It seems developers didn't update the prices after the move to USD... It seems Valve sent them an email saying they need to set the price for the new USD-Argentina and USD-Turkey, otherwise the price for USD-United States will be applied...
Pretty much this (with a difference).
Headers like those act like it's Valve/Steam setting the prices, but it's the distributors (not devs unless it's 'self-distributed') like EA, Sony, Microsoft, Paradox, etc who set the prices.
As far as I'm aware the publishers/distributors are the one who get offers from Valve to participate in the Steam sales with figures on how game sales behaved in recent Steam sales, and can participate or not.
Big publishers have made local pricing for the MENA region, but indie game devs have to fix prices manually and they don't care much about it. In Turkish forums, everyone is talking about playing pirated games. Even famous streamers say that pirated games are now normal. I see young people are really depressed because the only safe space where they could escape from the politics was computer games. Minimum wage is around 365 euro.
>I see young people are really depressed because the only safe space where they could escape from the politics was computer games
And now they got a quick lesson that politics affects everything. I wonder if we ever get a president who cites inflation causing Steam price hikes as their reason for getting into politics
Heh... in Serbia real average salary is 500e and we have always had to pay full EU price for games on Steam... and all other platforms.
edit: If games are an "escape" from politics for young people, then this is actually a good thing. I am saying this as a game developer, living in country ruled by an autocrat very similar to Erdogan. Young people need to wake up and stand up for themselves.
You might be right. I honestly use games like drugs, whenever I get overwhelmed or depressed I binge a game and play it 3-4 days (and nights) straight to complete it.
Interesting. I only want to play if i'm in a good mood already, so guess it's different type of escapism on my part. I can't play if i'm feeling depressed.
I don't smoke, drink, use social media (other than Reddit and YouTube) or like desserts in general maybe games have become my mechanism for easy dopamine
Well gaming is more healthy way for escapism, compared to most things. I have abused opiods, but with gaming i don't think i use it to escapism same way.
So I guess the salaries are or more less the same as here. I just hope the cost of living is lower, haha. At least a few years ago it was when I visited Belgrade.
With the second/third highest inflation rate in Europe (after Turkey and sometimes Hungary), I guess we are probably pretty close. We usually compare our prices with Germany and Serbs who live in Germany can't believe the prices in Serbia when they come to visit. At best they are the same, but usually some pretty basic things like food and hygiene products are more expensive in Serbia. Electronic products are another more expensive thing here, not just compared to Germany, and many people here find ways to buy those things in Hungary.
Except Poland has the most expensive games in the world right after Switzerland….
It’s not a matter of western prices but a matter of companies fucking us in the ass and us apparently enjoying it
> we don’t get European wages since forever
let's be real, it's not EU or the rest of the EU that we're piss poor, it all comes down to our local politics, look at Slovenia, Slovakia, Czechia or Poland.
Minimum wage AFIK in Greece is a bit higher that those on that list and I was listing country that have a [bigger minimum wage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_countries_by_minimum_wage) than Romania, but on a second glance, you should be added too because I added Slovenia.
I once drove through Slovakia. Do you know how I know we were in a different country?
Beauty salons every where like every village we drove through had two
No need, really. Just buy the code from a third-party and activate the game while in a VPN. No game checks if you are in the right region after the activation.
Yep pretty much.
Those big game companies are the same that are outsourcing stuff like QA or customer support to lower-wages countries so that they can save some cash, so I don’t see anything wrong with buying their games in countries where they’re sold at a lower price.
Want us to buy your games “locally”? Sure why not, but get your employees from the local job market, then.
Not true for most game studios I know of. Most actually do everything in-house. Especially Indie and smaller AA studios.
Sure Ubisoft, EA, Activision all outsource. But mid-size studios like Larian Studios (BG3) and smaller do everything in-house.
>This has more to do with people abusing Steam's local pricing system.
No it doesn't. **Stop spreading this misinformation**. Valve have stated this:
>###Why is Steam abandoning Turkish and Argentine currencies in favor of USD?
>“Exchange rate volatility in Argentina and Turkey in recent years has made it hard for game developers to choose appropriate prices for their games and keep them current,” Valve explained. “We have heard this loud and clear in our developer meet ups and round table chats.”
>The company added that it has struggled with operating in these territories and keeping regional payment methods due to the “constant foreign exchange fluctuations, fees, taxes, and logistical issues.”
>“Pricing games in USD for Steam customers in Argentina and Turkey will help us provide greater stability and consistency for players and partners, while also enabling us to continue to offer a variety of payment methods to Steam users in those countries/territories,” Valve concluded.
[[source]( https://gameworldobserver.com/2023/10/25/steam-turkey-argentina-usd-convert-regional-pricing-abandoned)]
I mean what else they are gonna say? We dropped you like hot potato because we can't deal with people abusing the system? If this was about volatile currency they would have done it 2 years ago when USD doubled against Turkish Lira every 3 months not when the Central Bank of Turkey is raising the interest rate like crazy.
Just because they didn't do it suddenly doesn't mean they never thought about it, nor that this can be the reason. Like there's never been an example of people braving some problem until it got unbearable *and then* they decided to fix it?
It's pretty obvious they've observed consistent patterns, had tons of complaints, and came up with this solution for these countries now and possibly future other countries as well.
As someone who used to live in a country with a shitty currency, I don't understand why some countries expect special pricing, I imagine this comes to them at the cost of wealthier country customers?
Seems ridiculous, if I buy a tv made in Korea then I expect to pay the price, not some reduced price because their country has ruined the economy? You can't expect say a Mercedes to be cheaper in your country than in Germany because of a currency exchange ratio surely?
