In a bizarre decision, Valve has seemingly increased the price of its Steam products in certain regions, making the storefront too expensive for its residents.
In an attempt to regionalise game prices in select countries, Valve has raised its storefront prices in Argentina and Turkey by up to 4,300%. This decision was made in an effort to combat fluctuations in the Argentinian peso and the Turkish lira with both countries now having to pay for games in U.S. dollars.
Hades is one of the games affected by the price increase.
With the Argentinian peso decreasing from $0.00991 in November 2021 to $0.00281 as of November 2023, and the Turkish lira seeing a 53% decrease from $0.0742 to $0.0347, Valve aims to beat the downtrending fluctuations in exchange rates. However, this has led to video game prices becoming extortionate for residents of Argentina and Turkey.
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Although game developers wish to maintain their profit margins by staying on top of exchange rate fluctuations, it has left some of its audience unable to justify the new prices which went live on 20 November.
Titles such as Hades raised by just 5% but Civilisation 6 was met with an incredible 4,300% price increase. However, Diablo IV decreased in price as a result of publishers setting regional prices manually. One Reddit user posted a list of all the price changes courtesy of the Valve price hike.
Additionally, publishers may follow in Diablo IV’s publishers footsteps by manually adjusting the prices of its titles in Argentina and Turkey in upcoming weeks. With the average monthly salaries in Argentina and Turkey as of November 2023 sitting at $126 and $277 respectively, residents are simply unable to meet Steam’s new prices.
As it has been just two days since these changes were implemented, affected players hope the decision will be reversed or at least adjusted. Let us hope so or Valve has lost a whole lot of customers.
Featured Image Credit: Valve