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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".

 

[Xzi]

It's a shame that Valve pulled that move instead of cracking down on easy region changing.

To be fair, Valve didn't make the move because of region-switching, they made the move because Argentina has inflation in the triple digits. The economy is totally shot, but eliminating the departments of health, education, and labor in the middle of such a crisis can obviously only make matters worse.

 

[SeventhSon7]

GabeN once said, 'piracy is a service issue'

so you know what to do...

 

[jomaper]

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

bobo

Post automatically merged: Nov 22, 2023

Is this a good thing tho ? Genuinely wondering cuz ... Idk, a country adopting the currency of another seems a bit weird to me but I don't know the situation

no, it's a horrible idea. we'll be a colony

Post automatically merged: Nov 22, 2023

Regarding the particular case of Argentina and this election I would say the following, I believe most people voted against the perpetuation of what was the current government. The current government has been in office since 2003 (with a little 4 years pause in between), they have collapsed the economy, they have proven cases of corruption and embezzlement of funds all around, they haven't shown any competence in leading the country forward and they have created a monumental rift in society. The social rift that existed in America since perhaps 2020 existed in Argentina since at least 2007, and it was a creation of the left here, or to be precise of the government in office, the "Kirchnerist" party.

I believe that they on their own, without any external help, created a hostile situation in society, and a complete lack of confidence in the government that nobody wanted. So I can't tell for sure how many people voted "the right" and how many people voted "anything but the assholes that are in office since 2003" (that happens to be the same vote); but what I can say is that the current party in office earned the disgust of the population on their own right.

Most people voted your second option. But I disagree with your first paragraph. The "little" 4 years pause took the biggest loan the IMF ever gave and it was used for literally nothing but money laundering.

 

[Xzi]

GabeN once said, 'piracy is a service issue'

so you know what to do...

I'm sure piracy was already pretty common there, people can generally only afford necessities at most.

 

[regnad]

Just waiting for the same to happen here in Japan as the yen plummets.

Europeans and Americans: ever wanted to visit Japan? You'll live like aristocracy if you come.

 

[jomaper]

Just waiting for the same to happen here in Japan as the yen plummets.

Europeans and Americans: ever wanted to visit Japan? You'll live like aristocracy if you come.

While there's a famous quote about how there's 4 type of countries: developed, in development, Japan and Argentina, I don't think you realize how big the difference is between our economies.
I really really hope the Japan's economy gets stronger, but your reality is a paradise for us hah.

 

[Lather]

The lives of the people in those areas are already difficult, but they are not even qualified to play games. XDD

 

[Avalyn]

Forcing people into piracy. Nice job!

 

[Etunts]

At Turkey's inflation rate, Greece will be able to just buy Constantinople from Turkey. lmao


On the bright side, all you baldies out there can get super cheap hair transplants! And all you people missing teeth, can get some cheap dental implants in Turkey! Turkey's Sultan is speed running his economy into the ground!

actually nothing in turkey is made in turkey, so they are essentially priced after where they are imported + tax.
And yes, now i cant buy any game in sales from steam as a turk.

 

[Purple_Shyguy]

Imagine being a Valve/Steam fanboy.

Gabe Newell: "piracy is a service issue not a pricing problem"

Also Gabe Newell: [increases the cost of your games 1000%]

 

[Deleted member 194275]

To be fair, Valve didn't make the move because of region-switching, they made the move because Argentina has inflation in the triple digits.

so explain why Valve applied this measure on countries with 2% inflation rate with 10+ years of economical stability?

 

[brunocar]

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.

bro u are a nazi, tf u saying

 

[ZeroFX]

my steam account was argentinian in the past, i sure made good use of that little country's failed currency.

 

[NinStar]

my steam account was argentinian in the past, i sure made good use of that little country's failed currency.

Me and 99.9% of my Switch purchase history.

 

[nubman33]

fuck gabe and fuck steam.

 

[matias3ds]

I'm sure piracy was already pretty common there, people can generally only afford necessities at most.

Actually piracy was adopted in South America way before , when the people didn't know that they where buying pirate games and consoles .
In the 80´s Nintendo wasn´t interested in promoting or selling their products to South America and not even iterested in translating those games into Spanish .
So piracy consoles such as nes , sega and snes appear and people start buying them without the knoledge that these consoles are not the real deal , and the games didnt even came with a box .

 

[Nightwish]

Is this a good thing tho ?

No. It works for a few export economies, everyone else pegging their currency inevitably runs out of easy access to the global reserve currency, mostly because its fluctuations aren't in their interest. Even export led economies mostly trading on the dollar can have serious issues with demand changes, unless they are a petro-state storing enormous amounts and colluding to quickly fix the issue. And, no, you can't *just* adapt the economy, otherwise the eurozone wouldn't be in permanent stagnation and managed decline.
As for inflation, as long as your personal income rises to keep the standards of living, who cares? Well, you care because it's barely ever used to crowd in long term investment instead of temporary relief, thus worsening the problem by increasing imports that you become more reliant on.
Anyway, Japan is still doing fine, to the astonishment of well-suited economists.

 

[sarkwalvein]

Actually piracy was adopted in South America way before , when the people didn't know that they where buying pirate games and consoles .
In the 80´s Nintendo wasn´t interested in promoting or selling their products to South America and not even iterested in translating those games into Spanish .
So piracy consoles such as nes , sega and snes appear and people start buying them without the knoledge that these consoles are not the real deal , and the games didnt even came with a box .

I know really. Some people here prefer the "Megadrive", some others the "Genesis", but they don't know that the "SONGA" is the real deal.

 

[HarveyHouston]

Not good for those outside of the U.S. Now they're going to succumb to the same kinds of inflated rates we Americans have to suffer through!

 

[Viri]

Imagine being a Valve/Steam fanboy.

Gabe Newell: "piracy is a service issue not a pricing problem"

Also Gabe Newell: [increases the cost of your games 1000%]

I don't think there are that many Steam fanboys on this website, seeing as this website isn't well known for buying video games.