"Valve must stop making excuses": Steam under fire for "significant price disparity for PC games," causing regional pricing that's "often 20% to 30% higher than the dollar equivalent"

The whole thing is stupid anyway.

If I have a game that I'm selling for $30 that doesn't necessarily mean that I convert into the local currency and sell that game for $30 in Nigeria (I have no idea what currency they use in Nigeria).

I might not be able to sell the game for $30 in Nigeria because that might be 3 months of the annual income. But I don't want to totally give up on the Nigerian market so I sell the game for $5, that way at least I'm still selling the game for some money.

To be honest I would probably prefer not to be basin my game pricing on the US dollar anyway right now. It doesn't seem like the most stable currency. Not many never was anyway.

I don't really care what they do, I just want them to do ANYTHING. Either update the regional pricing more regularly or just get rid of the damned thing and let me pay in USD/EUR. There are some rare publishers that will actually go out of their way to manually set the regional pricing to make it reasonable but most of them just follow the default suggested Steam one leading to massively overpriced games. I'm Polish and at this point I only buy games on sales, the final price still often comes close to what the game would cost me in USD/EUR without any sale.

Edit: Valve themselves specifically says in their SteamWorks documentation on pricing for developers

All of these factors have driven us towards the commitment to refresh these price suggestions on a much more regular cadence, so that we're keeping pace with economic changes over time.

and yet the prices remain the exact same since they introduced the Regional Pricing Recommendations in 2022.

It seems like at least changing annually would be better than the current system.

they changed the model back when the dollar collapsed which ended up like a firesale for those aware. i bought sooo much within those 2 days window lol.

it's the devs/publishers yes

some time ago Palworld devs lowered the regional price for Poland as they noticed it was relatively more expensive for Poles to buy the game, they got a lot of praise for that

I think what is talked about is coutries like Poland where the currency is weaker than the $ but they still cave to pay more.
Having to pay less when earning less is good but paying more while earning less is bad.
And the problem with at least poland exists now for a few years

Edit: i should have first read the article. And ut was indeed about poland where they pay (converted) like 100 for a 70$ game while earning less

Maybe I'm just misunderstanding the quote, but I'm pretty sure regional pricing have been around at least since 2010s.

Maybe I should RTFA

Fun side note: It’s Yannis Varoufakis, who would later become Greece Finance Minister during the turmoils, started the whole Regional Pricing (and the very first item marketplace with TF2) when he was Valve’s CFO.

That would mean a $70 game in the US costs $86.10 in Poland. Not $100. The math doesn‘t check out for a lot of games I think.

In the Reddit thread about the rejected NSFW updates, Crimson Delight have only good things to say about Valve's handling of the situation. "I have to say the reviewer was kind and forthcoming, we didn't feel threatened or bullied in any way, and we got the feeling they were trying to do their best to help devs navigate the process," developer Frenzin writes. "But the fact of the matter is that Valve has payment processors breathing down their neck, and the rules keep getting stricter as time goes on."

"Valve isn't the problem here," Frenzin continues. "The big credit card companies are. If anything, Valve has stood up to them and pushed back. They could've simply nuked the 18+ section of Steam, but they didn't, they stuck up for developers. Obviously adult games make Valve money, but it's a drop in the bucket compared to the rest of Steam's catalogue. Silksong itself probably earned Valve more than most NSFW titles put together.

"Given that we're erogame devs, we're against any sort of censorship (as long as the content isn't sexualizing minors or nonconsensual in any way)," the developer comments. "But it's important to understand where the real problem lies, and it's not with Valve."

GoG has regional pricing too...

I mean, definitely use GoG although this isn't particularly a reason.

Just sail the high sees like a smart person.

If you really want to support the devs, cut out the middle man and send them money directly.

It's not a difficult concept.

Publishers set prices.