- cross-posted to:
- games
I suspect piracy will become increasingly popular in these countries
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At first when I saw the title, I thought this was done to stop people who VPN swap stores. The article however paints a different picture: Developers do not want Lira or Pesos since they are too unstable. Doesn't make sense to price a game at X Argentine Peso if next month X is now 30% less valuable. If you have too much inflation, no one wants your currency. Even the Argentine government or presidential candidates said something along the lines of wanting to swap to the USD too.
There's a running candidate that said that, but that's the same candidate that said so many crazy shit and lies. So, you can take it with a grain of salt. Even if that candidate won the upcoming elections, I hope that dissolving Argentina's central bank is not going to happen because of many reasons, but also because the country has a parliament... They shouldn't allow it.
Which wouldn't help much, because then they would depend on the dollar, the properties of which are developed for the US economy, not Argentina's. But for steam? Whatever, charge in dollars, it's easier.
As someone from a developing country, I'm painfully aware of how most big publishers choose to ignore recommended prices and just go with a straight USD conversion most of the time so I can only hope this doesn't screw them even further.
I really wish it was viable for Valve to enforce a ceiling on suggested prices or something along those lines, it's about the only way I see that ever changing. Well, that, or everyone just becoming a full-time sailor, I suppose!
As a Turkish person this fucking sucks. I was a pirate anyway but guess I will never get to buy games
Wow fuck them
6000 is the cost of a aaa game on sale = 5 usd, 80 dollars is almost half of a salary, no more original games I guess
I hope they don't expect people to actually pay in usd and instead offer the conversion themselves. Because I can't imagine people maintaining usd credit cards just to purchase games from steam.
Otherwise, this could be a positive change as publishers can now set prices without the "what if the currency loses half its value tomorrow" insurance margin.
Edit: steamdb has a chart of the new regional pricing. It's 50% higher than the current one for tl and 150% higher for peso.
You can purchase in foreign currency with any international card, there's a bit of a fee though.
I mean... If the currency is that unstable... I would expect people doing that and having accounts with dollars or euros, saving money in a currency that moves more than a rollercoaster it's not great.
They have savings accounts in dollars or pinned to the dollar, not spending accounts. But looking it up it seems tl credit cards can pay in usd + maybe a conversion fee so I guess it wouldn't be such a deal breaker
Relatively speaking, games already were practically free in those countries to begin with, so it's not like piracy would make a difference to the vendors.
You have completely misunderstood the premise of regional pricing. Games were "practically free" in these countries because the average income is much lower than in e.g the US or Western Europe. The augmentation in pricing means that many Turks and Argentinians can no longer afford AAA games.
What augmentation in pricing? Steam is only changing the currency of the transaction. The devs will set the regional price for Steam to use, like they've been doing all along. Assuming they continue using the recommended regional price, the overall price shouldn't change except for conversion fees.
The recommended regional pricing that steam has provided for these regions works out as more expensive than when the local currency was used
I was involved with an Indie game that was priced at roughly $15. It literally sold for 10 cents in those regions with Steam's recommended pricing, mainly due to the accelerating inflation, and within hours of release, 20% of the sales came from these regions because of people abusing VPN. The pricing was quickly adjusted before that percentage could grow any larger.
When people can just get a freshly released game at a 99.5% discount, you might as well not sell the game at all in those regions.
turkish here, piracy is already a big thing for any kind of media/games here, but steam almost ended piracy for gaming. i've not pirated a game since like 4 years, but i suspect i'll go back to it after this change, i'd like to support the devs but i just can't afford it,sorry.
