How have the new price changes affected your Steam store shopping?
The first noteable change after Valve's update was that the minimum price was decreased (e.g. in EUR from 0,39 to 0,22). Weird that there was no thread celebrating that.
Noone knows yet if those games which have a price increase now won't get higher discounts when on sale. And if it's too expensive, speak with your wallet. It's a market and dev/publishers can always adjust again if needed.
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Weird that there was no thread celebrating that.
Probably because only the worst 'pseudo-games' got into the new extra-low-price category :)
I was wondering about those '8 ruble' prices, popping up again after several years of strict '16 ruble' minimum, thanks for clarification!
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You definitely have a point there. But there are other examples. E.g., the huge Big Fish catalogue had a new historical low during the Christmas sale.
Considering that SteamGifts community is already a bubble (active users in discussions are an even smaller one) and many people among it own more than 1000 games (which is also a small bubble compared to all Steam users), statements like "Steam is dead now" or "I won't buy any games anymore" look like panic. We've been spoilt by the golden years of bundles, giveaways, the huge competition between indie devs.
Games are a cultural good just like other entertainment branches by now and thus everyone should be able to spend at least a few bucks a month on it. And I understand that poorer regions (especially those which were abused) are hit hard by that, but hoarding/collecting is still a luxury. I guess casual or new gamers are those most affected, because they don't know about bundles, price comparisons, SteamDB, trading.
I wouldn't want to go back to the 90s/early 00's with games only available at retailers, only full price at release and cheapest sale price 5 or 10 bucks.
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No cultural good is coming out of titty, Anime or Furry adult games. Only perversion!
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Oof. Guess I'm not buying games for awhile.
Wish I bought games during the sale :/
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we need another item in the poll
- do not buy if the base price increases by more than 4x because I am pissed to the max.
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https://store.steampowered.com/app/1731460/LEGO_Brawls/
LEGO Brawls being a black sheep with ~50% reduction in almost every currency
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There's a story behind that one - epic exclusive and when it finally came to steam, launched at double the price. That's against Steam TOS for developers, they demand price parity wherever the game is officially sold. While we could speculate if this was done to milk fans or not, their hand was probably forced as customers complained and valve had a chat with them.
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Lmao so basically they hiked the price even before new recommended pricing was a thing.
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As an Argentinian, this is really tough, huge price increases + the taxes we have to pay for every game. Really sucks, and I guess we'll have to wait for the big sales. ;(
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Not sure if irony, but I'm pretty sure that 0 stays 0 (I love Tim btw and it's NOT an irony :D)
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I'm in the US so hasn't effected me yet. With inflation though it's reasonable for prices to increase some. I always wait at least a year or two before buying a new AAA release anyways, the only ones I won't necessarily buy at a large discount are indie developers I want to support.
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AAA games are hitting 70$+ now, like forspoken. It's a matter of time, but everyone will be pushed upwards with the dollar.
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I don't see any huge change. Only one game on my wishlist changed price. Sale prices will most likely be same or similar and if I considered some game worth buy for 60€ in release, then 70/80€ isn't such difference to me and would still buy such game.
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The only game I pre-ordered full rate was Serious Sam 4. And only game I ordered from bundle site at decent rate was Arkham Knight! I buy trash shoverlware Adult titty crap if under half dollar for sale solely for fast achievements / trading cards. For bigger games I prefer 75% - 80% off it very high priced at minimum. If decent priced then 50%. I will continue playing wait and buy game. Pun intended.
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with taxes of 75% all prices go up to 564% in prices
the only escapism i could have was gaming, but it just disheartening to know that's no longer possible if i want to be able to afford food.
this really sucks, and it just makes life more depressing, not only food and basic needs stuff go to shit every week doubling in price but now i can't escape the sad reality with new games. i was hyped for outlast trials and sons of the forest...
it pains me, piracy might be the only answer, but it is just not the same
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Dont know about this, my 3rd world country has always had 1st world country prices either way, so pretty much we have been experiencing this since the beginning of times LOL
Average salary is around 300 - 350 euros here, so you can imagine our pain, and how long we need to save up to buy single AAA game, I would not own at least 80% of my library if there were no sites like SteamGifts, normal giveaways, and amazing people online who can afford to gift games regularly, and OFC some online paid jobs that can bump up the income a little bit to afford some games while on sales.
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How much expensive went Injustice 2 for your region yesterday?
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It was 49,99€ beforehand and still is.
(The game looks like genuine garbage though even if I wouldn't want to label other people's opinion - I just did it anyway nvm :D).
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Actually I noticed some prices going DOWN.
Could it be because I live in the most expensive a.k.a the 'western EU region' (although Hungary lies to the east and is NOT part of the Eurozone)?
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https://store.steampowered.com/app/253230/A_Hat_in_Time
It costs 29% more at my country now.