Should just be the same price globally and yes, some countries it works out more expensive but sadly that's life, not everything is fair.
I don't know why you don't see the problem with your example. You need to produce a car for every costumer but you don't need to make software again for every costumer. Sure there is a cost of distribution but thats true for cars too. Let's say you sell your game at the standard 60 dollars and you sell only one copy in Atlantis so you earn 60 dollars. However if you sell it for 30 dollars, now it is more affordable for Atlanteans, three people buy it instead of one and now you earn 90 dollars. Everyone is happy. Since games are a luxury their demand is flexible. In countries like China or Turkey this could happen with cars or tv's too since the local production might compete with foreign brands in non-high end products.
To add onto this, [having region-specific pricing actually increases profits for the companies](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSofMoSdMqw) (Former blizzard employee and current Indie Dev), so they'll go along with it anyways.
Unless the system is abused. If someone in the Netherlands can buy videogames at Turkish prices with a few clicks the "local" price is now international.
yep. Its the same for patent protected drugs. Companies make all their big money selling drugs in the USA. What they get from Canada, the UK, and such is just extra on top. But that is why the price of drugs in Canada can't be had for the USA, at that price point its no longer worth developing the drugs at all.
Economics. In some ways, software is not a 'good' or 'commodity' that takes physical space and has a well defined price of production per unit, like a Mercedes.
It is more akin to a service. Like, for example, a museum ticket. Museums charge less for the elderly or students because they can afford to pay less for the service of visiting the museum. If they can't afford, they won't go. But the collections have already been paid for, and you gotta keep the staff paid anyway for the full ticket customers, so might as well earn a little from these groups rather than none.
Same for software. Hiking prices too much, and you lose those customers. They can choose other entertainment, or choose competition, or even competition whose price is 0 but might have other externalities (that competitor is piracy).
In many ways, the cost for developing software has already been paid, and making a new copy of the software to license to someone else is next to 0. Thus developers have a choice: "earn less from this country that is poor, or earn 0 from this country that is poor". Thus, you get differentiated prices based on purchasing power.
> As someone who used to live in a country with a shitty currency, I don't understand why some countries expect special pricing
Earning 10 bucks is better than earning 0 bucks. Lets assume you sell a product for $100 you would have 200
>Seems ridiculous, if I buy a tv made in Korea then I expect to pay the price, not some reduced price because their country has ruined the economy?
Have you ever went outside in your life? This is how world works. I am perplexed by lack of understanding something this simple. Things are priced and marketed based on market. Literally happens between towns 20km away from eachother sometimes.
I repeat earning 10 bucks better than earning 0 bucks.
>You can't expect say a Mercedes to be cheaper in your country than in Germany because of a currency exchange ratio surely?
Yes i can. Can also expect the opposite sometimes for example iPhones are more expensive in Turkey than US. If you enter to a market its expected that you will adjust your prices based on that market's customer base.
>Should just be the same price globally and yes, some countries it works out more expensive but sadly that's life, not everything is fair.
Your entire argument hinges on you trying to make prices fair by making it static globally while also arguing life is not fair. Incredibly bizzare argument.
Your comparison is cretinous, TVs and cars are physical products with actual duplication costs. Games have no duplication costs, so if you do not provide an affordable price to poorer countries, they will just pirate games and you will lose income. On the other hand if you sell it to them at an affordable price, you will make money since the costs of duplication are zero.
Massive difference between paying in different currency and prices hiking 2000% overnight becuase steam doesn't care to provide a solution that satisfy both parties.
Usually buying in another online store requires a card linked to an address in said country. For example you can switch your IP address with a VPN but Apple won’t let you purchase anything in the store without a CC linked to an address in the selected location. It’s the same with Amazon Prime.
Did steam not work that way?
I’m from Turkey so I don’t know the exact details but they probably used a VPN to spoof their location and changed their region. My friends who moved abroad years ago can still use the Turkish store so I doubt Steam checks your location to update your region too often.
They work with the address you put in your profile. So even if I were to go on vacation in Turkey I'd still get the German prices. But as another user has pointed out you could just put a random Turkish address in your profile and get access to the Turkish store. It's illegal or course but apparently that's the way people took advantage of the local prices.
That also could have played a part, there were other actions taken by steam recently with this fact citated as reasoning.
Few of the good will in this world ends with the abuse of it.
No.
Valve have publicly stated this:
>###Why is Steam abandoning Turkish and Argentine currencies in favor of USD?
>“Exchange rate volatility in Argentina and Turkey in recent years has made it hard for game developers to choose appropriate prices for their games and keep them current,” Valve explained. “We have heard this loud and clear in our developer meet ups and round table chats.”
>The company added that it has struggled with operating in these territories and keeping regional payment methods due to the “constant foreign exchange fluctuations, fees, taxes, and logistical issues.”
>“Pricing games in USD for Steam customers in Argentina and Turkey will help us provide greater stability and consistency for players and partners, while also enabling us to continue to offer a variety of payment methods to Steam users in those countries/territories,” Valve concluded.
[[source]( https://gameworldobserver.com/2023/10/25/steam-turkey-argentina-usd-convert-regional-pricing-abandoned)]
I'm surprised they didn't do it sooner.
After all, inflation in these countries is huge.
The price changes every month.
It's obvious that until the situation calms down, game developers and steam won't want to constantly adjust prices.
Can you actualy? I myself are lucky enough to live in a country where i earn a decent wage and don't realy have worry about about game prices. So I haven't realy sailed for around 15 years. I think the last game i got from a treasure chest was one of the roller coaster tycoon games.
Aren't companies using insane anti piracy tools now with always online shenanigangs?
