How have the new price changes affected your Steam store shopping?
Needs a "I have no delusional platform loyalty and will buy from wherever is cheapest. Except tencent...I mean, epic." option.
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Need an "I mostly buy games FOR steam, not from steam. No difference " option ( ' :
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I'll keep spending the same as always
This option works. Spending $0 before and after still counts as "the same as always".
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I generally only acquire games from bundles or trading, seldom directly from Steam (3 games in the last 2 years, average price of about 1 USD). Maybe it will provide incentive for us to work on our backlogs instead of buying new games that aren't deeply discounted.
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I mean I already abstain from getting anything that isn't at least 75% off unless I am 1000% sure I want/like/will hopefully soon play it. Then again most my wishlist is also just DLC for the sake of completion, and those are always a hit or miss anyways. That and I'd rather wait for stuff to get bundled unless it's an absolute must-have right then and there upon release, which isn't often the case for me. I think. At least as far as PC games go. I admit my wallet sits a bit looser on some console games, but I also buy fewer of those than steam games.
That said, the one mobile gacha game I actually actively play has had a price increase on other currencies to balance out the USD increase in strength, but they also upgraded what you got in those prem currency packages, as in while you had to pay more to make up for currency fluctuation, you also got more than you did before. (And if you never spend any money on the gacha nothing really changed for ya.) The one subscription option they had stayed at the OG price so no changes there.
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the one mobile gacha game I actually actively play
For decades they told us high cholesterol and too much salt were the worst, but what will end us as a species is really the ubiquity of sugar in everything, as well as the existence of "free" to play games.
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oh some of the new prices are so stupid, im living in vietnam and our price for blasphemous is about the same as canada's ffs, even south koreans can buy it for cheaper than us
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It's become very hard to afford games for Turkish users. For example the price of Mortal Kombat 11 raised by %700. A lot of people like me started to buy games legally thanks to Steam's affordable prices but unfortunately piracy will rise again with these raises.
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Say thanks to all the people that fake their country to buy games very cheap with a "turkish" account.
Of course steam, the publishers and the devs see how many copies get sold to each region and to which price and because more and more exploited/abused it, they forced steam and the publishers to react with increased prices.
The ones that get hit hardest from it are the people that really live in turkey.
But besides that... i seen a lot of turkish accounts that exploited the sg cv system with multiple copies of each very high discounted game that were listed as full value (20p or higher bought for 10 - 60 cents, multiplied with 5 copies or 20 = a lot of cv for nearly nothing).
So it still gave a high percentage of turkish people that had enough money to push their sg accounts.
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And the easiest solution for them is of course to raise prices by 300-1000% to make them a bit cheaper than in South Korea/Singapore/Hong Kong/Japan regions
https://steamdb.info/blog/valve-price-matrix-2022-update/
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I think the best solution would be ending the supply of TRY gift cards for Turkish Steam accounts. People who change their regions are using those gift cards to circumvent the measures by Steam.
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My blacklist is full of my own brothers as they abuse the sg, the thing is most of them really cool guys but I am very old-fashioned when it comes to finding exploits.
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Huh, just had an interesting thought — due to constant inflation, even if a game doesn't go on sale, its effective price is gradually decreasing (especially in the recent years). The 30 bucks we spent 2 years ago had more value than 30 bucks today. I guess that's a good thing for players, and a bad thing for the devs (but they discount games over time anyway)…
Plus, the market is so severely saturated, that I doubt anyone is really struggling with what to play next, tbh.
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160% increase on Mortal Kombat 11, not buying that ever I guess xD
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Rip to my Argentinian Friends, Lowest Increases are around 480% Now youll have to spend half a Month's Salary to buy anything more than Hentai Spam it seems like to me. Imo the Gaming Industry has just taken a huge Step backwards, if not an entire Leap. Kinda fucked up that this is coming shortly after the Gaming Industry even overtaking the Movie or Music Industry Revenue wise. I think we will see a Major Comeback of Piracy now, not even because People want to, but because they cant afford legitimate Copies. Steam made Gaming affordable, and was one of the Major Speaking Points to pick PC over Console Gaming, now all of that is gone.
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i think if you are living in argentina you dont give a crap about paying for games. they most likely just piratte the crap out of any software.
