With regional pricing, Valve aimed to create more fairness in pricing for games on Steam. However, this “fairness” causes frustration for players who feel that prices in some countries are not “fair” at all.
What does regional pricing on Steam entail? The regional pricing policy of Steam was developed to adjust the cost of games on the platform to the purchasing power of a country. Valve aimed to make their games more accessible to gamers in different economies around the world by offering “fairer” prices.
This resulted in games having different standard prices in various countries compared to the United States. Because average incomes and living costs are not the same everywhere.
It initially sounds like a reasonable and fair system, but players have been frustrated by this introduction from 2020 to this day – because Valve has not kept an eye on exchange rates.
“The regional pricing system should make games affordable, not expensive”
How does regional pricing affect many players? Players from different parts of the world report that some players in their countries cost between 20 and 30% more than the equivalent in US dollars.
YouTuber Water CS2 explains in his video on YouTube titled “Steam has a pricing problem” that the data Valve used for pricing is responsible for this issue.
According to the YouTuber, Valve has not updated the exchange rates used to convert the suggested prices since 2022, which means that no current representation of the economic situation in affected countries can be created – even though Valve assured that they would “review these recommendations annually and make appropriate adjustments” (via YouTube).
How are affected countries dealing with this issue? Players from Poland, who have particularly struggled with the now unfair pricing due to the fluctuating rate of their local currency, no longer see any reason to spend so much more money on games.
As an example, Water CS2 mentions the game “Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater”, which costs $69.99 in the USA. Polish players have to pay 369.99 Złoty for the same game, which translates to $101.08 based on the current exchange rate, meaning about $31 and 44% more.
To combat this, the #PolishOurPrices campaign was launched by the Polish gaming community, which has already been able to contact studios like CD Projekt Red to adjust Polish prices on Steam. Because the campaign itself warns: “If your Steam prices are too high, Polish players will turn to key resellers or piracy” (via YouTube).
Water CS2 mentions what many frustrated players might be thinking: “They shouldn’t have to do that in the first place, as Valve’s recommended pricing should just work.”
Polish players are demanding a solution to the problem, which has actually been laid out in the YouTuber’s video. Because now Steam itself has become a part of the unfair pricing that Valve initially sought to counteract. A user (@Reversed2137) responds under Water CS2’s video with a current comment highlighting the unfair system: “It shouldn’t be normal to wait for a sale just to buy a game at regular price”: The best MMORPGs on Steam are currently on sale, only Amazon is not participating