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I view regional prices on a digital product that cost the exact fucking same to make as discrimination
Why charge someone a different price, solely because of their race, or age, or location, or gender, etc.
Thanks to the publishers for coming up with 'regional', 'poorer', 'richer', terms :(
You know its based on hate/discrimination because the companies purposely have things in place to prevent/restirct gift giving, key redemption/activation, trading, reselling, etc.
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Yes, they hate certain regions so much they made the games cheaper and affordable there.
To the gulag with them!
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more likely they just make it more expensive in other regions
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I'm not sure if you're joking or have absolutely no grasp of the situation.
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you don't understand how pricing works then i take it they don't make it cheaper in some regions they just make it more expensive in the others
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They literally created most of the regions to be cheaper and more affordable for the citizens there though?
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i don't agree but it doesn't worry me i have never bought a single game on Steam itself anyway
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Facts don't care if you disagree with them, that's the magic of them :)
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what you said was not facts and you can't prove they were
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https://gameworldobserver.com/2022/10/20/steam-regional-pricing-recommendations-update-valve
"Valve has committed to updating its regional pricing recommendations for Steam developers more frequently. The company says this problem is bigger than just foreign exchange rates and should reflect different economic circumstances."
This is the top I'm willing to sacrifice from my time for your trolling. You say nothing of value, yet tell me that I don't understand prices of a store you have no idea how it works and you don't use, then act hurt and disagree with a commonly known fact on the base of who knows what.
I don't believe you existing either ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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Do I have to mention the thing again about them still pretending to be their own mother? ^^
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are you still banging on about this rubbish - but then again i expect nothing more than that from someone with so little in their life that they have to comment an irrelevant comment in a conversation their not even a part of - so sad
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Not sure how you managed to get race, age or gender mixed into this when the topic is very much about regional pricing.
I view regional prices on a digital product that cost the exact fucking same to make as discrimination
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Regional pricing was introduced due to the observation that people in poorer countries would pirate the games anyway. By offering a more convenient and legal path to get their products the industry thought they could wring out a few bucks of those countries instead of getting nothing at all. It seemed to work.
The unforeseen consequence of that policy are the digital "immigrants" flooding into these countries which leads to the current situation.
The only discrimination I can see is through the acknowledgement that disposable income differs vastly on a global scale and thus the existing price differences as result. I'd not want to imagine the outcry in the poor countries if they'd be "emancipated" to pay the same as the rich regions.
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I'd not want to imagine the outcry in the poor countries if they'd be "emancipated" to pay the same as the rich regions.
Which is more or less what is happening right now (and for the last couple of months since Steam has updated their price recommendations) and what this thread is about. The poor regions now have to pay a LOT more for many games than before. Still not quite 1:1 when converted to $ or € but it's a significant increase especially when being compared to the average incomes.
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Still not quite 1:1 when converted to $ or € ...
That's not what I see at SteamDB. Prices in Argentina and Turkey are four to five times cheaper on average as in Euro region still.
... but it's a significant increase especially when being compared to the average incomes.
Agreed, some publishers take the opportunity to raise prices far above what would be reasonable for inflation adjustment.
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Afaik the change takes a more drastic impact on the more expensive games. For cheaper games, the change is minimal.
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That's why I looked up prices for No Man's Sky and Stray. I didn't do an all out survey understandably.
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Why do you look at games with old unupdated prices then? Not really statistically significant
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I just took a few random games that came to my mind. I know enough about the theory of sampling to know my findings aren't statistically significant.
On the other hand nobody in the thread came up with significant data showing the majority of games with remarkable sales figures have seen an outrageous price hike.
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At least you could take games with new and updated prices according to new pricing policy to compare them with western prices to pretend your calculations are some kind of real
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You're right of course I should have looked into it with due diligence.
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For example, freshly updated new prices for these famous games are:
Mortal Kombat XL
DRAGON BALL Z: KAKAROT
UnderRail
Darkest Dungeon
Praey for the Gods
Injustice 2 Legendary Edition
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OP has the link for the price changes, this one is for Argentina https://steamdb.info/pricechanges/?cc=ar
You can check the biggest price hikes by clicking on the percentage in the header
While I see a lot of games I don't even know (quite a few are Choices of -like games from Heart's Choice), just some bigger - almost exclusively indie-level bigger - names I see.
Scythe: Digital Edition
Opus Magnum (and every Zachtronics game)
Underrail: Expedition
SEUM: Speedrunners from Hell
The House of Da Vinci
Roughtly 500% price increase (then calculate the taxes on top of that, too)
DRAGON BALL Z: KAKAROT
100% Orange Juice
Roughly 100% increase
Seems like the big studios didn't wake up, or they know that multiplying their prices won't end well.