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a lot of us actually rather pay for games, but it's just terrible that piracy is the only option if we want to get a game but also be able to have food for the month
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Say thanks to all the people that fake their country to buy games very cheap with a "argentina" account.
Of course steam, the publishers and the devs see how many copies get sold to each region and to which price and because more and more exploited/abused it, they forced steam and the publishers to react with increased prices.
The ones that get hit hardest from it are the people that really live in Argentina.
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Well, I think it pretty much marks the definite end to me buying anything directly from Steam's store any longer. I already would only begin to consider if the sale was 75% or greater, so this is a "no thanks" from me. Bundles and keys is where it's at.
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Wonder if all those new Turkish citizens that were asking us to change their region will now move out of Turkey, as it's no longer 5x cheaper than US or UE.
Sucks for people who actually live in Argentina or Turkey, but also due to how weak currency was - hard to blame devs for wanting to get how much they planned from the market in USD.
If it would be 4zł = 1USD and game would cost 40zł, I would not blame devs for rising price if exchange rate would change to 8zł = 1USD
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The stupid thing is that the easiest solution for them was to raise prices by 300-1000% to make them a bit lower than in South Korea/Singapore/Hong Kong/Japan regions rather than implementing new regional checks or security measures to filter out scammers
https://steamdb.info/blog/valve-price-matrix-2022-update/
Average salary Singapore $5334
Average salary Hong Kong $4538
Average salary Japan $3522
Average salary South Korea $2915
Average salary Turkey $819
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What else they can do? They already force your account to be in the same region as CC you're using, knowing you won't be able to write to Turkish bank "yo man, I want account in Turkish bank as I need Turkish CC, I don't have Turkish nationality, I've never been to Turkey". And still there are users who found a way to profit from that, they offer "service" where you give them your account credentials, and they buy some shit shovelware with their Turkish CC. That way you change region no problem and enjoy Turkish price.
They tried to limit purchase with IP address but people exploited it with VPNs.
They implemented ridiculous region locks and "no more than 10% worth" as people were making a living from re-selling cheap games from Russia to US or EU.
There is no way to get rid of scammers and people who will try to exploit the system. Plug one hole and they will gnaw through concrete to make new one.
Plus (like I said) main reason behind change is to adjust for volatile currency exchanges. If I'm publisher and be like "I will sell my game for 60 in EU and 20 in Russia, as people are poorer there" I can expect to get 20 USD for full price purchase by Russian citizen. Not 5 USD, as their country went on war and their currency nose dived by 75%. Currency exchange adjustment that happens each 6 or 12 months should be standard. Not exception that make people rally.
If you want to just compare average salary do it in more objective way with showing how much games cost on those markets. Turkey has on average 3.5x lower salary than South Korea, while games cost:
| Country | Salary | Cyberpunk | Hollow Knight | Darkest Dungeon | Days Gone |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Singapore | $5334 | $51.63 | $11.22 | $16.46 | $50.80 |
| Hong Kong | $4538 | $51.10 | $12.67 | $19.98 | $50.97 |
| Japan | $3522 | $66.45 | $11.20 | $21.19 | $37.09 |
| South Korea | $2915 | $52.63 | $12.76 | $21.53 | $36.52 |
| Turkey | $819 | $13.27 (4x) | $1.27 (10x) | $12.53 (2x)* | $17.54 (2x) |
*after price hike, used to be 10x cheaper
Now think that price in Polish zloty was higher than Singaporian one in all games above, except for Cyberpunk which was made by Polish company. Average salary in Poland is $1500, 3.5x less than the one in Singapore. We never had special treatment like people in Turkey or Argentina, as everyone charges us either more or the same as EU.
Would be great if Steam would count price in USD as 100%, check average salary in US and in each single country in the world. And then adjust it based on it automatically. But they can't decide how much game will cost in specific country, it's developer / publisher thing. That's why Poland has 2-3 times worse salary than western europe and pay the same as they are. And that's why Turkey had 2x less income per person on average than Polish citizen, while paying 10x less for games. Don't see how adjusting for those discrepancies is wrong, when it makes field more equal for everyone while cutting incentive to cheat the system.
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These are wrong stats since only Darkest Dungeon has adjusted prices to new "recommended by Steam" price tags.
So Darkest Dungeon compared to Turkey prices:
+31% in Singapore
+59% in Hong Kong
+69% in Japan
+72 in South Korea
Are these really fair prices? Nope.
