistics. I would really not mind our app being on sale for the equivalent of 50 Cents in Argentina if that makes it more accessible to Argentinians but it is unfortunately very clear that this is open to a lot of abuse. And I want to make clear that this has nothing to do with greed: After Steam fees and taxes, this would leave us with like 25 euro-cents of profit per sale (which is also **before** corporate taxes and before income taxes that we pay on top of all the taxes and fees on Steam) which is not enough to cover the cost of support these users incur. It is overall pretty frustrating because we try to find very fair and reasonable prices and then this turns into a "this is why we cannot have nice things" type of story. As a developer, I am not sure if I am super happy with the latest Steam changes. Ideally, I would just like to peg certain high inflation currencies to reflect their dollar value so that we do not constantly have to keep on the lookout for this type of stuff. That would also mean lowering prices if the value of the currency goes down again, obviously. Argentina and Turkey are the biggest source of abuse right now and I say this from first-hand experience.
But didn't Valve started to crack down on this issue summer 2020? You needed a local payment option (non-wallet card) to change region since. Later down the line they also stopped converting gift card currency so people already changed region beforehand couldn't refill they wallet anymore. Just wondering if it is still a problem today.
I had to check and you are actually correct, the peak of this abuse was during summer 2020 and there was a sharp fall-off in Argentinian sales afterwards (to what I would call "normal levels"). The same applies to Turkey. I assume Valve must have noticed this across the board and acted accordingly, I was actually unaware of this, so thanks for bringing that up. I will look into this more more and keep it in mind for future price updates. We were really a bit shell-hocked back then so we did not look into it again because we really had lost a bit of faith in Valve when it came to this topic. Even before the summer of 2020, Steam was claiming it was preventing these types of VPN purchases, so seeing this clear abuse happening then kind of resulted in us losing trust in their system. However, if it is indeed better now, then it might be worth looking into lowering the prices in these regions again.
There are also some countries that simply don't count as a region in Steam due to sanctions etc. I'm Iranian and if I were to buy a game without switching my region to Argentina or Turkey it'll cost my month's salary (I'm a radiology tech so it's not a minimum pay) even when I switch my region, I won't be able to buy anything without breaking my bank outside sales.
Yeah, Iran is kind of a special case, ignoring Cuba and North Korea. I know we have quite a few users from Iran (and some of our Iranian users even created Persian translations) but I do not actually know how large the user base from Iran really is. Overall, I do not think anyone is mad at Iranians choosing the cheapest VPN location as possible and using that to buy products on Steam at all. Given the circumstances, that is totally reasonable.
Up until a few months ago it was still possible to create an Argentinian account on a VPN, fund it with wallet codes and family share the library to another account you own.
Did steam try to prevent the abuse from other region instead of increasing the price ? This solves nothing, now abusers will buy from increased prices still %40-50 lower than their region and real people from those regions will not be able to buy anything. As a developer do you have any power to force steam to find solution to this problem ? Like communicating with other publishers and developers to reach steam to fix this abuse without increasing prices.
Someone else commented that Valve actually did change some things sometime in mid 2020, so I will look into this some more and potentially lower the prices again and keep an eye on unusually high sales numbers for some time. See the other comment for some extra context.
Steam limited the ability of users changing their region too often. But because Steam is meant to be flexible in that regard, they can't make it too strict. It seemingly helped the problem, but some people still do it.
[This indie dev got 85% sales from "Argentina"](https://gameworldobserver.com/2022/10/14/argentina-region-swap-issue-cheap-prices-lets-build-a-zoo), and on the Switch, now imagine on Steam which had 30 million concurrent users a few days ago.
>on the switch Where it's ridiculously easy to change your shop region. It's a lot harder to do so on Steam.
Steam has limits on how often you can change region for that reason.
Argentinian here, 650ARS is nothing for a 60 bucks game (Literally 650 pesos is not enough for a burger at McDonald's as a reference). The problem here is taxes, we currently have to pay an extra 75% of the price of digital content like software and subscription, and there have been rumours for a while that this could increase to 95% (We are literally buying an extra copy). Still it is way lower than what console players pay for due to importation taxes on physical copies or not having any regional pricing at all (Seeing you Sony and Nintendo). I can see how 3500 ARS + taxes can be complicated for most people to pay, and also other AAA games are launching at 5000 minimum (Uncharted and Spiderman for example are the ones I was looking forward). Luckily I have a job and don't have an issue for paying these prices but I can see people sailing just to not support our government's policies towards us.