Though I wonder, what makes the "digital immigrants" leave again, if the issue did not reach the bigger publishers (or at least they do not appear in the steamdb listing)
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Seems like the big studios didn't wake up, or they know that multiplying their prices won't end well.
Though I wonder, what makes the "digital immigrants" leave again, if the issue did not reach the bigger publishers (or at least they do not appear in the steamdb listing)
Yes, that's the million dollar question (pun intended).
I'm also wondering if it's actually legal to bar a buyer from sourcing their product in a region with lower prices. After all this is the antithesis to the "free market" credo of capitalist economies and arbitrage is everyday business in global markets. Somehow the game industry succeeded to make the public believe they're kind of a special snowflake.
For the people living in poor countries this all isn't very helpful though as companies will raise prices to make more profit from region hoppers.
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For what I've seen in the past, Bandai - Namco always keep the dollar exchange here.
Elden Ring costs $1200 mexican pesos = $60 dollars. 1 dollar = $20 pesos (more or less).
Most of the indie games will cost half the price, 1 dollar = $10 pesos which is great.
I would never pay for a game on a parity exchange, this is why I never bought a PS4. It took years for the PS2 to be affordable but you could get one brand new and sealed physical copies of the most sell games were around $15 to $20 dollars (Players choice or something like that).
Lets see what happens with this trend a year from now.
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The grand irony here is that hiking the prices according to valve's suggested still gives no impetus to "immigrants," as you call it, to leave. They still get a better price (up to 50%?) than going home, so why would they.
Another thing I didn't see brought up is the circumstances contributing to this problem: China has their own version of steam, heavily neutered (meaning, only what the government deems acceptable for their high standards). Any sensible gamer will get out ASAP to have access to the full market. And in the process of doing that, discover a whole new world, and make a rational, price-driven selection of relocation. Russian gamers have seen the buy button removed or prices hiked to the moon as a sort of protest, leading them to exit in similar fashion. In other words, current world conditions have pushed people into moving which ordinarily wouldn't have reason to. It's a lose-lose situation.
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so why would they.
I misread Mskotor's comment on the previous page, she wrote about being curious about what will happen to the Turkish accounts that were asked to be moved there - and I misread it as they were already asking to be moved out.
So, that factual error / mistake is entirely on me - it's still a lot cheaper than other regions.
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Any sensible gamer will get out ASAP to have access to the full market. And in the process of doing that, discover a whole new world, and make a rational, price-driven selection of relocation.
Out of curiosity, I sometimes Google-Translate Chinese reviews of games that don't have many English ones, and more than once I've seen such reviews on Steam store pages describe what country they switched to, how much it costs there, and how much cheaper that is compared to the CNY price they'd conventionally be supposed to pay.
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In mainland China using a VPN to bypass the great firewall is illegal and might land you in jail or worse make you disappear. You know organ harvesting is a thriving industry there.
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I'm seeing 11-15% increases for most stuff, which pretty much wipes out any difference between CAD and USD prices :/.
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Here I was thinking they wouldn't so this to Asia region... Then bam 200-500% price increase. Everything is unaffordable now.
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Some price decreases there, which is funny, a lot of price increases though, mostly from stuff I never heard of nor will ever care about and those that I do... thankfully I already own them.
Sad to see if more games do this, especially new ones. Ah well. Guess I'll just wait for bigger discounts now to buy new stuff. It's fine. I have a big backlog :D
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I don't live in a first world country and there are no changes
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https://isthereanydeal.com/game/kingscastle/history/
this is just insane. No one in his or hr right mind would buy that for $50. I'm in NA
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Too big library + always buy on sale = not affected too mutch
THE F...?
VAR乐园终身VIP +12695% 7,19zł 919,99zł 6 hours ago
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2017000/VAR_paradise_lifetime_VIP
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"My loyalty to steam is tested. I will shop GOG and Epic if they can give me better prices"
I had no such loyalty to begin with. Epic, GOG, Origin, Windows store, Uplay, I'll buy from whatever place gives the better deal for the games I want.
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I just think it's silly to have loyalty to massive corporations that only like me for my money. The whole steam fan culture reminds me of how things were when I was in 1st to 3rd grade, and people pretty much pledge loyalty to either Nintendo or SEGA, and were willing to believe just about anything bad said about the "other" side, while brushing off anything bad "their" side did as inconsequential. It was silly then (though at the time I was part of it, being on Team Nintendo), it is silly now.
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there is up to %700+ increase in my country... I realy liked seeing all my games on steam and bought a bunch of games at the winter sale but it seems like i will go for gamepass and epic for the time ahead. I would continue from steam if the price difference wasnt much it is...
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most of the games are unaffordable ... what were they thinking? you should create a post in steam forum about cost rise ... i did
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yes its brutal to give %10 of the minimum wage to a video game but this is not steam's fault too...
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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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