And Poland is not a separate country legally, it is EU - I think most of you agreed to enter EU some time ago, or to be inside of it since you get nice bonuses of doing so other than to be poor Argentina, Brasil, Turkey or India :-)
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So Darkest Dungeon compared to Turkey prices:
Yes, and they all have higher salaries, so no wonder they cost more than in Turkey. I don't see how it's proving your point. It's developer decision to have people in Turkey pay "only" 1.5-2x less than in those countries, while earning 3x less. And it makes your next point without any sense:
And Poland is not a separate country legally, it is EU - I think most of you agreed to enter EU some time ago, or to be inside of it since you get nice bonuses of doing so other than to be poor Argentina, Brasil, Turkey or India :-)
You either don't understand what EU is (not to mention Turkey is trying to join EU for years now, should people in Turkey start to pay 60 USD for AAA games, as they would no longer be "separate country")?. Or try to make a point with unconnected facts, and with direct negation to the point you tried to make above that "Turkey people earn less so price spikes are bad".
You either want games prices to reflect buying power of citizens and currency power (like it should be), or try to deflect argument that pricing in Poland makes no sense for at least 10 years now by saying "it's part of EU so we should not look how much people really make there, as others have it IMO worse".
Fact that people in Turkey or Brasil make on average 2x less per year than Poland does not mean they should be immune to any kind of price adjustments due to rise in salary or lose of currency value. Poland also had price increase of 25%.
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Poland gets enough free cookies from EU like Orban does for Hungary, can sell stuff to any others EU countries without taxes, can be hired and live in any EU country, can get free education somewhere in Germany/Scandinavia/etc. + many others free things poor people from outside of EU simply can't reach so having higher EU game prices in the country because of all free EU bonuses is nothingness.
In my turkish provincial town people having salary higher than 500-600 euro count as millionaires (it's not Istanbul, Ankara, Antalya or Izmir) and it is not a joke.
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Poland and Hungary are the biggest stoppers and "parasites" in EU, and due to their more and more authoritarian government that break basic rule of law are denied all money for post-COVID recovery. Poland may also lose money for general stuff. And will have to pay millions of EUR of fines, as government doesn't respect verdicts of EU courts.
But again, instead of staying on topic of "Valve adjusted prices due to change in buying power and currency value" you go to attack idea of EU, Poland as also being in a situation where people there make fraction of EU citizens money and pay full price. You attack EU even when Turkey (like I mentioned) try to "go into the club" for years now. Ignored question if would it be fair for developers to charge 60USD to Turkish citizens if they would manage to join "bad EU", as they would get some help to upgrade road or limit price on milk. So it would be nothing for you to pay 60USD for a game in 2 or 3 years, right?
You know that people don't just drop whatever and go to study in Germany? You need money, family, friends to pull that off. Just like in Turkey, people pretty much always are born, live and die in the same area. People do not jump around like you try to show it. And it's not impossible for Turkish people to go to EU, they can grab a working visa and work, or study visa and study. I know few people who came to UK to do all things you mentioned above as not available to Turkey. Only issue is to get visa and pay for it. While someone from Poland can in theory buy a ticket for 15 EUR and fly to France to work. But if you think that's all you need to do, then you would be disappointed. You need to secure place to stay and food while being in a country with way higher cost of living. It took me 3 months before I found a "normal" job in London in fast food, as employers also prefer to hire someone from UK or with few years of residency. Not some random hobo that just came from aboard.
If you say it's so easy in EU to do whatever you want wherever you go (which would "justify" higher price as people have it easier), then try to go from your provincial town to Turkish capital and make a living there. You will also face the problem of lack of place to sleep, money to buy food and time to find a job before you run out of the little money you have. 10 years ago I was also grumpy, sitting in Poland and thinking that "others have it better" and "it's easier for rich people in the west". Until I decided to leave Poland and see how much problem there is in a country without national number, bank account, work. You may be able to go on holiday to find a gig for a month or two and visit country. But not go to another part of continent to settle, and simply start to work without issue.
