What do you think about users who change their account location to Turkey?

Wouldn't it make more sense to blame the people in power, rather than blame consumers of other countries? It's not like if everyone who exploits this loophole stopped tomorrow (I doubt it's all that many to be honest), prices would normalize and Turkey's economy would be booming. Things would still be awful regardless.

It's a bad situation in general, no doubt about that, but I just think the blame and outrage should be directed at the people who actually caused it in the first place - and that's not Steam or it's users.

Same here. + Regional pricing recommendations are really bad for us actual Turks lol... Can't even buy a game without emptying 1/7 of my bank account..

"Rumor", "Not enough people for real damage", "still get truckload of money regardless", "only an excuse to raise prices".

Good job.
/s

Some of Eastern European salaries are also similar even though they are in the first world.

It's a never ending question though: is the mindless accumulation of games by the hundreds a goal in itself or are games meant to be played?
And I am saying this sitting on way more games in my account than I have time to play, but most of these games are coming from bundles and freebies. I did not have to bend backwards, change taxi 3 times and screw people out of their money so that I could have 15K games in my library that I'll never touch.

There are people from Turkey who offer service for using their cards to change country on Steam.

you are free to buy from neocolonial EU store!

I'd agree that you're not one of the abusers. But you're probably also the absolute minority within the people having set their account to Turkey or Argentina without actually living there. We are mostly talking about people from countries with "strong" economies abusing this to still save money.

I hope your situation and the situation in your country gets better soon.

It had just gotten harder, not impossiible. You have to use an IP from that country and purchase something with a working payment method from that country once to change your shop region. Afterwards you can pay via wallet code / gift cards.

Years ago it was based only on IP. VPN usage can be detected though, so there was always the risk of getting banned. Regional switch was only possible by ticket including evidence of being residential in the new region (by bills e.g.).
Then Valve changed to base it on the payment method, maybe to avoid the effort of above described process. Now you can switch a region by using VPN and a payment method of that region just once, then use wallet afterwards.

They're based on shop region. Your IP can be easily obfuscated by using a VPN and there are ways to provide a payment method from those countries as well to change the shop region. Afterwards you can pay via wallet without VPN and foreign payment method.

Most users would not want to share their personal information if a platform, which people enter just to play games, asks for their identity

People do the wrong things based on poverty

And it's understandable. It's less understandable when it's out of greed though.
In this case, it's one or the other, probably more of the other but it definitely has very real consequences for real people, devs and users who are actually living in way poorer conditions than the ones doing that, so that's ethically problematic.

I tend to think of piracy as a "victimless" crime. Yes technically you are playing games you didn't pay for but I'm pretty sure most people who do wouldn't pay or be able to pay for the games anyway. (I don't condone or practice it but I don't think it's a huge dent in actual game business). However here, it's not victimless and that should be taken into account by those who do it.

Although I reported hundreds of users to Steam support, I don't think they have taken any action on this issue. I know that these incidents are being exploited, but I haven't applied any raise so that the real users living in that region can buy and play my developed games comfortably

can you blame people for wanting the same deal you give to people from other countries?

First of all it's not a "deal". It's an adjusted price based on living costs. It's very different.
If someone is making 20 times the monthly average of people in another country, using the adjusted prices just to gorge themselves on 20 times the amount of games is not cool. To anyone.

So if your Steam info is accurate you are from Massachusetts. Quick google search shows the average salary there is around 60k a year. Yet in Latvia where I come from average salary is around 13k. So about 5 times as less. Many people live of course below average and seeing the job market and promised salaries a loooot of jobs pay way below 10k a year.
For many that is about 700 a month after taxes. take off food, rent, fuel, etc. The free money for leisure is extremely limited. I mean we still pay I think the same prices you do for the games. But then imagine some countries where salary is even less then that. Its either not buying a game at all or at least selling something for people who earn less.

So the point is about people who have enough free money to be able to pay the actual perceived market value of the game. So if those 60 dollars for a game for you would be maybe one dining out, for some its the whole months allowance for food. Think about it.

And since its digital good with theoretically unlimited amount to sell, getting the most sales out of poor regions even at lower profit margin is better then having no sales. I mean real estate, food in general also costs higher for you.. that's how economy works. And someone who earns 10 times more changing the region to get a game for way cheaper is simply an exploit of the system which is in place to help out poor regions.

As a side note - I personally earn more then average and I can spend some more money on games.... since Im on this site and also making giveaways. But even with that I haven't bought a single game when it came out or at full price. Even with regular discounts when it drops to 20-30 EUR. The price simply is unwarranted. I can buy food for the whole week for that. I have to work a full day to be able to afford game at its full price. I have a lot of different priorities, hence I only buy bundles. And even with calling myself lucky in my country I still earn less then minimum wage in Massachusets.

You have it backwards, the EU/US price is the normal one, the regional pricing is a courtesy to ppl living in less well off regions. And of course also profit maximizing by getting some additional income from such countries. But if the loss from region switching people becomes high enough there might come a point where it will be better for publishers to not offer regional prices at all. Even if it means that everyone in Argentina / Turkey goes back to pirating.

It would be better if these region switching people just simply pirated the games or waited a year or two for bigger discounts or a bundle if they are not willing to pay the Western price. Because now they are hurting legit gamers from poor countries.

I'm from a poor EU country with no regional pricing and I don't find region switching justified at all. Games are not a neccessity. And you can have more games than you can play in a lifetime simply from giveaways and cheap bundles.

