Did you get affected from the price update?
That's too much for every region... People will go back to pirating if this goes on.
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I don't believe so, they will just wait for deeper discounts and buy more from grey market websites.
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Don't they use dollars or euros at grey markets? Well, i never use grey markets so i am not the expert here but as far as i remember some of the Steam's local pricing is way cheaper than most of the grey markets. It still might be the case even after this changes.
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in Turkey and Argentina prices increased 5-6 times, even 80% discounts won't change situation
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+1 this and the multy streaming platformes ,
maybe this will help epic win some gamers XD
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Not piracy. There at alternative stores selling Steam keys, though.
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100% True, i just buy games people they are cheap if they turn to be expensive i will just stop.
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Thinking hard about if there's a game I wanted to buy and it doesn't have price updated yet, hmmm.
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Steam’s regional pricing recommendations are decided by a few different things. Although exchange rates are a factor, Valve also base their regional price recommendations on consumer price indexes, and what they call “purchasing power parity” between different countries.
Because Indonesia, Russia, Turkey, India and Argentine are well-known 1st world countries with giant wages /s
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Problem to Argentina is that is well known that people uses VPN to buy games in our currency and valve did nothing to stop this... So now we get Fuc*** because of it...... Plus the 75% tax we get everytime we bought something.
Nice move Valve.. You just killed our country xD
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are you sure it was Valve and not your politicians?
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Politicians AND valve.... They already know that people is abusing VPN to change they store to ARG. They know for so long and they do nothing.
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My condolences, pal. Brazil here. People from richer countries here seem to think that Steam is the biggest invention of humanity that got rid of piracy. No, sorry.
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dont you need a valid payment method in that country? like a credit card?
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Check out all that "purchasing power" in East Europe too.
(But, eh, whatever, that's always been a thing and no-one ever mentions it.)
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Exactly,I live in Turkey and every new game is like 800/1200 tl,and monthly wage is 5000~ tl and also food electric etc is very expensive too
I think you can see how bad it is
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Do you know the Highest Minimum wage in Indonesia is only about 300 USD/month, some small businesses even pay you less than that. Yeah, try buying a game that costs the same as the cost to feed a small family for a month. :(
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The prices on the chart are NOT based on the USD conversion rate, contrary to what's stated in the Steam announcement. This better be fake news.
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Holy crap, the prices went up a lot... I will stick to sales and indie games directly on Steam and go out to Key-Stores if i want a full priced game.
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New Steam recommended regional pricing on SteamDB (convenient tables below the news text)
Also effected people can get disappointed in real time here: https://steamdb.info/pricechanges/
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Funny how it seems trash games are the fastest at updating their prices 🤔
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We can ask developer of Goblin and Coins what he is thinking :) Not saying it is a trash game, just saw it on the list and remembered that I saw developer here on SG :)
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Didn't think much of it, followed the recommendation. That said, for my game the base price is so small it doesn't really make any real difference in most regions.
And coming from an Eastern European micro-state that had a period of super inflation in the early 90s, I feel for people around the world that live in countries where an entire paycheck isn't enough for a few or even a single AAA game... but that's basically everyone outside USA/CA/EU including me... so... we're all in it together.
World has moved on, global market is falling apart quickly, tomorrow may only be worse.
edit: There might be a reason why everyone is updating the prices asap, and that's because if you raise any price in any region, you get a 28 day cooldown for sales. You have to "follow the recommendation" now to avoid skipping over some major sales later. You can always go in and fine tune some regions by lowering prices - lowering a price doesn't trigger a cooldown and can be done at any time. At least it was part of my reasoning, but I'm not smarter than any other devs so it could be the idea behind others reacting fast too.
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Double thank you! One for reading the and participation in discussions (I feel like this part of SG no less important than giveaways... at least I wouldn't have stayed here for sure without all this). And another one for a reasonable and deep answer - it is really interesting to get reply regarding the topic from the person who can see situation from both sides. I didn't know about 28 day cooldown period.