You need confirmation that you have a place to stay, before you can open a bank account (permanent stay, some hostel won't count). You need bank account as employer will send money there. You need to prove to authorities that you came to work legally and (ideally) already found job to get national number. You need national number to have health insurance. Employers don't want to wait no-idea-how-long before you get national number and bank account. Being born in a country and living there for the whole life does not make you appreciate all the things that are given by default. Unless you have enough experience and can be hired before you move, so employer can vouch for you in bank and authorities - you would have hard time.
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To find a work in EU for non-EU nationals (except Switzerland, US and few other countries) requires all listed above by you + unique for every EU country package of documents from your employer and country officials that you have needed qualifciation, experience and education. So even on a stage of researching/consideration it is much easier to decline even superb qualified non-EU national and hiring someone with same or lower qualification inside of a country or EU.
Yes, problems of first world countries and $60 AAA games without discounts :-P
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I'm Hungarian, I live there. My salary is usually between 500 and 600 euro, depending on the actual conversion rate (which is now 10% worse than last year this time). I simply can't afford even a 40 € game, not to mention a 60 or 80 € one.
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But they can't decide how much game will cost in specific country, it's developer / publisher thing. That's why Poland has 2-3 times worse salary than western europe and pay the same as they are.
No, Poland etc would have to leave the EU (and the whole single market thing) to get a separate set of cheap country pricing. IMO (IANAL) it's already really problematic to offer PLN pricing that is not virtually identical to EUR pricing for any Steam games.
Valve got rid of EU2 pricing (letting publishers set much cheaper prices for the less empowered EU countries) because it wasn't just fine, legally at all.
I can't think of a jolly way to price discriminate in the EU so that poorer countries aren't pretty much unable to afford expensive video games and rather pay more appropriate prices like Brazil and Indonesia have always done.
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No, Poland etc would have to leave the EU (and the whole single market thing) to get a separate set of cheap country pricing.
We already have separate pricing, as we have separate currency. Otherwise, we would be bundled with EUR, not have different price setting. Same for UK, they had separate currency for years albeit being in EU. The digital directive does not say that all prices across all Europe must be the same, that would be impossible. Imagine all electronic shops across EU having to have the same price. Sometimes electronic price is cheaper in Germany than in Poland, and people buy there. Directive says that German shops must not discriminate against Poles, and treat their purchase like if it would be purchased from Germany. Not that German shop can't have lower price on PS5 than Polish one. Same for software.
They get rid of EU2 as it was too much hassle or there was some problem with people (again) re-selling cheaper games to EU1. Don't remember clearly, it was 6 or 7 years ago. Not that it would be illegal to offer cheaper games for people in easter europe
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Of course a Polish store can have game prices below the German equivalent, but then Activision can't instruct the Polish store to refuse orders from German customers looking to benefit from that cheaper price.
Because of them EU laws, on Steam you could also just use your Paypal based in one EU country to buy in any other. Dunno if that still works. IIRC worked fine for UK too, some ten years ago.
And yes, there existed a few highly problematic things like UK keys that were UK only, or excluded specific richer EU countries (as in those times, you could often preorder an AAA-ish game for 25€ from UK shops like Zavvi while it was 40€+ in regular EU shops). I don't know if any game publishers were actually taken to court by consumer advocacy groups and such over that – usually customers yelling at the publisher over and over made them remove those region locks from the Steam subs.
While commercial game reselling is obviously against Steam's EULA, people from EU1 being able to buy cheaper EU2 games is very much the idea of the EU single market.
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It's a double-edged sword. To pretend an indie has no right to keep up with inflation is pretty stupid. But with AAA games, while the prices have stayed the same, the unit sales have massively increased, costs have generally lowered with cheaper cloud storage and hosting. Generally there's no reason for AAA games to increase their prices.
But also, I live in a country where I earn 400-500€, so it's not like I can pretend I'm the one hit hardest by this. Seeing people in 1000€+ income regions spread tears is some real rich kid energy and I'm still in one of the most wealthy countries on the planet. In reality video games still are insanely cheap with dozens of games on a monthly basis being around 1-2€ per unit. There's more gaming to go around than actual time needed to experience them.
So yeah, gaming (especially AAA gaming) is getting more expensive. But honestly looking at rich kids with 100+ game Steam accounts crying their crocodile tears makes the actual victims (poorer regions whose pricing's actually truly unfair) seem like babies who can't get their latest gaming fix.
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This sucks. I'm annoyed and disappointed about this.