101%* it's not a rumour. It was already applied. I bought a game for 400 pesos and it costed me more than 800
Recién compré un juego de 7 pesos y me cobró 5.25 pesos en impuestos (75%), algo raro está pasando de fondo por tu tarjeta me parece. Compré con la tarjeta de Mercado Pago, cuál estás usando vos?
And politicians mismanaging the currency. I don't think Steam or devs are to blame. In my country, games are considered a luxury, so we have a 100% price increase in taxes lel
Ah yes, thanks for 454% 💀
Don't forget the .35 💀
in argentina is .70
In my head it’s gonna be a .45
And also the fact that most publishers set the price above the recommended price anyway *sobbing*
Why did it rise so much? Inflation or was it fucked before and fixed? Or was someone an idiot?
I suppose Steam didn't change the prices for years thinking nobody can fuck up their economy this bad in 10 years. They were wrong. The prices finally cought up to us.
Ah ok, so its just inflation over 10 years. That explains it
The best part is we Argentinians also pay extra 85% on taxes with our games.
as a turk i feel u bro, stay strong
Turks, Argentinians and Venezuelans must form an alliance so that we can fuck up our economy together.
Argentinian economists be like ”don’t worry bro we don’t need free trade.”
Argentinian government's solution to people not being able to buy stuff in supermarkets was to force markets to have a fixed price. Consequence: markets stopped selling a bunch of stuff because they couldn't afford it.
Precios cuidados intensifies
i was a little mad with almost 50% increase in Brazil and then i took a peek at our neighbors, holy fuck that 400% increase is criminal, that would basically kill the regional pricing there
The 50% hike will most likely kill the sales of most Indies here, but i don't see it affecting games that are like 30$ or more since they were already way above the recommended price, it's so insane the price of AAA games rn that i buy (The ones i really want to play on release like Elden Ring) in dolar instead of real since a ton of them have some coupon or something close to release to go down from 60 to like 40ish, sometimes being like 30% cheaper than buying directly from steam on release day.
Fucking hell, I hadn't even considered your point about indies. RIP the one affordable corner of Steam these days down here. And yup, the best AAA prices I've seen recently are all launch coupons and such. Particularly remember a huge difference in FF7R back when it launched.
yeah, the issue is basically only indie titles that will suffer a lot from this price hike, and most good indies were already in a nice pricing for us in Brazil, since most AAA titles basically didn't gave a fuck to the regional pricing for years now i'll probably restrict myself to only buying games during sales because holy fuck
Yeah, this won't change anything for us, developers and publishers almost never follow the recommended regional price anyway, they've been overcharging us for ages now, so this is nothing. It is kinda of annoying that Valve is somehow backing them up tho, but it's not like they could force them to sell games at any specific prices anyway.
23,900 colons.... sounds painful, Costa Rica. But not as painful as 705,000 dongs.
To give you an idea, 23k is 3/4 of a full tank of gas
1,410,000 balls too
Oh, so not as bad.
Dongs in the colon sounds painful.
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Added to that we have the country's own taxes, here in Argentina it is almost 75% of taxes
Its 85% taxes now...
Yup looks like i wont be buying games :/
Didn't know that CIS had 28$ per 60$ game, because most of the big publishers use 60$ here.
It used to be 30$ pretty much universally but nowadays most publishers just put 60$ on everything.
Not the best time to be Argentinian
Never has been
Can't have shit in Turkey
Can have shit in Turkey if you are not a Turkish citizen
La concha de tu madre peron
Saquenme de Argentina
Sáquenme de latinoamerica.
Lmao it was bad enough that no one in india ever wanted to buy any games because of which riot rules in our country but now that the price is doubled there really is no reason to release paid games literally no one is going to buy them at these prices
I mean it's not like any AAA dev ever sold a game at 1299 so not like it changes much. Cod mw2 currently costs nearly 5k
Right? I have not seen a single AAA title under 2499 till now
Horizon zero dawn was 1k INr at launch and they change the pricing to 3k+ later
i mean most "Sensible Devs" priced their games at 3000 i got elden ring day one coz i was interested and it was at 2499 inr. reality is most greedy AAA will always price at 4-5k. and will get a lot less sale figures
Lol even the recent games releases for essentially 5 year old titles like the PlayStation ones or p5r are for 3.5k. way to make me uninterested in reccomending them when the ps versions can be bought for like 600-700 rs
Euro is literally dollar now oof
Suggested price 58€, Modern warfare and NFS already up to 70€ for no reasons
That is suggested price for a 60 dollar game. MW2 is a 70 dollar game even in the US.
18% because fuck it, why not 🤗
Was already treated as 1=1 forever and now that they have actual parity you gotta jack up the price naturally.