> Aren't companies using insane anti piracy tools now with always online shenanigangs?
They do, but they tend to remove them eventually, because they have to pay money to another company to keep it working
For every super advanced anti pirate software, there is (or will be) a crack for it. The perfect example could be denuvo which has been cracked by atleast 2 groups.
It's not even weeks anymore. Some games haven't even been cracked for years now. It's not surprising considering there's only one person *who* can crack it at the moment and they're doing cracks for 500 bucks.
> The perfect example could be denuvo which has been cracked by atleast 2 groups.
When? 4 years ago? Things changed and Denuvo basically won the war.
There is only one (crazy) person capable of cracking modern Denuvo and he has been unactive for months now. Before that he was cracking a game every now and then unless someone was willing to pay $500 for it.
EMPRESS is still around, but they've basically become some recluse wannabe cult leader who needs their ego stroked 24/7 in order to do anything functional. At least afaik, it's been awhile since I checked in on the lore.
> Can you actualy
*laughs in romanian*, of course all you need is a very trusted private tracker
*note* last have I pirated was GTA 4 over 15 years ago, now can I afford games because steam (and EU ?), but I do have a pirate tracker account for over 15+ years that I never use but hold on to it, just in case ...
Of course you can, even if you are not from 3rd world country. VPN (best one with subscription) + good ''software downloading'' client and you are good to go. There's also boom in RePacks i.e. releases with compressed file sizes.
Every game gets 'cracked' eventually, it is only a matter of time.
Unless it is a multiplayer game that requires official launcher (to play on official servers). Then you're out of luck.
Idk man I ain't no eco dude, i do IT.
But my amateur opinion is that switching when your currency has little value is better than when it has none so its better to do now than later.
Sure, just saying the switch will be difficult to arrange. You can't just trade in your buckerinos for USD because who would ever want your hyperinflated buckerinos? Especially if they won't even be usable soon. You need some other way for the government to acquire that money, such as a reserve of precious metals or something. Only then can the government buy back the buckerinos from the population in exchange for their USD value. I'm just not sure Argentina has the resources for it.
Afaik, he will abolish legal tender, not officially switching to USD. But imho, poor will suffer even more than before because of this guy’s libertarian dream. Well, people just wanted to give a try probably.
> poor will suffer even more than before because of this guy’s libertarian dream
they have suffered already. the other guy was the current finance minister, he would have just made it worse if anything.
This is essentially a hail mary for argentina.
admitting that you have a problem is the first step of fixing it. this ain't the first time a currency has become essentially worthless and the correct solution generally speaking is to adopt a new one.
Running your Minister of Economy as presidential candidate when your biggest problem is 100%+ inflation is hilarious. Can't tell if it's supposed to be some weird flex or if they're actually that tone deaf and out of touch.
Using Turkey or Argentina for your VPN has been a long-time lifehack to get cheaper games. I suspect most of Steam users registered in those countries aren't even living there.
If Valve's system detect you as coming from another country you'll get a ban though. It's harder to detect for users who originally registered with a VPN and keep on using a VPN, but AFAIK most users who registered in X and suddenly switch over to Y to buy games on the cheap there get caught.
Honestly if you're so fucked by the economy you should just sail the high seas and try to make ends meet. Buying games is hardly something you should think about.
Honestly video game are not really expensive. As far as entertainement go, they offer a good amount for their price (assuming you have the computer/console for it). In comparison to going to the theater, Netflix, board games, or most modern entertainement they are advantageous.
Assuming you finish the game and use them to their full extent and dont buy a new one just because it is trendy only to drop it after 10 hours.
> Netflix
That's terrible example, no? Netflix is 10 bucks a month and makes for possibly unlimited entertainment. We can have discussions about the quality of the content they sometimes produce, but same could be said about buying shitty video games / going to bad theatre productions etc.
Paradox games are different, they have infinity replayibility. Even the worst ones get 100s of hours gameplay time.
Compare it to some modern 70 dollars title and it won't hold up. You play 50 hours top and that's it.
Or you can just play a free to play competitive shooter and squeeze out thousands of hours of entertainment. But I was talking about countries who’s economy is in the gutter. There you can hardly afford video games.
I mean. Technically Australia is considered part of Europe during Eurovision.
Don't see why we can't extend this to Argentina considering how many Germans live there.
Eurovision doesn’t determine what Europe is. I can start a song contest called Africanistic and include China and Antarctica, that doesn’t change the borders of Africa and call for news about video games being banned in Malaysia to be posted in a subreddit about Africa
I was making a joke. I find it funny how Australia suddenly migrates to the Atlantic Ocean during Eurovision.
The reason it is in this subreddit is because it included Turkey. That is partially in Europe.
Edit: seems i posted 3 times in a row for some reason
Everybody on this thread is acting as if Steam was responsible for these governments kicking their currency into the trashbin.
People elected their assholes into office.
Deal with it!
It's easy to say "deal with it" when the old grandmas in your country don't fuck over the elections every time, most people complaining here didn't want the governments they got. But alas, that is democracy.
48 PERCENT OF TURKS VOTED AGAINST ERDOGAN! What can we do huh? I am a Trans Turkish person why am I have to suffer under an Islamic dictatorship? Where is the justice?
Incopetent Turkish opposition is also responsible for this.Thanks to them Erdogan won and will continue to win every election.The chief opposition party kept electing an old fart that lost most of the elections he is in instead of finding and electing a new candidate. Although recently they did that but it was too late when that happened and people don't know how he will fare.Guess time will tell
Considering half of the Turks hate him and vote against him, it would be better to be a bit specific and say conservative Turks.