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when steam sends you an email saying we updated our pricing, you log in, and see a bunch of red flags, realizing "i can charge more!", who wouldn't raise all prices in one click? It's ironic how it's only a recommendation but essentially it's become a blazing endorsement to do so. Not that we didn't see this coming a long time ago, just that it hits hard and virtually everyone. I really want to see the sales figures in the next quarters.
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I mean, the base price is literally the same, no one is actually increasing it. It's just that world economy went to crap and regional currencies lost value compared to USD, so Valve (once again, not the first time, this used to be done 2x a year) updated their recommended exchange rate, so to speak. And mind you, these are all still way under a 1:1 compared to USD price in 90% of the regions, because it's not literal exchange for $1 but it carries over some adjustments for specific regions (meaning, cheaper in poorer regions, just not "2 years old conversion rate" cheaper anymore).
As a gamer I understand, I really do (literally can't afford to buy indies at full price, let alone AAA, even before this), but if you sell bread for 60 cents and someone comes and says, I'm from the village outside of town our pay is smaller and you sell him bread for 40 cents... and then someone else says I'm living on a farm beyond the village even, you sell him bread for 35 cents... and "stale" bread an hour before closing for 11 cents... and then 2 years later you make that "special price" 45 (instead of 40) and 40 (instead of 35) while the base price is still 60... how are you a bastard? You're still giving them a special regional price... and people still like to buy fancy $10 bread from the chain bakery across the road which doesn't even give regional price.
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+1. Although plenty of AAA games from trash publishers are already at a near 1:1 conversion ratio.
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Funny enough, 6 hours later, some publishers are actually lowering prices instead of increasing them. They aren't huge decreases though, mainly 5% max. Only hentai and asset flips are rising prices by the looks of it.
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In my region I can see only 17 entries out of 500 I checked that has lowered the price...
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Maybe you are seeing apps instead and discounts according to current sale?
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No, I saw this before the sale started. You're probably seeing less because publishers don't really want to sell in RU anymore due to current world events, not sure though.
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Maybe, I'm too lazy to check in other currencies :)
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Just to add something, I am from South Asia region. And I have never seen a game priced 60$ in USA be 20$ in South Asia region.
Just as an example, Baldur's gate 1 got regional pricing on steam in 2022.
So to clarify, even if valve didn't change regional pricing "recommendation", we all would be fucked either way. It's more like a free excuse to blame steam now after winter sale ends this year & prices increase.
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It matters a lot for indie games. Most developers with unknown publishers will mostly stick to the default prices.
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In Argentina on top of this new pricing, we're also paying another 75% due to national taxes. XD times.
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How does this work? I mean, I thought taxes were included in the store price, like it is for instance in EU. Is there like, an extra tax applied to your payment method by your bank or something?
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Yeah, exactly that. We only have 2 payment methods Visa and Mastercard, so we can't avoid the taxes.
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Wow damn. But then I guess that unlike in EU there's no added sales tax on the Steam price, meaning the displayed price is all for Steam's pocket? (and the game publisher obviously)
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The price we see on steam are without taxes, someone made an addon to see the prices with the taxes.
The sad thing is that in total we are paying more to our government (they don't even use the money wisely) than to the developers.
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I can confirm the same behavior in the US too. Regardless of digital or physical in-store purchases, the US does not require listed prices to include sales tax and it is added at the time of purchase. For instance, we have 8.1% sales tax in my city, so whenever I make a purchase at my grocery store or Steam, the shelf price may be $10, but the price we pay is $10.81.
Having said that, a few select retailers do elect to include taxes in the list price, but it is by no means a requirement.
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So for example if you are paying equivalent of 10 bucks in your currency, Steam gets 10 but your bank charges you 17.5?
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Yes, there are a lot more restrictions though, for example, if you buy stuff with your card internationally (digital or whatever) and the total that month is more than $300 dollars, then the taxes are increased to 101%.
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F for Argentina, we get the short stick fo this...because everytime we bought something in here we need to pay 75% more in taxes..so when we bought a game of 10000 we get to pay 17500 for it :(...(the minium wage for work here is like...40000)
Apart from that a lot of people Using VPN to abuse the prices in our region so a lot of developers put increased prices for their games....
