Steam Turkey
Hercules Montero
I do understand and feel you. It seems though that most employees and 3rd party developers live mostly in Europe/Australia/US, and it would not be fair to expect them to work for less/free.
Living in those places can be quite costly!
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Looks like ED uses a direct turkish lira to dollar/euro conversion; they got very few differences in regional pricing, at least on steam. Even Russia is just 5% cheaper after conversion. Most regional stuff is -20% to +30%.
Same for Argentina, the end is nigh.
I do wonder if we're gonna get the same prices as the USA like back in the day or if it'll be like how GOG and EGS do and they'll introduce a cheaper region but in USD.
Kinda related with the original post, but slightly different.
In Brazil, just like you, we're about to get prices and wallets converted to USD as well.
I'm predicting some heavy taxes on digital content soon and, then, Steam will leave the "brazillian wallets" with brazilian currency that accepts buy without currency convertion.
Federal government is getting way less from tax payers and demanding way more already.
Laffer's Curve is happening on real time just like the last government told it will and I'm loving it.
The brazilian people wanted to play stupid games last election. Now we gonna gather our stupid prizes.
I guess it's because of the abusers who used VPN to create Steam accounts from Turkey and Argentina. I would love to see a one last major sale before this, didn't know the summer sale was the last. Well, I hope they still keep some regional price, otherwise it'll be tough.
Still hard to tell before seeing what these new USD regional prices would be, but I think most games will be way more expensive than they are now. I don't see them making it cheaper than half of the original USD pricing, maybe 1/3 at best (their current Valve suggested prices for the developers is around this). Currently there are many games that are 10, sometimes 15 times lower than the original USD price with the local currency, so those days will definitely be over in a month.
Oh well, if it is gonna be like this it will be like the range I guessed in my message just above you (somewhere between 1/2 and 1/3 of the original USD price). This means to buy any wishlisted game that is below these prices before next month. Shame that they will make the change just the day before the autumn sale.
One thing I don't think they considered btw: Turkey, as well as Argentina and the other countries that will be affected from this have huge inflation rates, so even though for now it might still be possible to buy some games, in a year or two one single game might become half of the minimum wage (it will be like someone paying $1000 for let's say Baldur's Gate 3), then people won't be able buy any games.
Turkey prices seem to be going sky high for anything these days, for daily expenses too. They used to be much cheaper than in my country (Bulgaria), but recently I noticed many things (in official stores) were more expensive than here already, and I was told all prices got a huge hike some months ago this summer.
One thing though most of those other listed countries are even in a worse situation than Turkey and Argentina, so the new buyers from those countries might not be enough to cover the losses they will suffer from less purchases from Turkey and Argentina. They might be hoping the VPN abusers to buy from their own countries with this, but that might not be the case and those kind of people can just go for piracy.
It is all guesses and speculations at this point and I don't think even Valve knows what precisely will happen with this change. If they reach their expected sale numbers this will stay, otherwise they will update the suggested prices to a lower amount to cover the losses
While I agree, this will surely increase the sales for those countries since they'll get better prices, even though still steep for their income. Would this worth the sacrifice from Argentina - Turkey customers, they'll know soon. One thing is certain, the system abusers will blend in.
Of course could now someone come along and say "not all games cost $20" and it would be correct, some are cheaper, some are more expensive.
The amount of bought games and the amount of users that exploit it influence the damage a lot, so of course could be the number above be far away from the real damage but each one see with this, very simple, calculation how much damage this people do to the dev studios. Which will, absolutely sure, lead to lesser innovations, lesser experiments and lesser quality in games of the, "near", future.
But the region hoppers people will not see themself guilty for that results because they paid the devs money..... (if it were lesser as 5% of the full price or not).
A good bunch of such people are sg users.... the mods know exactly which ones switched the countries because they need to do this for the users.
