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Changing your country on Steam has been made harder to battle VPNs

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Something that has been happening for years now, is that people have been switching around their country on Steam and using VPNs to get cheaper prices - Valve looks to have put a stop to it.

Why was this a thing? Thanks to regional pricing, countries that typically have lower incomes can enjoy the same games as others with lower prices to match. Being able to get around that to buy cheaper games using a VPN was a bit of a loophole, which has been sorted by Valve.

Spotted by SteamDB, It's not entirely clear when this actually went live for everyone. Checking it myself, changing country on Steam is now a bit more involved. Previously it was quite easy with a VPN but if you did it too often, Valve would put you on a cool-down from doing so for a while. Now it seems everyone has the same full enforcement. After changing country, you then need to make a purchase from a payment method registered to that country.

It makes sense for Valve to sort it, otherwise developers have had to adjust prices in other regions to match resulting in people from countries with lower incomes ending up with higher prices. This is apparently exactly happened with Horizon Zero Dawn according to VG247, and when you check on SteamDB you can see the prices across countries like Argentina and Turkey rocket upwards.

Using a VPN or proxy to get around it, was actually already against Steam's Terms of Service, with Valve saying if found out they may place "restrictions" on your account.

What are your thoughts on this?

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Tags: Misc, Steam, Valve
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53 comments
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F.Ultra Aug 1, 2020
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Quoting: slapinWell, in case of Ubisoft or when you either VPN or torrent, this choice will bias things towards torrent which I don't like. I wonder why Sony Playstation managed to do it right and Steam can't do it...

What do you mean by "Sony Playstation managed to do it right"? AFAIK they have both regional locking and prices.
eldaking Aug 1, 2020
Quoting: KimyrielleI guess that's part of the "Globalization is for big business, not customers!" textbook. Apparently it's totally fine for a US company to ship your job to Vietnam because wages there are a fraction of what they are here, but if a customer goes "Ok, I can make that work for me too, and shop where it's cheaper!", the same companies go "Oh no, YOU can't do that. Only WE can!"

Too funny.

Getting slightly off-topic, but I disagree a lot with how this is framed. This "Americans lose jobs to people that receive lower wages" is a load of bull; the person receiving poverty wages is not "taking your job", they are being exploited by your country. If an American wants that job, he can take it - I assure you immigration is a lot easier in that direction. As a bonus, you get their prices for videogames... People in the US benefit the most from the cost reductions of exploited labor; implying that US customers, of all the people in the world, can't benefit from globalization is not quite right.

This is a very literal "first world problem"...

Yes, globalization is for big businesses. They can set up a company in the US, pay taxes in Ireland, dispose of their garbage in China, exploit workers in Mexico, and get IT support from India. But for the people whose country is the one with all the big businesses, the right thing is to have more solidarity for the fellow workers of other countries, not thinking about how they get "cheaper" (not really) videogames.


Last edited by eldaking on 1 August 2020 at 3:40 pm UTC
Koopacabras Aug 1, 2020
wwwow I'm surprised how many people have a stereotype of third world countries, many here think that they are like a slum dumpster. Third world is a Cold War definition you should update your definitions, here for example, GDP is comparable to a Scandinavian country (but yeah with double population) and GDP per capita is comparable to some eastern european countries like Ukranie, or Poland. We are not even a low income country considering statistics just a middle income. I'm not saying there is no poverty which there is but the mayority of my country is quite nice. Sad that you have that picture of some countries. I hope that stereotype don't stick and maybe you should come to take a tour . It's just that cost of living is quite a less here even for the CIA factbook Argentina is ranked quite good in therms of Purchase Power Parity.

but likewise I guess it's understandable, I'm totally ignorant of countries like Estonia, Latvia, Lithuanie, Hungary, lots of countries for me are like "exotic", I guess Argentina is likewise exotic for some people in Europe or North America.


Last edited by Koopacabras on 1 August 2020 at 8:50 pm UTC
F.Ultra Aug 1, 2020
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Quoting: The_Aquabatwwwow I'm surprised how many people have a stereotype of third world countries, many here think that they are like a slum dumpster. Third world is a Cold War definition you should update your definitions, here for example, GDP is comparable to a Scandinavian country (but yeah with double population) and GDP per capita is comparable to some eastern european countries like Ukranie, or Poland. We are not even a low income country considering statistics just a middle income. I'm not saying there is no poverty which there is but the mayority of my country is quite nice. Sad that you have that picture of some countries. I hope that stereotype don't stick and maybe you should come to take a tour . It's just that cost of living is quite a less here even for the CIA factbook Argentina is ranked quite good in therms of Purchase Power Parity.

but likewise I guess it's understandable, I'm totally ignorant of countries like Estonia, Latvia, Lithuanie, Hungary, lots of countries for me are like "exotic", I guess Argentina is likewise exotic for some people in Europe or North America.