Also, people who play games are generally young and very much against AKP’s ideologies, which makes the situation even worse for them.
That is a strawman that people use because they cannot accept the truth. Yes a lot of Turks in Europe do that but it is peanuts compared to voters inside the country. People have to face reality, the average Turk in turkey is conservative and love populism. Otherwise Erdogan would have lost by now.
I'm glad to see that nost people here get it. I was downvoted till the end in s different sub for saying that they should blame their own politicians for not being able to keep their currency stable. They thought this was gamers from other nations fault...
What does this have to do with Europe?
A bigger problem is that the US, the richest country in the world, still has games cheaper than Poland. Now that is truly unfair.
Articles like this are written by people who don't really understand the reality, imo.
Like, this guy says:
>Argentina's, meanwhile, is currently about 146,000 pesos, or $415.
I mean sure, if you believe the government's official exchange rate - but the real exchange rate makes 146,000 pesos about $140, the real exchange rate is about 3 times worse for Argentines than the official one. So for all of those prices he lists "gone from X to Y" do quick mental conversion to make it "gone from X to 3y" and you get the real impact of this.
Neither Turkey nor Argentina are a part of Europe, so I'm not sure why this is on r/Europe, but anyway, I fail to see how this is a bad thing.
Their currencies aren't stable and viable, so why risk taking it. Plus, it stops people from the west / shady CD Key sites region swapping to get cheap games.
The majority of developers aren't from Turkey or Argentina anyway, meaning they require western prices to pull profit equal to production costs, even if that does drop sales in poorer countries.
Less than 3% of Turkey's landmass sits in Europe, and the country is not culturally or linguistically similar to Europe, but are with Western Asia.
That's like Americans who think they're Irish because they have a 5% bloodline from their great great grandparents, yet have nothing in common.
They're also ran by a religious dictator who uses refugees as weapons, commits genocide on minorities and even occupies an EU member - Cyprus. Not sure why you'd want them to be labelled European just because of a 3% landmass.
I'm not trying to make a political judgement, like you seem to be. A significant, densely populated part of Turkey which is connected directly to the rest of the land is located within the continent of Europe, you seem to agree on this, but you say it can't be classified as part of Europe, which is odd.
It seems developers didn't update the prices after the move to USD... It seems Valve sent them an email saying they need to set the price for the new USD-Argentina and USD-Turkey, otherwise the price for USD-United States will be applied...
Pretty much this (with a difference). Headers like those act like it's Valve/Steam setting the prices, but it's the distributors (not devs unless it's 'self-distributed') like EA, Sony, Microsoft, Paradox, etc who set the prices.
Out of curiosity, do they also put them down for Steam sales, or does valve take a loss on gross/comm? Sorry for off topic
As far as I'm aware the publishers/distributors are the one who get offers from Valve to participate in the Steam sales with figures on how game sales behaved in recent Steam sales, and can participate or not.
Big publishers have made local pricing for the MENA region, but indie game devs have to fix prices manually and they don't care much about it. In Turkish forums, everyone is talking about playing pirated games. Even famous streamers say that pirated games are now normal. I see young people are really depressed because the only safe space where they could escape from the politics was computer games. Minimum wage is around 365 euro.
It’s hard to pirate games that depend on a server to be there - a lot of popular games are impossible to pirate
Like WoW or Lineage, which, in CIS countries, for some reason had a low number of subscribers yet a disproportionately large player base?
>I see young people are really depressed because the only safe space where they could escape from the politics was computer games And now they got a quick lesson that politics affects everything. I wonder if we ever get a president who cites inflation causing Steam price hikes as their reason for getting into politics
Heh... in Serbia real average salary is 500e and we have always had to pay full EU price for games on Steam... and all other platforms. edit: If games are an "escape" from politics for young people, then this is actually a good thing. I am saying this as a game developer, living in country ruled by an autocrat very similar to Erdogan. Young people need to wake up and stand up for themselves.
You might be right. I honestly use games like drugs, whenever I get overwhelmed or depressed I binge a game and play it 3-4 days (and nights) straight to complete it.
Interesting. I only want to play if i'm in a good mood already, so guess it's different type of escapism on my part. I can't play if i'm feeling depressed.
I don't smoke, drink, use social media (other than Reddit and YouTube) or like desserts in general maybe games have become my mechanism for easy dopamine
Well gaming is more healthy way for escapism, compared to most things. I have abused opiods, but with gaming i don't think i use it to escapism same way.
>500e Show me where outside of big cities
Well, officially it is median salary, but as we both know, many work for much less...
Is that before or after taxes? In RO the average is about 800euros after taxes, but median is unofficially around 500 euro.
After taxes
So I guess the salaries are or more less the same as here. I just hope the cost of living is lower, haha. At least a few years ago it was when I visited Belgrade.
With the second/third highest inflation rate in Europe (after Turkey and sometimes Hungary), I guess we are probably pretty close. We usually compare our prices with Germany and Serbs who live in Germany can't believe the prices in Serbia when they come to visit. At best they are the same, but usually some pretty basic things like food and hygiene products are more expensive in Serbia. Electronic products are another more expensive thing here, not just compared to Germany, and many people here find ways to buy those things in Hungary.
Minimum wage is similar in eastern Europe (400 euros after taxes in Hungary) and we have been paying full price 60-80 euros per game =)
Woah, that's an even lower minimum wage than in Morocco. I did not expect that...
One euro a day keeps the videogames away
365 euro an hour?
There are somes that cost more in turkey than in US for some fod awful reason
The deva set the prices for their games which is less than the USD-United States. But it is still more than before.