I spotted, in the last months, around 10 that done region restricted GAs in the past from a cheap region and switched then to region restricted turkey or argentina GAs. They are easy to spot if someone do themself the work to search for them.
Oh, no doubt. The very same developer you posted about above mentions in reddit comments that as a percentage of total sales during the initial release window, 1/10 of those were from Argentina. I believe he stated in another comment that according to the download data, 75% of those who purchased the game from Argentina did not live in Argentina.
This also affects more than just the devs/pubs too. Steam and payment processors are also likely taking hits from the regional abuse which is likely the driving cause behind Valve changing things up. It stinks for people in these regions since the policy of 'something instead of nothing' is only applicable so long as abuse of the system isn't out of control.
One is the consumer(1) in Argentina/Turkey who is heavily affected by the macroeconomic conditions and the instability of their currency, which makes it difficult to afford games if he has to pay the current exchange rate
Another is the developer(2) who believes he's not getting fair compensation for his work, or spends too much time adjusting prices for a volatile currency
Also the abuser(3) who exploits this situation, changes store country to get an illicit massive discount on Steam games
The whole concept of regional prices is that selling 100 units for a $10 profit each still beats selling 5 units for a $50 profit
That goes to space once (A)the developer updates the price, but days later it needs adjustment again and (B)you're losing sales in EUR/USD for people using ARS/TRY
You also don't wanna crack down too hard on region hoppers. They're paying customers, and it's very hard to establish who's exploting the system and who's a legitimate changer
So Valve takes the easiest route
In the end people who live in countries with high double digit or even triple digit inflation rates won't spend their income on luxuries like Steam games. The initial idea of regional pricing was to get something instead of nothing at all. Valve's Mr.Newell aka GabeN admitted as much in an interview.
I expect a huge influx in the black sail ship crews. In the meantime customers in richer countries will have to pay even more to subsidize the exploiters masquerading as living in poor economies.
Looking at your fine image of a banknote I'm always reminded of Kenneth Galbraith, who said every paper currency will reach its intrinsic value sooner or later i.e. the worth of paper it's printed on.
I will add the 4th side of the story which is many countries never got fair Steam game prices, while others got too generous Steam game prices. This includes all Balkan countries which apparently will never get fair game prices, and many in the MENA/LATAM region which are finally getting some regional pricing despite nothing like what ARG/TR had.
In relation to purchasing power, new game costs me 260 USD / EUR and with season pass 400 USD / EUR. I would like to see how US citizens pay so much for games and whether they would accept such prices. I'm betting that game sales in the US would then be close to zero.
honestly it's so lazy to the point where it only serves any westerner who wants to get a 50% extra sale, and for steam to spread them across 25 countries so the devs wont notice they're getting way more sales from 2 very specific countries.
like the dead cells dev once said "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."
now steam is just gonna spread them across 25 more countries so nobody would notice so that the difference.
I always wondered why ultra-rich countries like Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and U.A.E. don't have their own region. Not only that, their recommended price is only about half of the standard one from EU/US.
yeah, i remember seeing regional pricing for them and i am like, bruh, these people make as much if not more than most americans lol,
and they're getting good discounts too.
for a multibillion dollar company, steam is the laziest least caring about it's business/customers company i have ever seen, but they have a monopoly over the market so they don't really care.
steam IS the one setting the prices, publishers can CHOOSE to completely ignore it or update it to a different value.
they followed steam's recommended prices for years till 3 years ago after covid when many economies started crashing,
that's when many started setting their own prices, and some just completely ignored the pricing, looked at the current exchange rate and set it to that.
the part about "steam is the laziest least caring about it's business/customers company i have ever seen"
isn't about steam SETTING the prices,
it's about steam not doing anything about it for almost a decade,
barely adding any new regions,
barely updating the prices,
not doing enough market research to find a fair price -they literally put 27 countries where some earn 10 times as much as the other in the same pricing bracket-,
not caring about many westerners abusing this system to get an extreme sale on all games.