'The end of Steam' leaves gamers heartbroken

If you’re into PC gaming, I can almost guarantee that you use Steam. For many of us, it’s our go-to storefront - packed with the latest releases, tempting offers, and surprisingly fun freebies.

For example, you may want to sample the delightful Portal Fantasy for free - a new release which is giving serious Pokémon meets The Legend of Zelda energy. If that doesn’t float your boat, single-player adventure Outcore: Desktop Adventure is also free and garnering a ton of praise from players. There really are loads of freebies to browse on the site, but there’s more to Steam than its free releases. The site finally listened to users, adding much needed PlayStation DualSense controller integration last week. In some territories though, users have been left feeling completely alienated following ridiculous price rises, with some games going up by as much as 4,300%.

Deliver Us Mars is free to grab on the Epic Games Store right now.

Valve has adjusted regional pricing in both Argentina and Turkey meaning that users in those countries, as of 20 November, now pay in US dollars rather than Turkish lira or the Argentine peso. The aim, according to Valve, is to assist developers so they don’t have to constantly adjust prices to keep up with what PC Gamer’s describes as volatile Turkish and Argentinian currencies.

What this change has meant in practice though is stark price rises. Last week, we reported that while games like Hades had only seen a 5% price increase, Civilisation 6 has gone up by a whopping 4,300%. Over on Reddit, many gathered to mark “the end of Steam”.

One user said, “Argentinian here. Yesterday, I spent 46K (Argentine pesos) on some games. Now, with the new prices, it would cost me 701K,” while another added, “When a couple games cost around your salaries, that’s not funny at all.” User TucumanPAPA said, “Mortal Kombat 1 price after the new price change is more than my entire monthly salary [...] This literally killed the small but loyal market we have here.”

In their report, PC Gamer notes that Argentinian and Turkish users have informed the site of incredibly high taxes on top of these new prices, further increasing costs. It’s a really unfortunate situation, and one that there may be no clear solution for anytime soon.