Agreed lol,economy in here is in a downfall since 2018 and game developers (and Steam) just EXCEPT US to pay 1/4 salaries now while acting like "oh no but we cant earn anything",like come on dude,most of your sales are from EU,not turkey... Ridicilous situation that wont change any time soon,i also consider migrating away to germany or somewhere else because both economy sucks,and everything (even basic life supplies such as bread) has gotten %300-400 more expensive over the years.
I'm looking forward to the elections this Summer,but i dont have my hopes too high... I think nothing will change and economy will continue its pathetic downfall.. lol.

https://tradingeconomics.com/turkey/inflation-cpi#:~:text=Inflation%20Rate%20in%20Turkey%20averaged,percent%20in%20June%20of%201968.

Glad someone mentioned that Eastern European salaries are in no way comparable to western salaries, yet we don't have an Eastern Eu region, like Turkey or Russia.

I am really curious why, because the buying power is there, but there is no way someone would spend more than 10% of their average salary for a new game, but would definitely spend it if the game were a third or fourth of that price, so I am not sure why Steam didn't set up a few more regions to better serve customers.

I agree with most of your post but here you're drawing a wrong conclusion:

"To put this in context, the % of our total sales from a given country will roughly equal the % of our total players from that country. For Argentina & Turkey, their % of total sales is 3-4x the amount of the % of their total players. "

To me it sounds like you've got free money. They bought a game they won't play.

No, this means that according to their numbers around 66-75% of their games bought in Argentina and Turkey have been bought by people who are not actually from Argentina or Turkey. Those people still play those games as much as anyone else. They just don't play with an Argentinian or Turkish IP because they're not really from there. Or do you really think people from Argentina and Turkey play their games 66-75% less likely than everyone else on the planet?

+1

thats even worse

I wish Valve would find a way to adjust prices for you too. Though doing that kinda seems hard. They don't restrict it by countries instead they do this by currencies. Since all EU countries are subject to same rules even though their GDP is much more different than each other, this makes it complicated. If they do this by IP and stipulate local payment methods, if someone wants to abuse the system it would be not hard for them to switch countries and do all of that. Not want to mention that this would make the whole gifting system more deranged.

I totally understand the people who set their region to Turkey if they're from a similar average wage countries as Turkey because in this scenario they try to justify the system on their own. On the other hand, there are some people from Western countries who make many Steam accounts from Turkey, fill them up on sales and sell them later. Sadly a couple of rotten fruit is enough to make the whole sack to go bad.

Valve changed physical gift cards to be regional two years ago, so yeah, cards in Turkey are sold as TRL, but people are selling them just like they offer the "switch region service". Besides that you could always push your wallet with items on the community market.

Maybe people don't question it because they have a better understanding of economic concepts and realities?
We don't live in one global unit with the same standards and regulations applied, the same basic or advanced preconditions. Varying costs of living or spendable income are a reality. Prices adjust - not only internationally, but also regionally within a country.

And unless you suggest that you should get paid the same as someone in Argentina or Turkey, doing the same job as you do, your complaint sounds pretty hypocritical.

This was my first thought as well, but then I thought the developer can consider his business model to include just the richer parts of the world and serve them the game as luxury good.

But then, why not just allow some less privileged people to enjoy the game too? Or if you prefer a more capitalism-based justification: why not make at least some profit in the less rich regions?

people aren't questioning the premise of it being okay to charge people from different parts of the world different amounts of money for the same product, service, and experience

What fairytale do you live in? Companies can and DO charge different price for different products, services and experiences depending on the region of the world. Fuel, rent, food, gym, recreational activities, beer in a bar. Near to everything has different cost depending on region. Sometimes even from city to city and from neighborhood to neighborhood. And this is done to adjust to the local buying power, consumption levels and cost needed for distribution. Same beer can cost you 10 bucks in the bar in center because 500 people want to buy it even for that price, but its going to cost 5 bucks in downtown because you can't even scrape 200 people to buy it for that price. And that is talking about a product which in on itself costs near to nothing to make comparably to the prices it is sold for.

System is not fare. No doubt about that. But that is normal for all of the products and services. You know what is unfair? Having companies making phones, PCs, cars based on USA market where people have higher buying power, and having countries with bad economies needing to buy the products for the same price. Not having this balance between economies actually is the unfair part. Not the market balancing itself out. For example - Lets say Tesla 3 costs around 40-50k. So does many similar category EVs. In many developed countries the average yearly salary is over this 50k mark. And for you to take out a loan and buy it over 5 years is rather normal practice. These countries are also the ones who peddle the greener future narrative. Yet many developing countries have average salary 3-5 times less if not more. If anything is unfair, it's the global trends pushing on us unreasonable prices for technology which we cant afford. In this case of course its logical since the cost of materials, development etc doesn't change between regions, hence the same price for the whole world. But if anything is unfair, it's this same price principle.

If a game costs $60 in one region of the world and no one is able to buy it, they can reduce the price to $20 and have increase of profit tenfold. Thats the magic of software - you have a fixed cost for creating the whole product and creating more copies doesn't increase the cost of one unit (key). So if they can sell 1 key for $60 or 10 keys for $20 you don't need to be a genius to understand which is the correct model for choosing the pricing model based on regions.

It's basic economy and it fascinates me how many people are not understanding it........... Only way what you say would make sense is if we would have one global united economy and people would be paid equally for the job they do.