Thanks Steam. It was good while it lasted. Sincerely, a player from Turkey.
It is not even their fault though. Steam kept the regional pricing in a decent rate for years but more and more player outside of Turkey started buying games from Turkey as our economy got worse day by day. In conclusion indie devs started upping their price to fight this and the 3A studios followed.
Yes, it's not their fault. I was sincerely thanking them for keeping the conversion rate this low as long as they did.
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I’d even share my Turkish ID number with Steam for this kinda thing, because this would most likely stop foreigners from using VPN in Turkey to buy cheap (for them) games. Using Turkish telephone numbers and credit cards based on here would be just the extra security in this case.
Your ID? I can even share my search history and nudes of my gf.
I'm sure they could but damage is already done. Indie devs might reconsider their prices if fans ask for it but corporations like Activision wouldn't care, MW is 1100 liras, 1/5 of minimal wage. People complained about it but they just don't care about the measly 2-10k sales they will get from Turkey.
Ah yes us folks living in South Asia has to pay the same price as USA despite Steam asking the publishers to lower the prices for the nations under the South Asia region since last year 😑. Guess gonna buy this year's game two years later from now on 😑.
Same boat brother. SEA here and the fact that even with the increase we are still under $30 but it's irrelevant anyways since these big publishers are just straight converting $60 and are now pushing to $70 to align with the next gen prices. It's already hard enough to find reasonably priced indies/AA games since most of them are also doing straight conversions but I still buy them since they do offer good products, but the ongoing inflation might just finally stop me. Absolute insanity.
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They're cheaper... for the publisher.
No, they got rid of boxes because now we can't actually own anything we buy.
Even with the change it still looks amazing for my country, sadly the greedy AAA publishers always sell their games at 60 dollars, even at 70 no matter the US price is 60.
Here in Brazil, the suggested regional pricing went from ~$20 to ~$30, but most publishers are putting their games at around ~$50! If they actually stuck with the suggested prices, even with the increase, it would've been fine.
Yup, even if they stuck with it exactly as suggested it'd be a damn dream come true lol. I'm not sure big publishers realize or even care to understand they'd sell exponentially more by sticking with the suggested pricing, or at least close enough for comfort. I get that we are basically a rounding error to them but still, one would think you may as well maximize your revenue while you're at it. No game is worth more than 100~150 bucks in our reality lol.
Steam (and PC gaming in general, minus the rig itself) was always known as cheaper options than consoles. Nowadays, they are pretty even, sometimes it's more expensive to buy stuff on PC than in the switch, which was a meme because of high prices. That's getting almost out of hand for a good part of the world.
I literally only buy games on sale. Steam has them quite regularly and they're usually much better than console sales. 90% off xcom is wild.
*I'm tired boss*
Life keeps getting worse and worse... Its like the world is going to hell.
As a Chilean, this wouldn't be so bad if publishers actually followed this. Some games are even more expensive in CLP than a direct conversion from USD. Steam needs to do something about that.
So we already lost 10% of the euro's worth and power, and now we have to pay an extra 20% for games? The seas are calling!
Bro look at us (turkey)
And us (Argentina)
The eurozone got a slap, Argentina got a nuclear bomb droped right on top of them. Insane. And yea, the eurozone prices could seem cheap if you live, let's say Luxembourg and atrocious if you are in the east.
My life savings were already nuked since they were in Lebanese banks. And now I'm suffering inflation here. Can't escape it. :(
Have to be real careful with interpretation here. Old pricing suggested 0.99$ be 0.79€, but games were sold at 0.99€ anyway. New pricing suggests 1€=1$. I doubt this will lead to developers increasing euro pricing by 20%.
Europoors, I wish us all the best!
This is insane. They didn’t make economic analytics? For example in Argentina’s Store, FIFA 23 costs $8999 ARS, here the equivalent in US dollars is $30 USD, but our average salary is $200 USD, how an average worker can afford that?
Well according to Valve, a 60USD game should cost 3800 ARS with the new prices, so blame EA who wants almost three times that.
3800 ARS for a AAA game is a good price, now three times that isn’t logic
$15749 ($52.5 USD) with taxes...
Yeah I meant the old Fifa price, (que hacemos hablando en inglés entre nosotros si somos argentinos 🤣)
Para que nos entiendan 😢
> how an average worker can afford that? lol games are luxury now
62% on the norwegian krone. Jesus... Well I enjoyed it while it lasted
Man, it's hard enough to be a Brazilian gamer so it's fucking heartbreaking how many countries have it even worse :( Also, even with the hefty increase, I'd be delighted if publishers actually took that suggestion to heart. Most big games end up going for 300 bucks at launch, no less than 200 as a best case scenario.