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IT is...it really is...because in our country more than 50% of childs are poor.... So we are the country with more %of taxes we pay in the entire world but our economy and social values are shi*. And people vote for this goberments that steal all the money...
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The only good part regarding all this will be the abuse decrease. I'm sorry the absurd increases. 😥
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These new recommendations are absolutely horrendous. Gaben better think long and carefully about these if he doesn't want to start leaking players to other stores and the high seas.
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I'm not trying to be bias here, but it's not particularly Gabe's or Valve's fault for this inflation. Government, cost of living, war in Ukraine, covid having an impact over the economy and the list continues.
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PS plus extra - best thing I've seen, subscriptions will save the world.
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subscriptions will save the world.
"You will own nothing and be happy"
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Why do people mention the happy part? You will own nothing, that's it.
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Technically you don't own anything on Steam either.
If a publisher decides to revoke their keys, you'll lose access to the games you paid for. (Example: https://steamcommunity.com/app/201810/discussions/0/5002961597099594293/)
Apart from submitting a support ticket to the place you bought your games from, or making a fuss online, there's is NOTHING you can do.
And the kicker is it's absolutely legal. (Good luck with legal fees if you were thinking of filing a lawsuit.)
We can all thank Steam for spearheading that trend 20 years ago, which has become a standard in the industry.
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According to message in the discussion that issue might be resolved.
WinGameStore support:
Good news! We received word that Bethesda and Steam are working to reverse the crazy mixup that happened with Wolfenstein New Order key claims. They apologize for this problem, and will have all original account's access to the game restored. However due to the nature and size of the problem, they estimated it could take up to 2 weeks to fully clear up.
Please be patient with the re-activation. You did nothing wrong, and we were caught off guard as well by this. However Bethesda and Steam are now getting the problem fixed.
If you notice the game re-enabled within 2 weeks, please shoot us a ticket update so we know you are good to go.
But it is crazy that it work in that stupid way :/
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I'm one of the people affected by this and bought it from WinGameStore and got the same message from them 7 days ago. The problem has still not been solved. Just saying.
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I wonder how many licenses on Steam do you own actually
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Bingo! We pay for "renting" the license :/
What happens if Steam went belly up (not 'op') tomorrow? That's a question no one is willing to consider answering.
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i remember reading somewhere they said if anything ever happens to steam, they said something along the lines of "we'll give plenty of notice, you can download your games and we'll remove the drm (permanent offline mode basically)."
yeah, having to download possibly terabytes of data sucks, but the chances of valve going belly-up anytime in the near future is pretty much impossible.
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I totally agree, that's why it took me so long to register to Steam in the first place.
That being said, that's just video games and it costs way less than actually storing them (even if this were pirated copies, games these days are so fat that for most of them buying costs less than storing them for just a few years). Still a horrible issue that we don't own our copies, still a very bad habit given to people who don't ever stop to think about this, but not in its strict self a huge issue.
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A lot of new games are already 5000+ ARS so it MAY help to reduce the price of upcoming AAA games.
Though it will hurt a lot the sales of indie games, I'm sorry but I'm not paying more than 1000 ARS for an indie game unless I REALLY want to play it.
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AAA companies don't follow it...look the new games they are 5000 7000 8000+ ARS.... So now they will be higher than before xD
But like you say.... This will only affect indie developers now...
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It made sense to not follow it at the time since it was so low, I'm not saying that now every company will follow it but maybe a few will.
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It will only hurt the sales of indie games that don't to their proper research and instead choose to follow these barbaric recommendations. I get what you're saying, but this is not gonna "hurt the indie scene". The developers are still the ones who choose the prices.
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They choose the price but now people will be less likely to harass them with the excuse of "valve's suggested prices".
So now indie devs are not to blame for their awful prices.
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What's the minimum wage in Argentina at the moment?
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Considering that one AAA game is worth 10% it's not cool at all.