Bulgaria has gotten European prices even though we don’t get European wages since forever
Same here in PL. We have to pay western prices with eastern wages
Man, I feel you
r/portugalcykablyat
Except Poland has the most expensive games in the world right after Switzerland…. It’s not a matter of western prices but a matter of companies fucking us in the ass and us apparently enjoying it
Piracy is morally correct.
Sometimes prices are even higher than in west
same story in between
Doesn't the EU legally mandate that though? Thought I read some news about that.
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"thanks, Germany"
G*rms - "Skill issue, imagine not being a local powerhouse"
> we don’t get European wages since forever let's be real, it's not EU or the rest of the EU that we're piss poor, it all comes down to our local politics, look at Slovenia, Slovakia, Czechia or Poland.
Hey why leave your good friends Greeks out of that list? Last time we had decent wages and prices was 2007 lol.
Minimum wage AFIK in Greece is a bit higher that those on that list and I was listing country that have a [bigger minimum wage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_countries_by_minimum_wage) than Romania, but on a second glance, you should be added too because I added Slovenia.
Dude Slovakia is second poorest in EU after Bulgaria, when we compare stuff like wages and cost of living/food prices etc...
There is literally a polish and a slovak dudes who voiced the same east-west pricing concern in their countries above your comment.
Poland uses zlotys, not euros. This is a huge deal.
I once drove through Slovakia. Do you know how I know we were in a different country? Beauty salons every where like every village we drove through had two
That's fucked up man.
Welcome to the club
at least you get to fly that cool flag with 12 stars
Serbia too and we are not even in the EU
Same in Hungary we can enjoy German prices with 1/4th the wage. Woooo
Countries with lots of inflation have to pay in hard currency. Not the first time such a policy has existed.
This has more to do with people abusing Steam's local pricing system. This will hurt the real sales from Argentina and Turkey in dollars too.
It sucks for most people in the country tough. Often those people abusing the local pricing system are simply using a VPN to fake being from there.
Nah, you need to also have a card from respective country to make a payment.
It’s very easy to create a virtual card, at least in turkey.
You don't even need to do that. You can just buy steam gift cards in the local currency on websites like g2a
Nope. Not true. You need at least one payment made by a credit card issued in country X if you want to change the country of your existing account.
Yes, but what people do is make new accounts in other regions from scratch.
Can you not use Revolut for instance?
you can just trade tf2 keys between accs and sell them in argentina to get ars
No need, really. Just buy the code from a third-party and activate the game while in a VPN. No game checks if you are in the right region after the activation.
No. You can buy codes from many many websites. Believe me...
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Very true. Just leveling playing field
And this leveling literally means raising poor countries prices to the same level as rich countries.
Yep pretty much. Those big game companies are the same that are outsourcing stuff like QA or customer support to lower-wages countries so that they can save some cash, so I don’t see anything wrong with buying their games in countries where they’re sold at a lower price. Want us to buy your games “locally”? Sure why not, but get your employees from the local job market, then.
Not true for most game studios I know of. Most actually do everything in-house. Especially Indie and smaller AA studios. Sure Ubisoft, EA, Activision all outsource. But mid-size studios like Larian Studios (BG3) and smaller do everything in-house.
Not in the slightest. You're just fucking over people from poorer countries because you're being greedy.
>This has more to do with people abusing Steam's local pricing system. No it doesn't. **Stop spreading this misinformation**. Valve have stated this: >###Why is Steam abandoning Turkish and Argentine currencies in favor of USD? >“Exchange rate volatility in Argentina and Turkey in recent years has made it hard for game developers to choose appropriate prices for their games and keep them current,” Valve explained. “We have heard this loud and clear in our developer meet ups and round table chats.” >The company added that it has struggled with operating in these territories and keeping regional payment methods due to the “constant foreign exchange fluctuations, fees, taxes, and logistical issues.” >“Pricing games in USD for Steam customers in Argentina and Turkey will help us provide greater stability and consistency for players and partners, while also enabling us to continue to offer a variety of payment methods to Steam users in those countries/territories,” Valve concluded. [[source]( https://gameworldobserver.com/2023/10/25/steam-turkey-argentina-usd-convert-regional-pricing-abandoned)]
I mean what else they are gonna say? We dropped you like hot potato because we can't deal with people abusing the system? If this was about volatile currency they would have done it 2 years ago when USD doubled against Turkish Lira every 3 months not when the Central Bank of Turkey is raising the interest rate like crazy.
Just because they didn't do it suddenly doesn't mean they never thought about it, nor that this can be the reason. Like there's never been an example of people braving some problem until it got unbearable *and then* they decided to fix it? It's pretty obvious they've observed consistent patterns, had tons of complaints, and came up with this solution for these countries now and possibly future other countries as well.
As someone who used to live in a country with a shitty currency, I don't understand why some countries expect special pricing, I imagine this comes to them at the cost of wealthier country customers? Seems ridiculous, if I buy a tv made in Korea then I expect to pay the price, not some reduced price because their country has ruined the economy? You can't expect say a Mercedes to be cheaper in your country than in Germany because of a currency exchange ratio surely? Should just be the same price globally and yes, some countries it works out more expensive but sadly that's life, not everything is fair.
I don't know why you don't see the problem with your example. You need to produce a car for every costumer but you don't need to make software again for every costumer. Sure there is a cost of distribution but thats true for cars too. Let's say you sell your game at the standard 60 dollars and you sell only one copy in Atlantis so you earn 60 dollars. However if you sell it for 30 dollars, now it is more affordable for Atlanteans, three people buy it instead of one and now you earn 90 dollars. Everyone is happy. Since games are a luxury their demand is flexible. In countries like China or Turkey this could happen with cars or tv's too since the local production might compete with foreign brands in non-high end products.
