Bad news for PC gamers. Valve will adjust the recommended prices for games on Steam practically all over the world. Unfortunately, in some territories, such as Argentina and Turkey, the increase is significant and exceeds 450% – yes, you read that right.
With these changes, the Gabe Newell-led company hopes to gain more control over platform pricing as the developers had some issues with pricing depending on the country. Obviously, each region has its own economic situation, and you must adapt to each of them when promoting your games.
“Steam developers can control their own prices in all currencies. But researching and identifying ideal prices for dozens of different currencies can be a daunting task for some developers.”
So the Steam base for making recommended price adjustments is, of course, the US dollar. In Europe, $0.99 is now equivalent – on Steam – to €0.99, a 25% difference from the previous value of €0.79. In Argentina, it rose to 82 pesos (to $13.99), representing a discrepancy of 486%.
Does this mean that all games will increase by these percentages? Not necessary. It’s important to note that the platform tables, which you can check out at the following link, do the conversion based on the dollar value of the game, but without the exact multiplication by the dollar value mentioned above.
Let’s take a practical example of a common case. Selected next-gen games are on sale today for $69.99. In Europe, exclusively on offer from Steam, they will now start at €67.99 (was €58.99); in Mexico from $719.99 (up to $619.99) and in Argentina from $4,500 (up to $759.99).
Why do I say “from” and “with”? Because these are the prices suggested by Steam and developers are free to add them in a certain region, if they see fit.
Call Of Duty Modern Warfare 2 It is useful to demonstrate the above. In Europe it costs 69.99 euros (2 euros more than the recommended price) and in Mexico it costs 1399 dollars (680 dollars more than the recommended price). In the case of a North American country, of course, numerous additional factors come into play that add to the cost. From the real value of the dollar to the tax problem.
The situation in Argentina is still extremely unfavorable. It’s no longer just the fact that the recommended prices in this country are skyrocketing, but also a lot of taxes need to be added because Steam games are billed externally. The final price, depending on the game, can be exorbitant, given the purchasing power of the region.
The important point is that the new games that are about to be released already reflect the proposed price adjustment.. Not so with older titles, many of which are sure to start adjusting their value over time.
Source: Hiper Textual