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it is not, as they have already said, in addition to the value of the game we pay taxes of 75% via visa or mastercard, it is unfortunate what happens, the current offers are probably the last that we can take advantage of in Argentina.
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I'm sorry to hear this Toe. Although I'm in a much better position, I can understand why Argentina not only had a bad economic blow but now faces more difficulty for the people. I really hope all the best for you and your country. Any signs of a improvement?
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Nop, the Peronist are still ruining the country, gifting and stealing money, the opposition are useless and are afraid to do what they should do.
There is a liberal economist running for president next year, he wants to fix the economy by dollarizing Argentina so future presidents can't print more money, he has a chance to win the ellection but it's slim and even if he wins, the peronist and all the sindicalist that works like the mafia won't let him do anything. It may sound fatalist but the future doesn't look good.
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I'm sorry to hear that. I really hope it works out for the better. Your people and the country deserves great leaders that want the best for the country. Things don't get fixed over night, so let's hope the guy you root for helps your country and gets to be elected.
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Oof i hope can buy some things from my wishlist before they update the prices on Halloween sale. Yep buy right after sale starts whatever you want if they already didn't update the prices lol.
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I'll be able to "safely" gift to everyone through the Steam Store again, yaaaay! :D
(Just gotta sell a kidney or two first. Whatever, I don't wanna sustain my continued existence anyway.)
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Worst of this is that they are doing it the same day as the sale starting.... Is like shooting to your own foot....what a move valve.....this will only hurt the sales...but whatever, is not my company..
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I'm not sure but I think I have read somewhere that the publishers/developers can't raise a price just right before a sale is planned.
Found it: https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/marketing/discount_rule_changes
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No van a subir los precios aún, porque cuando los suben, Steam no es deja poner el juego en oferta durante 28 días. Así que esperarán hasta que terminen estas ofertas de Halloween para incrementar los precios.
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With utilities bills are rising and crazy inflation , with this type price hike will see a huge sales drop.
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Will it be such change in eu? On different picture games acts cheaper, that has to be a trap.
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It seems Valve notified the publishers about this update and some of the prices has already changed. Maybe not for some AAA companies since they were already charging the same with US but indie developers will sure stick to this recommendation as before. Updating the prices depends to the publishers so maybe there is still time for some games.
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New prices are crazy for us, we now have to pay an AAA price for Left for Dead, Half Life, and some other games.
Apparently Valve forgot we pay an additional 75% of taxes in every transaction... Back to pirating?
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Decades of thieves running a country has its consequences I guess.¯\(ツ)/¯
The only blame I put on Valve is that they didn't stop completly the people that abused the lower price stores, but the taxes and the fair prices (for the developers) are not their fault.
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I agree with you. I think this regional pricing could have been avoided, though...
Abrazo de gol. :D
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Well, I don't like be a bad news bearer but you're welcome. :)
I bought kinda a lot in the last winter and summer sales since I was waiting this to be happen any moment but I was hoping to see at least one last good winter sale. This still felt so sudden. Guess people will follow historical lows with more care now.
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I've constantly followed it since the discovery of gg.deals. I think it's a great tool and I try to never miss opportunities when I can, even if I don't get to play the game right away. Some games you can't find them in the same deals in months if not years.
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I agree, some games saw historical low with -90% at some point and years later you're lucky if you find -50% discount for them.
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That's so true and gotta constantly check for good deals. I really don't always throw myself unless a game is 80-90% decrease also. if it's 50%, I kinda can expect it to become later down the line again at a 50%. Like a Winter or Summer sale.
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I used to buy immediately if something from my wishlist sees 90% discount even though I know I won't play it right away. For the last 3 years I didn't do this and permanently deleted about 400 games from my library. I know they're not exactly permanently deleted but still... And eventually I cleared my wishlist from "maybe I'll play this" games. I already stocked enough backlog though I still wanna buy a couple of games before the price increase hit them so I just hope good things from Autumn and Winter sales, however today my expectations vaporized. Now it's "maybe".
