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Steam announced the highly volatile exchange rate going on with both Argentina's peso and Turkey's lira makes it hard for game developers to keep an appropriate and steady pricing for their games, which prompted Valve to make a change in the currency for these countries to instead default to US dollars, starting on November 20th, 2023. The mentioned change was notified to game developers, so they could make the proper changes to their games' pricing to take into account this new change.

The currency change has now taken place, starting yesterday, and this has seen a huge price increase for both territories, with some games incrementing no only by the hundreds in percentage, but even to the thousands in percentage compared to the original price before the change took place. Argentinian users in Reddit have put together a price table comparing prices from before Nov 20th, and after Nov 20th. Some handful of cases saw some games like Diablo IV got a reduced price after the change (-7,64%), but this is only an insignificant minority, since a big amount of games saw increases all over the board, with games like Cyberpunk 2077 seeing an increase of 66+%, going from the original price of $27,06 USD up to $44,99 USD, and in the most dire of cases, games like Stardew Valley which was originally priced at $0,49 USD, is now going for $14,99 USD, an increase of an overwhelming 2977% in price.

While the situation is still fairly recent, some game developers have noted that the cause of these price increases for some games seems to be the cause of a lack of manual input from the developers to update the price listings for their own games. Game developers were notified about the situation last month, but a lot of devs missed the notice and haven't updated their listings, which resulted in the aforementioned issue.

It's worth mentioning as well that these two countries are not the only ones which could be affected, since the volatility of the exchanges in currency in other Latin American (both Central and South America) and MENA (including middle east and North Africa) regions will also cause changes when it comes to Steam and its pricing for a number of countries located in those regions. The affected countries will be the following:

LATAM-USD Region:
Central America:

• Belize
• El Salvador
• Guatemala
• Honduras
• Nicaragua
• Panama

South America:

• Argentina
• Bolivia
• Ecuador
• Guyana
• Paraguay
• Suriname
• Venezuela

MENA-USD Region:
Middle East:

• Bahrain
• Egypt
• Iraq
• Jordan
• Lebanon
• Oman
• Palestine
• Turkey
• Yemen

North Africa:

• Algeria
• Libya
• Morocco
• Tunisia
• Sudan

Source

PS: In the table seen above, "s/i" means "without tax" and "c/i" means "with tax".

 

[x65943]

The inflation in Turkey and Argentina is near unprecedented so it makes sense to ditch the currencies

Funny enough Javier Milei who was just elected in Argentina wants to change their currency to the USD - so it seems this was bound to happen to them one way or another

 

[k7ra]

Nice~

 

[JuanMena]

make a change in the currency for these countries to instead default to US dollars, starting on November 20th, 2023.

Ask Cuba how that went.
But what happens with unstable coins such as Russia's Ruble?
Are they not offering any *adjustments for them? Or just for the brown people?

Also, don't y'all act like saints since everyone was abusing this "Change your shop settings to Argentina to get cheaper prices".
Even Nintendo's eShop was "affected" by this one simple life-hack developers hates so much.

 

[k7ra]

Ask Cuba how that went.
But what happens with unstable coins such as Russia's Ruble?
Are they not offering any changes for them? Or just for the brown people?

Also, don't y'all act like saints since everyone was abusing this "Change your shop settings to Argentina to get cheaper prices".
Even Nintendo's eShop was "affected" by this one simple life-hack developers hates so much.

You can't buy many stuff with rubles.
Many games disable support for Russia.
And Russians can't use thier bank cards to pay for any steam stuff, only buy vouchers or use other country sites to add currency on account. So if they want add it, they buy usd with commission - then steam convert to rubles with commission

 

[brunocar]

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Steam announced the highly volatile exchange rate going on with both Argentina's peso and Turkey's lira makes it hard for game developers to keep an appropriate and steady pricing for their games, which prompted Valve to make a change in the currency for these countries to instead default to US dollars, starting on November 20th, 2023. The mentioned change was notified to game developers, so they could make the proper changes to their games' pricing to take into account this new change.

The currency change has now taken place, starting yesterday, and this has seen a huge price increase for both territories, with some games incrementing no only by the hundreds in percentage, but even to the thousands in percentage compared to the original price before the change took place. Argentinian users in Reddit have put together a price table comparing prices from before Nov 20th, and after Nov 20th. Some handful of cases saw some games like Diablo IV got a reduced price after the change (-7,64%), but this is only an insignificant minority, since a big amount of games saw increases all over the board, with games like Cyberpunk 2077 seeing an increase of 66+%, going from the original price of $27,06 USD up to $44,99 USD, and in the most dire of cases, games like Stardew Valley which was originally priced at $0,49 USD, is now going for $14,99 USD, an increase of an overwhelming 2977% in price.

While the situation is still fairly recent, some game developers have noted that the cause of these price increases for some games seems to be the cause of a lack of manual input from the developers to update the price listings for their own games. Game developers were notified about the situation last month, but a lot of devs missed the notice and haven't updated their listings, which resulted in the aforementioned issue.