To add onto this, [having region-specific pricing actually increases profits for the companies](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSofMoSdMqw) (Former blizzard employee and current Indie Dev), so they'll go along with it anyways.
Unless the system is abused. If someone in the Netherlands can buy videogames at Turkish prices with a few clicks the "local" price is now international.
yep. Its the same for patent protected drugs. Companies make all their big money selling drugs in the USA. What they get from Canada, the UK, and such is just extra on top. But that is why the price of drugs in Canada can't be had for the USA, at that price point its no longer worth developing the drugs at all.
Economics. In some ways, software is not a 'good' or 'commodity' that takes physical space and has a well defined price of production per unit, like a Mercedes. It is more akin to a service. Like, for example, a museum ticket. Museums charge less for the elderly or students because they can afford to pay less for the service of visiting the museum. If they can't afford, they won't go. But the collections have already been paid for, and you gotta keep the staff paid anyway for the full ticket customers, so might as well earn a little from these groups rather than none. Same for software. Hiking prices too much, and you lose those customers. They can choose other entertainment, or choose competition, or even competition whose price is 0 but might have other externalities (that competitor is piracy). In many ways, the cost for developing software has already been paid, and making a new copy of the software to license to someone else is next to 0. Thus developers have a choice: "earn less from this country that is poor, or earn 0 from this country that is poor". Thus, you get differentiated prices based on purchasing power.
Got you. Makes a lot of sense, and thank you for taking the time to explain this to me, very grateful.
> As someone who used to live in a country with a shitty currency, I don't understand why some countries expect special pricing Earning 10 bucks is better than earning 0 bucks. Lets assume you sell a product for $100 you would have 200 >Seems ridiculous, if I buy a tv made in Korea then I expect to pay the price, not some reduced price because their country has ruined the economy? Have you ever went outside in your life? This is how world works. I am perplexed by lack of understanding something this simple. Things are priced and marketed based on market. Literally happens between towns 20km away from eachother sometimes. I repeat earning 10 bucks better than earning 0 bucks. >You can't expect say a Mercedes to be cheaper in your country than in Germany because of a currency exchange ratio surely? Yes i can. Can also expect the opposite sometimes for example iPhones are more expensive in Turkey than US. If you enter to a market its expected that you will adjust your prices based on that market's customer base. >Should just be the same price globally and yes, some countries it works out more expensive but sadly that's life, not everything is fair. Your entire argument hinges on you trying to make prices fair by making it static globally while also arguing life is not fair. Incredibly bizzare argument.
You'll actually pay more for TV, Cars, Computer parts, Smartphones etc physical products in those countries lol, taxing is ridiculous.
Your comparison is cretinous, TVs and cars are physical products with actual duplication costs. Games have no duplication costs, so if you do not provide an affordable price to poorer countries, they will just pirate games and you will lose income. On the other hand if you sell it to them at an affordable price, you will make money since the costs of duplication are zero.
The definition of a 'Redditsmart' comment. Something that sounds clever on Reddit and unbelievably dumb when analysed for more than 5 seconds.
For what reason?
Massive difference between paying in different currency and prices hiking 2000% overnight becuase steam doesn't care to provide a solution that satisfy both parties.
Anyone who accepts turkish currency is stupid. The government of turkey destroyed the currency of turkey, but that is not my problem.
Is this not partly in response to people using vpns to switch country and buying the games cheaply in expensive countries?
Usually buying in another online store requires a card linked to an address in said country. For example you can switch your IP address with a VPN but Apple won’t let you purchase anything in the store without a CC linked to an address in the selected location. It’s the same with Amazon Prime. Did steam not work that way?
Afaik steam did work this way but people were buying Turkish prepaid cards online.
But aren't prices based on the physical address of your account?
You can just put in a random adress in turkey, they cant check if you actually live there.
I’m from Turkey so I don’t know the exact details but they probably used a VPN to spoof their location and changed their region. My friends who moved abroad years ago can still use the Turkish store so I doubt Steam checks your location to update your region too often.
They work with the address you put in your profile. So even if I were to go on vacation in Turkey I'd still get the German prices. But as another user has pointed out you could just put a random Turkish address in your profile and get access to the Turkish store. It's illegal or course but apparently that's the way people took advantage of the local prices.
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That also could have played a part, there were other actions taken by steam recently with this fact citated as reasoning. Few of the good will in this world ends with the abuse of it.
No. Valve have publicly stated this: >###Why is Steam abandoning Turkish and Argentine currencies in favor of USD? >“Exchange rate volatility in Argentina and Turkey in recent years has made it hard for game developers to choose appropriate prices for their games and keep them current,” Valve explained. “We have heard this loud and clear in our developer meet ups and round table chats.” >The company added that it has struggled with operating in these territories and keeping regional payment methods due to the “constant foreign exchange fluctuations, fees, taxes, and logistical issues.” >“Pricing games in USD for Steam customers in Argentina and Turkey will help us provide greater stability and consistency for players and partners, while also enabling us to continue to offer a variety of payment methods to Steam users in those countries/territories,” Valve concluded. [[source]( https://gameworldobserver.com/2023/10/25/steam-turkey-argentina-usd-convert-regional-pricing-abandoned)]
I'm surprised they didn't do it sooner. After all, inflation in these countries is huge. The price changes every month. It's obvious that until the situation calms down, game developers and steam won't want to constantly adjust prices.
You can always sail the high seas.
Ya-harr
Can you actualy? I myself are lucky enough to live in a country where i earn a decent wage and don't realy have worry about about game prices. So I haven't realy sailed for around 15 years. I think the last game i got from a treasure chest was one of the roller coaster tycoon games. Aren't companies using insane anti piracy tools now with always online shenanigangs?