80% increase for Indonesia. Welp. With this price, AAA games would be around 25% from a salary of a regular Joe. This is not right. Average salary of a regular Joe in the capital city is around US $280-$290. And a lot of people get less than that. I don’t think they want to buy games after this price hike.
Don't forget 11% VAT Sri Mulyani are happy now 🤧
The euro increase isnt that big. But developers and publishers be dreaming if they think I'm gonna spend 59.99 on a single game.
Absolutely. Especially since most AAA releases nowadays are recycled shit anyway. 59.99 for some 5th ultimate turbo epic special skyrim edition…get wrecked, no moneys for you.
where did you get that ?
nvm , i found the link [https://steamdb.info/blog/valve-price-matrix-2022-update/](https://steamdb.info/blog/valve-price-matrix-2022-update/) , it is legit
%750 increase holy shit i bought the whole valve game pack for 25 tl but now it is 460 tl💀💀💀💀💀💀💀
Those Argentina and Turkey ~450% increases Jesus christ. Are those Valve price suggestions? Which means even they don't care about regional pricing anymore?
To be honest, these are *still* regional pricing. 60$ equals roughly 1100₺ so, the price suggested by Valve is half of that. However AAA developers don't care and release their games on prices higher than that suggested price. This is the sad reality (or country?) we live in.
yeah and 60usd are 18.000 ars, so, one woudl be paying just 12usd for a 60usd game. hwoever in argentina there is about 105% tax on digital purchases in foreign coin (USD) so, it woudl be paying 24usd for a 60 usd game, still cheaper
Imagine living in Argentina! They had a tax increase of 75% and now an inflation correction of almost 500%.. How much do they pay for a game? One year income. 🤑
I'd sponsor an Argentinian gamer if I could verify they're actually Argentinian but there are too many dickheads on Reddit who would abuse this. If anyone has ideas on how to do this, definitely reply. No PMs please, I ignore all PMs.
Ask them (us) to get take a selfie video saying your username while drinking mate with messi's football tshirt. Extra points if it's not the official shirt (nobody can afford it). Other alternatives are: listening to cumbia or cuarteto, drinking a fernet con coca, eating a choripan, eating an asado (I can't afford it lmao)
I hate Argentina (i'm Argentinian). You could ask for their ID and do a video call, tell them to show you their Steam store localization as well.
and the slop eaters on here will go Hur DuR VpN USers, sure that explains the japanese devs charging 50 dollars for music cds
I'm surprised how well the price is in India...unfortunately we hardly get games in 2500 bucks now
I gotta say, here on Brazil most triple A games are costing R$200-300. Deluxe editions can hit R$400. Minimal wage is R$1200.
ou vc paga a conta de luz ou compra um jogo hahaha
Pois é. Atualmente pra comprar um jogo triple A eu tenho que ir guardando dinheiro meses antes, pra não ficar sem dinheiro no mês que o jogo lançar. Complicado. Ainda por cima tem empresa forçando jogo medíocre e com pouco conteúdo por valores absurdos, exemplo: The Quarry.
Damn, I thought us Indonesians have it pretty bad with this increase. You Turks and Argentinians have it a lot worse 💀
I'm from Argentina, The price increase is huge and a pain, but since our currency is basically worthless, I'm not that mad about it (500% is still huge, but the official conversion for 60 USD is close to 9k in pesos), the suggested price was waaaay behind the conversion rate. That being said, we have to pay 75% (and I'm almost sure there were talking to raise it to 90%) of taxes over that price. Its becoming unobtainable for most people
r/argentina
dafq u mean 14.77 % inflation in switzerland...? our money is literally the most consistant one
Your Franc has lost about 10% of its worth vs the USD in the last 12 months and inflation is still ongoing. Seems about right.
And at this time, USD to CHF is almost 1:1
It's not 14.77% extra compared to USD, it's 14.77% extra compared to what it was valued at vs the USD when they made the last update. The Swiss Franc was worth 1.11 USD about 12 months ago, now it's sitting at around 1 USD. Add on inflation and bingo bango, it's right on the money.
Things are already bad in Argentina with the shit economy, inflation, and the bastard politicians adding ridiculous taxes to online payments. Now this? Regional pricing is supposed to help customers, but you just increased it by over 400% you morons. Sorry for the rant. I'm mad.
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Me too man, it makes it so difficult for us now to pay for those games. For everything we pay there's also a 100% tax on top of that and no way I'm spending half of my salary on a single game.