Annoyed because I didn't expect it on this scale: there was enough time between the announcement and sale to adjust prices then, so I thought most games (whose devs/pubs wanted to hike the price) would have been changed before the sale.
Disappointed because I'd have picked up more games, that I was on the fence about, during the sale if I'd known.
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thought most games (whose devs/pubs wanted to hike the price) would have been changed before the sale.
No, that would have ruled them out from participation in the ~biggest sale. The whole 28/30 days cooldown. Nobody wants that for themselves.
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The announcement was made in October (~60 days before the start of the sale) and many games did receive pricing changes not long after.
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The autumn sale was rather big too, 22–29 November. I would assume the games that changed price immediately end of October were excluded from it.
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Mh, Oct 25 to Nov 22 is actually exactly 4 weeks. And the cooldown (before this year) was 28 days. Now it's 30 days, IIRC. So it might just be that people who repriced on the first day (Oct 25) still got to partake in the autumn sale.
(Or I might be wrong altogether.)
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Well, my wishlist seems to have no changes right now. It has 133 games.
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The simple method is using the Augmented Steam browser extension. It shows the current price of your complete wishlist. That way you can easily tell if there was a substantial price increase.
In my case I didn't notice any change at all, only the usual fluctuation with sales coming and going. If there'd be a general 10% hike, I'd be way above 20k €.
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Dont know, i just remember the prices from my head :D I mean, they all look like the same as last year.
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My loyalty to steam is tested. I will shop GOG and Epic if they can give me better prices
Or just buy outside of Steam since these other websites usually have better deals anyway and you still get Steam keys unless it's a game from Rockstar, EA or Ubisoft (sometimes GoG for CDPR games and Epic keys for exclusive games). Like Days Gone, it was 10€ on GameBillet but 16€ on Steam.
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good good, less playing games, more for the life we have
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Brazil here. It has been unaffordable for quite a while.
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With close to 1500 games in my steam library and a pile of shame as large as the Mount Everest i only get "new" games from my monthly Humble-Bundle and when i spot something on Sale. Living in the center or Europe i dont think too much changed but as i only buy "cheap" these days anyway it´s hard to say.
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I thought Euro had it bad until I saw Argentina and their price hike. RIP.
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F for the people who live in Argentina...
Oh well I´m included in that price increases :c.
Some games go from 100 / 180 pesos to 2000 in this two days o.o.
The worst and crazy example is Elden Ring going to 11399 pesos (it literally had like 2 or 3 price updates, which made it more and more unaffordable). Crazy expensive if you think in the fees you have to pay apart from that price...
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Overal with taxes how much Elden Ring would cost in Argentina?
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15.048,25 Ars for the normal edition and 19.948,25 Ars for the deluxe edition aprox.
I'm not really sure if it will be more expensive even. Because we take the official dollar price + taxes taxes and taxes (and also it´s quite unstable btw... considering the ´´dolar blue´´)
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Wow that's crazy...111 USD
You have to be a millionaire in Argentina to play AAA Steam games and games with new prices now
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I thought it was up to 75% taxes by now? Your numbers are lower.
The only way to avoid this altogether is to have money outside of the country, right?
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as i said its death to steam. people from low regions will not be able to buy games now.
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Why this should be the death for steam ?
They earn 1% ? 5% ? lesser.... or did you think that more, percentage of their income in $, come together from all low priced regions?
And steam get "only" 30% of the sale price, so a smaller part from the begin.
I am sure they will will not cry because this ultra low "not earned money".
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its stupid devs. some of them have 0 salles even with previous prices) then they will remove their games from steam and tell us "we remove game from steam because of 0 sales" just stupids...
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Yeah they will complain about how stupid customers don't value such good games and they will just drop developing games...
That's not relevant for accident bestsellers like Factorio, Rimworld etc. though
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It's no news that Valve posted a recommended pricing update to deal with a decade old, out-of-sync currency conversion.
But because of a 28 day cooldown, a lot of publishers held off on making the update to not miss out on the end of year sale.
Well, that's over now, and so are the good times. In just 24 hours tremendous price hikes are being seen all over Steam, depending on where you live.
Check latest price changes here, currency selection in the upper right.
Likely, this is going to continue throughout the month of January 2023, and of course, all new game releases will be hugely impacted with this new standard.
How have you been affected? What do you predict will happen to Steam and the PC gaming market in 2023?
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