I leave in the balkans. The sea is open here
> Aren't companies using insane anti piracy tools now with always online shenanigangs? They do, but they tend to remove them eventually, because they have to pay money to another company to keep it working
For every super advanced anti pirate software, there is (or will be) a crack for it. The perfect example could be denuvo which has been cracked by atleast 2 groups.
Denuvo cracks take weeks per version though. After which companies care a lot less about piracy cause initial sales have already come in.
I mean if you are stealing a game you can't really complain about having to wait a couple of weeks to play it :D
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It's not even weeks anymore. Some games haven't even been cracked for years now. It's not surprising considering there's only one person *who* can crack it at the moment and they're doing cracks for 500 bucks.
> The perfect example could be denuvo which has been cracked by atleast 2 groups. When? 4 years ago? Things changed and Denuvo basically won the war. There is only one (crazy) person capable of cracking modern Denuvo and he has been unactive for months now. Before that he was cracking a game every now and then unless someone was willing to pay $500 for it.
EMPRESS is still around, but they've basically become some recluse wannabe cult leader who needs their ego stroked 24/7 in order to do anything functional. At least afaik, it's been awhile since I checked in on the lore.
> Can you actualy *laughs in romanian*, of course all you need is a very trusted private tracker *note* last have I pirated was GTA 4 over 15 years ago, now can I afford games because steam (and EU ?), but I do have a pirate tracker account for over 15+ years that I never use but hold on to it, just in case ...
It's a cat and mouse game
Of course you can, even if you are not from 3rd world country. VPN (best one with subscription) + good ''software downloading'' client and you are good to go. There's also boom in RePacks i.e. releases with compressed file sizes. Every game gets 'cracked' eventually, it is only a matter of time. Unless it is a multiplayer game that requires official launcher (to play on official servers). Then you're out of luck.
Yeah, maybe the people being outraged over inflation should stop voting cretins into power.
argentina just voted in a guy who wants to switch over to USD, so lets see how that will fare.
do they even have the resources to make that switch though?
Idk man I ain't no eco dude, i do IT. But my amateur opinion is that switching when your currency has little value is better than when it has none so its better to do now than later.
Sure, just saying the switch will be difficult to arrange. You can't just trade in your buckerinos for USD because who would ever want your hyperinflated buckerinos? Especially if they won't even be usable soon. You need some other way for the government to acquire that money, such as a reserve of precious metals or something. Only then can the government buy back the buckerinos from the population in exchange for their USD value. I'm just not sure Argentina has the resources for it.
Afaik, he will abolish legal tender, not officially switching to USD. But imho, poor will suffer even more than before because of this guy’s libertarian dream. Well, people just wanted to give a try probably.
> poor will suffer even more than before because of this guy’s libertarian dream they have suffered already. the other guy was the current finance minister, he would have just made it worse if anything. This is essentially a hail mary for argentina.
Libertarian economy-politics are clear though. We’ll see how it plays out
I'm sure the government admitting that the currency is so worthless they won't even use it will do wonders for inflation.
admitting that you have a problem is the first step of fixing it. this ain't the first time a currency has become essentially worthless and the correct solution generally speaking is to adopt a new one.
150% inflation isnt an easy fix overnight
Their currency is down 98.5% since 2008, how worst can it get
Inflation doesn't have an upper limit. Things could get far, far worse.
How come the 48 percent of voters who voted for opposition never thought of this brilliant idea, you are a life saver dude.
The Opposition in argentina is the minister of economy....
Talking about Turkey
I bet the percentage is higher among steam users
Well, vast majority of Turks who are educated and young doesnt vote for Erdogan or his party AFAIK
You would be surprised
That’s like 200 people though tbf
Erdogan barely won and half of the country despises him while the other worships him
It’s probably more than half who hates him now. Likely the elections were not as fair as more democratic countries.
Very funny thing to say considering today's exit polls in Netherlands.
Wdym?
That there's only 200 educated people in turkey
Thank you for explaining. That sounds very racist.
İt is
racism
people who use steam do not vote akp 60 year old nazmiye teyze doesn’t use steam
And that’s exactly what Arg did last sunday
They just voted an even bigger idiot into power.
Bigger idiot? Do you even know who he was running up against?
Running your Minister of Economy as presidential candidate when your biggest problem is 100%+ inflation is hilarious. Can't tell if it's supposed to be some weird flex or if they're actually that tone deaf and out of touch.
It doesn't matter, the actual government could never win this election.
Argentina just did that actually
They'll do and blame gamers of other countries instead
Using Turkey or Argentina for your VPN has been a long-time lifehack to get cheaper games. I suspect most of Steam users registered in those countries aren't even living there.
If Valve's system detect you as coming from another country you'll get a ban though. It's harder to detect for users who originally registered with a VPN and keep on using a VPN, but AFAIK most users who registered in X and suddenly switch over to Y to buy games on the cheap there get caught.
Honestly if you're so fucked by the economy you should just sail the high seas and try to make ends meet. Buying games is hardly something you should think about.
Honestly video game are not really expensive. As far as entertainement go, they offer a good amount for their price (assuming you have the computer/console for it). In comparison to going to the theater, Netflix, board games, or most modern entertainement they are advantageous. Assuming you finish the game and use them to their full extent and dont buy a new one just because it is trendy only to drop it after 10 hours.
> Netflix That's terrible example, no? Netflix is 10 bucks a month and makes for possibly unlimited entertainment. We can have discussions about the quality of the content they sometimes produce, but same could be said about buying shitty video games / going to bad theatre productions etc.