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I'll still purchase if they are at a decent price. I'm lucky to say that I've seen only 8% increase. I honestly feel sorry for countries that increased by 100 to 500%. It's not something I'd expect to see. It's really sad. 😥
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Yeah, it's sad. But what's done is done or will be soon. This probably won't hit so hard the people with enough backlog but good luck to those newbie accounts. :(
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You're very right my friend. Still, that won't stop us from increasing our backlog even further. Winter Sales is coming! 😅
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I just hope it would be a somewhat good sale (without increased prices for some games), otherwise even winter sale won't cut it anymore. :)
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Where do you live and how much % increase do you have?
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I live in Turkey and the % is too high. An example from my wishlist, Firewatch was 31₺ and now it's 190₺, there are couple of games I noticed currently and hoping for some indies don't get the increase before winter sale. I mean, I already have a huge backlog but judging by the new prices it won't get any bigger from now on.
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What's the average, income in Turkey atm? You've been hit hard. I'm so sorry to hear that. 😥
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Minimum wage is 5500₺ so with the current exchange rate it is $295. Valve's recommended price for a $60 game is 510₺ and Modern Warfare II is 1100₺. :)
Well, it is sad but comparing to all other things happening, gaming is at very behind in today's list. It was the last hobby for many people and now it is going away. There is a hope for 2023's elections since ~6 million young people will vote for the first time. But even if the government changes it will be hard to save the current wreck, so I do not expect some time soon to everything's to be fixed.
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510₺ from 5500₺ minimal wage is ~10%
6600 (3800 + 75% tax) from 55k ARS minimal wage is ~12%
275 zł from 3000 zł minimal wage is ~10%
So IMO it looks like they try to aim for games to cost 10% of whatever minimal wage people earn. Minimal wage goes up each year so they will most probably "adjust pricing" each year up as well. I will not go through all currencies, but saw info about Turkish and Argentinian minimal wage here so thought I will compare it to new polish pricing.
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That seems probable. It feels like they took the upper hand because they thought it will go worse so maybe they don't adjust it at least for a while, because 10% seems like a little high to me. Also this kind of sudden change will surely affect people's spending habits and I think Steam might lose more than 5/6 of Turkish -(regular spenders)- (to keep the current earnings) at least until to the next expected raise (more like inflation gap) at January. I don't know about how it is in Argentina or Poland though.
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Things definitely takes years to kinda start feeling that they are moving in the right direction. I really wish you and other countries that struggle economically the same.
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Yeah, I wish the same to all. We're having a tough time as a whole world and it's almost like 4 horsemen of apocalypse. I hope we can recover from this sooner than we thought.
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Luckily games can be our distraction. Speaking of the 4 horsemen. You should, if you haven't already played yet Darksiders Franchise. I've only played the first one and finished it, but I know the rest of the games are awesome as well. It's about the 4 horsemen that bring the apocalypse.
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I actually won the first Darksiders here, and there was a 90% discount for the second game at that time so I bought it as well. It was not on my wishlist but I generally like hack'n'slash games. However I found Darksiders pretty boring and didn't finish. Haven't played the second game because of this. If I played it while I was still in college I would probably like it though. :)
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Yeah, the game might have not aged well in some areas. I've played it when it was out, but didn't play the sequels.
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So now that those cheap games and asset flips are increasing their prices to ridiculous levels, it will be even easier to abuse the CV?
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Price increase for my country ranges from 20% to 70%. Though is bad it's still around 50% cheaper than what a USD costs for us today.
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Valve disappointing users again FACEPALM.
Where are the great offers and great events of the old days? MISSING
A complete disaster. And as always, the only ones who benefit are the developers...
And then they wonder, why is there game piracy in all of Latin America for example? Or another example: the cheap (sometimes) sale of games in unofficial stores? The ignorance is total.
A sad day to be a gamer.
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Valve finally updated their regional pricing recommendations. This won't be applied to the prices automatically and the updates expected from the publishers.
The most affected countries are Argentina and Turkey but for EU ~20% increase is still not low.
The price changes can be seen in this table:
Edit: More detailed prices can be seen here. (Thanks to @AndyFrost)
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