It's worth mentioning as well that these two countries are not the only ones which could be affected, since the volatility of the exchanges in currency in other Latin American (both Central and South America) and MENA (including middle east and North Africa) regions will also cause changes when it comes to Steam and its pricing for a number of countries located in those regions. The affected countries will be the following:

LATAM-USD Region:
Central America:

• Belize
• El Salvador
• Guatemala
• Honduras
• Nicaragua
• Panama

South America:

• Argentina
• Bolivia
• Ecuador
• Guyana
• Paraguay
• Suriname
• Venezuela

MENA-USD Region:
Middle East:

• Bahrain
• Egypt
• Iraq
• Jordan
• Lebanon
• Oman
• Palestine
• Turkey
• Yemen

North Africa:

• Algeria
• Libya
• Morocco
• Tunisia
• Sudan

Source

PS: In the table seen above, "s/i" means "without tax" and "c/i" means "with tax".

this sucks an unimaginable amount of balls.

this effectively means piracy is back as the only affortable way to game in these countries.

 

[x65943]

Ask Cuba how that went.
But what happens with unstable coins such as Russia's Ruble?
Are they not offering any *adjustments for them? Or just for the brown people?

Also, don't y'all act like saints since everyone was abusing this "Change your shop settings to Argentina to get cheaper prices".
Even Nintendo's eShop was "affected" by this one simple life-hack developers hates so much.

Russia inflation 2022 20%
Ukraine inflation 2022 20%
Argentina inflation 2022 95% (now over 100%)
Turkey inflation 2022 72%

The first two countries are literally at war yet the inflation is much lower - the difference is actually due to government policy - but the fact of the matter is the inflation is way too great to continue to deal in these currencies in Argentina and Turkey

Nothing to do with race, and tbh Argentinians are whiter than some Europeans

 

[k7ra]

this sucks an unimaginable amount of balls.

this effectively means piracy is back as the only affortable way to game in these countries.

Sadly, it's truth.
Some games cost as salary or even higher

 

[BraveDragonWolf]

The American dollar is going to be on it's way out anyway. Who knows when actually?

 

[MariArch]

Well, luckily no one will have to worry about Argentinian pesos soon enough.

 

[raxadian]

I can't buy games on Steam directly anyway cause they don't take debit cards from Argentina.

 

[Marc_LFD]

Nothing to do with race, and tbh Argentinians are whiter than some Europeans

Some Argentinians are Europeans because they immigrated over there. That's why they're "White"

Heck, the new president is undoubtedly European himself and god damn I love his blue eyes.

 

[maikel_12]

Steam will release gift card for that USD-latam? In Venezuela you used to buy USA gift cards and they worked without problems but about a year and a half ago they blocked their use outside the USA so I would love for them to release cards now that Venezuela is USD-Latam so I can buy again, since they don't exist here. way to pay on steam in addition to a giftcard

 

[Deleted member 194275]

Ask Cuba how that went.
But what happens with unstable coins such as Russia's Ruble?
Are they not offering any *adjustments for them? Or just for the brown people?

Also, don't y'all act like saints since everyone was abusing this "Change your shop settings to Argentina to get cheaper prices".
Even Nintendo's eShop was "affected" by this one simple life-hack developers hates so much.

I don't know about every country in the list, but Bolivia is super stable right now, both with their inflation rate and their exchange rate. So why it is on the list? I believe the current economic challenges for Argentina is just an excuse to steam to tell South America to fuck off.


Anyway, not the first time steam shows how they hate South America.

(side note, at least on Brazil, they skip taxes like pros. When you buy something from there, the receipt come from Luxembourg, not USA or Brazil like PSN, Xbox Live or eshop do, so even domestic taxes are not an excuse in this case)

 

[JuanMena]

I don't know about every country in the list, but Bolivia is super stable right now, both with their inflation rate and their exchange rate. So why it is on the list? I believe the current economic challenges for Argentina is just an excuse to steam to tell South America to fuck off.


Anyway, not the first time steam shows how they hate South America.

(side note, at least on Brazil, they skip taxes like pros. When you buy something from there, the receipt come from Luxembourg, not USA or Brazil like PSN, Xbox Live or eshop do, so even domestic taxes are not an excuse in this case)

Let alone all the people that took advantage of Argentinian economics to get cheap bullshit.
Those are not getting any kind of sanctions.

But hey! Let's rise the price to all of South America because why not?

 

[raxadian]

Only like two credit cards brands worked on Steam in Argentina. Hopefully they will take debit cards again now that everything is in USA dollars.

 

[matias3ds]

Yeah with the new president now we will change our currency Pesos for Us dollards . Finger Cross that he can achieve such a hard change

 

[SadOrigami]

In case someone is wondering, a normal salary here in Argentina is around $150-$300usd when converted...

 

[ShadowOne333]

In case someone is wondering, a normal salary here in Argentina is around $150-$300usd when converted...

Don't forget to mention the time frame in which you earn that salary.
$150-$300 a week I'd assume, given how that's more or less the standard in Latin America (I'm in Mexico btw)

 

[Cris1997XX]

Damn, it seems like this thread awakened the South Americans in GBATemp