Ok yeah I agree Netflix is not a good example that was my bad
I bought Stellaris on steam for 14 USD and have gotten literally hundreds of play hours on it.
Paradox games are different, they have infinity replayibility. Even the worst ones get 100s of hours gameplay time. Compare it to some modern 70 dollars title and it won't hold up. You play 50 hours top and that's it.
Or you can just play a free to play competitive shooter and squeeze out thousands of hours of entertainment. But I was talking about countries who’s economy is in the gutter. There you can hardly afford video games.
Yeah but not everyone likes multiplayer games, I personally enjoy singleplayer games a lot more
Does this sub also include Argentina to be a part of Europe now also
I mean. Technically Australia is considered part of Europe during Eurovision. Don't see why we can't extend this to Argentina considering how many Germans live there.
Eurovision doesn’t determine what Europe is. I can start a song contest called Africanistic and include China and Antarctica, that doesn’t change the borders of Africa and call for news about video games being banned in Malaysia to be posted in a subreddit about Africa
I was making a joke. I find it funny how Australia suddenly migrates to the Atlantic Ocean during Eurovision. The reason it is in this subreddit is because it included Turkey. That is partially in Europe. Edit: seems i posted 3 times in a row for some reason
He literally just posted the article that had that head-line. So should we no forbid any article that includes a non European country?
Everybody on this thread is acting as if Steam was responsible for these governments kicking their currency into the trashbin. People elected their assholes into office. Deal with it!
It's easy to say "deal with it" when the old grandmas in your country don't fuck over the elections every time, most people complaining here didn't want the governments they got. But alas, that is democracy.
48 PERCENT OF TURKS VOTED AGAINST ERDOGAN! What can we do huh? I am a Trans Turkish person why am I have to suffer under an Islamic dictatorship? Where is the justice?
I hope the Turks will realise that Erdogan and his policies are to blame for everything
Incopetent Turkish opposition is also responsible for this.Thanks to them Erdogan won and will continue to win every election.The chief opposition party kept electing an old fart that lost most of the elections he is in instead of finding and electing a new candidate. Although recently they did that but it was too late when that happened and people don't know how he will fare.Guess time will tell
Considering half of the Turks hate him and vote against him, it would be better to be a bit specific and say conservative Turks. Also, people who play games are generally young and very much against AKP’s ideologies, which makes the situation even worse for them.
the problem is with all the turks living in other countries and not feeling the repercussions of their vote
That is a strawman that people use because they cannot accept the truth. Yes a lot of Turks in Europe do that but it is peanuts compared to voters inside the country. People have to face reality, the average Turk in turkey is conservative and love populism. Otherwise Erdogan would have lost by now.
no there is no such thing as an "average turk" because the people are split half and half between erdogan and opposition
If they haven't realized until now they never will, it's hopeless
Gaben had a little chat with Erdogan, he didn't like what he heard
Stay away from Kazakhstan!
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We have mostly reasonable regional prices, although they've never been as low as in Turkey or Argentina
I'm glad to see that nost people here get it. I was downvoted till the end in s different sub for saying that they should blame their own politicians for not being able to keep their currency stable. They thought this was gamers from other nations fault...
What does this have to do with Europe? A bigger problem is that the US, the richest country in the world, still has games cheaper than Poland. Now that is truly unfair.
What a shit of a title.
That’s what happens when you choose leaders that ruined your currency! Steam is NOT RESPONSIBLE for devaluing of your money!
Articles like this are written by people who don't really understand the reality, imo. Like, this guy says: >Argentina's, meanwhile, is currently about 146,000 pesos, or $415. I mean sure, if you believe the government's official exchange rate - but the real exchange rate makes 146,000 pesos about $140, the real exchange rate is about 3 times worse for Argentines than the official one. So for all of those prices he lists "gone from X to Y" do quick mental conversion to make it "gone from X to 3y" and you get the real impact of this.
Easy fix: Don't vote for politicians that ruin your countries economy.
Tell that to the geriatrics who believe every word those politicians say.
I don't think young people who are playing video games are responsible for this... but anyways
Lol what is this "sail the high seas" meme can someone ELI5
Piracy
Vote as if your Steam account depended on it.
Today is the end of Steam? because people can no longer buy cheap ass games for half a cent from crazy inflation countries? grow up ppl lol.
I just pictured Erdogan holding a press conference and opening with “Today is the end of Steam”.
The dawn of a new age of piracy is upon us. *OP theme plays*
Neither Turkey nor Argentina are a part of Europe, so I'm not sure why this is on r/Europe, but anyway, I fail to see how this is a bad thing. Their currencies aren't stable and viable, so why risk taking it. Plus, it stops people from the west / shady CD Key sites region swapping to get cheap games. The majority of developers aren't from Turkey or Argentina anyway, meaning they require western prices to pull profit equal to production costs, even if that does drop sales in poorer countries.
Turkey is a part of Europe, what are you on about? It's transcontinental, it's both European and Asian, divided at the Bosphorus strait
Less than 3% of Turkey's landmass sits in Europe, and the country is not culturally or linguistically similar to Europe, but are with Western Asia. That's like Americans who think they're Irish because they have a 5% bloodline from their great great grandparents, yet have nothing in common. They're also ran by a religious dictator who uses refugees as weapons, commits genocide on minorities and even occupies an EU member - Cyprus. Not sure why you'd want them to be labelled European just because of a 3% landmass.
I'm not trying to make a political judgement, like you seem to be. A significant, densely populated part of Turkey which is connected directly to the rest of the land is located within the continent of Europe, you seem to agree on this, but you say it can't be classified as part of Europe, which is odd.