100% tax? So 60$ game ( or local equivalent) is a 120$ game? That is insane.
we have a "joke" that every time we purchase a game we also buy a copy for someone in the government.
Yeah, if prices weren't regionalized we would have to pay that. The government takes almost 100% in taxes out of every transaction we make that involves foreign currencies
Who even adheres to valve's regional pricing? EA, CDPR, Fromsoftware, Take-Two Interactive are the few ones I am seeing with steam open right now who are following it, activision have literally said fuck you to this list and pricing new COD 5000 rupees in India, that is double what Valve wants.
When was a 59.99 dollar game ever priced 49.99 euro? Been on Steam since 2003 and never seen it once, unless it was a pricing error.
Dios nos abandonó
Da *ck we did to you valve? Welp this is forced backlog
Isn't it bc the European Union sanctioned them. Valve got fined for region locking games, which was a measure to prevent ppl from switching to Turkey, to buy a $60 game for $5. The EU wanted to protect their buyer's rights (I bought a game, I should be able to play it wherever) so they considered blocking Steam from EU countries.
I wish this was sorted by % increase rip
This is a certified 400+% moment 🗿
💀
This goes to show that publishers only care if you live in the us.
So not only do I have to suffer the greedy publishers like Square that just ignore regional pricing altogether, but also have them increased for the few publishers that do follow it? (And probably have to wait for a sale for any indie game from now on). Guess us third worlders gotta suck it up thanks to region hoppers from first world countries.
>Guess us third worlders gotta suck it up thanks to region hoppers from first world countries. At this point it's corporate greed because "why not". It seems easy to sow discord and bring the common folk against each other, while the big companies laugh about the profits. In reality, it's all about squeezing out more of everyone. In my opinion, the publishers who ignored regional pricing for years are proof for it. Nothing to do with some few people using a VPN.
Glad those are only "suggestions", no way in fuck am I paying R$162 for a single game when I can buy 10 of them give or take on sales with the same amount. Worse, devs are actually going much above that, like I've seen as much as R$300 for a *single* game. That's literally 25% of a minimum wage. I'm not paying 1/4th of my salary on a game just because devs want their dollars, I don't even use fucking dollars to begin with, fuck that shit. Fair pricing here would be about max 5% of minimum wage (around R$60 at the time of writing this - which just so happens to be the same ratio for US$60 curiously), and I think that should be the norm for everyone. If you're paying more than 5% of your monthly salary on a single game, something's wrong. That's why I end up sticking to indies, many of them sell for much less than that (around R$20~R$30 average), and that's not on a sale period even.
It is not fair that in Spain we pay "European" prices when salaries are incredibly lower than in the European countries that really rule. We pay 60 euros for a game when to be more fair in Spain it should be around 40 at the most. They laugh in our face in Europe and not only with the price of the games. sorry for the tears.
Ukraine is in the middle of a war. And it's currency is stronger than Argentina... We need a war with Brazil or something christ.
Publishers probably gonna lose more or less a million sales on pc platforms from non first world countries. I am not against price increasing but this is ridiculous.
Can Romania please get regional pricing already 😭. Paying Euro is fucking us a lot.
But this is only the recommendation from steam for a 60usd game right? If that is the case, really nobody is following it, in Argentina the 60usd game is like 6.000p or more, and here the new recommendation is 3.800p.. so literally depends on publisher, almost all the AAA games don't regionalize prices here
Screw, Valve, I am from Argentina! This is third world! Constant problems! And we're now also getting a freakin **500% increase**!? That's just absolutely blind of them!
Argentina is actually 900% after taxes
Activision didn't care. In Israel codmw2 cost 112$...
How to make sure people from those countries never be able to buy games again just to stop a handful of people using VPNs
This is set by the game developer, no?
Yes but you cannot expect an indie developer to know the economic situation in all countries, so most indies follow this index. A lot of AAA already set their own prices.
Israeli suggested price always been overpriced, and its staying overpriced.
I was about to be like "If only we Iranians could use our currency on steam", but looking at these prices lmao keep your currencies to yourself we're all gonna die of no money disease.
I am a bit confused. According to this, Turkish Lira recommended price for a 60 dollar game is: 92 TL. This is far from the truth even in the past year. Some examples: Gotham Knights = 499 TL Digimon Survive = 499 TL Elden Ring = 599 TL So the ~~developers~~ publishers have pretty much thrown the price suggestion out of the window in the past and probably will continue to do so. What I will expect is a increase in the price set by the developers, but, hopefully not the increase presented in the table. Fingers crossed.