Not entirely sure where this is coming from, just to check I went through all the posts in this thread so far and yours is the only one that contained the term "third world". Also I see exactly zero people comparing Argentina with "a slum dumpster" or anything even near in comparison.

edit: And btw Argentinas GDP per capita is 62% of that of Poland and 255% of that of Ukraine so not sure where "GDP per capita is comparable to some eastern european countries like Ukranie, or Poland" is sourced from. And Argentina have 4 times the population of the highest populated Scandinavian country (Sweden).

I used the Wikipedia numbers for reference.


Last edited by F.Ultra on 1 August 2020 at 9:21 pm UTC
Koopacabras Aug 1, 2020
Quoting: F.Ultraedit: And btw Argentinas GDP per capita is 62% of that of Poland and 255% of that of Ukraine so not sure where "GDP per capita is comparable to some eastern european countries like Ukranie, or Poland" is sourced from. And Argentina have 4 times the population of the highest populated Scandinavian country (Sweden).

I used the Wikipedia numbers for reference.



that's outdated, now we are probably a middle-middle income not high-middle income, we have some fluctuations here. in economics the pandemia has been catastrophic here, more than the average.
but to be fair for statistical measaruments, the categorization of income, is very broad in the same category you could have very big differences.


Last edited by Koopacabras on 1 August 2020 at 9:51 pm UTC
F.Ultra Aug 1, 2020
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Quoting: The_Aquabat
Quoting: F.Ultraedit: And btw Argentinas GDP per capita is 62% of that of Poland and 255% of that of Ukraine so not sure where "GDP per capita is comparable to some eastern european countries like Ukranie, or Poland" is sourced from. And Argentina have 4 times the population of the highest populated Scandinavian country (Sweden).

I used the Wikipedia numbers for reference.



that's outdated, now we are probably a middle-middle income not high-middle income, we have some fluctuations here. in economics the pandemia has been catastrophic here, more than the average.

What is the source though? Wikipedia uses the IMF estimates for 2019 so hardly "outdated" since that would be the very latest available data possible.

Completely off topic though since this is not a thread about the Economic siltation in Argentina (a topic that you for some reason brought to this thread). And if you didn't get it from my prior post you cannot say that Argentina is like Poland or Ukraine when there is a huge difference between Poland and Ukraine to begin with.


Last edited by F.Ultra on 1 August 2020 at 9:52 pm UTC
Koopacabras Aug 1, 2020
Quoting: F.UltraWhat is the source though? Wikipedia uses the IMF estimates for 2019 so hardly "outdated" since that would be the very latest available data possible.

Completely off topic though since this is not a thread about the Economic siltation in Argentina (a topic that you for some reason brought to this thread).
it's data from the world bank here it's more updated.
 
https://miro.medium.com/max/1000/1*w9cdWPA7xFDkieFNLre_hg.png


yes I know it is not the topic but if you follow up the linked thread to ResetEra there's some mentioning that, I'm sorry I went off topic.


Last edited by Koopacabras on 1 August 2020 at 9:59 pm UTC
F.Ultra Aug 1, 2020
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Quoting: The_Aquabat
Quoting: F.UltraWhat is the source though? Wikipedia uses the IMF estimates for 2019 so hardly "outdated" since that would be the very latest available data possible.

Completely off topic though since this is not a thread about the Economic siltation in Argentina (a topic that you for some reason brought to this thread).
it's data from the world bank here it's more updated.
 
https://miro.medium.com/max/1000/1*w9cdWPA7xFDkieFNLre_hg.png


yes I know it is not the topic but if you follow up the linked thread to ResetEra there's some mentioning that, I'm sorry I went off topic.

And if you use the comparison function on the World Bank site: https://data.worldbank.org/?locations=AR-PL-UA you see the same differences that I quoted earlier from Wikipedia.

edit: And more to the topic at hand, looking at the GDP per capita between Sweden, Argentina, Poland and Ukraine show why game devs wants to apply different prices in different regions: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?end=2019&locations=SE-AR-PL-UA&start=1960


Last edited by F.Ultra on 1 August 2020 at 10:25 pm UTC
Koopacabras Aug 2, 2020
I guess my point is that we are just another average country, according to that statistics some years even better than Poland, which for me it's just another average country. We are not a poor country by definition. We just use another random currency which in comparison is worth little to the USD dollar, just things cost different, that's what currencies are for basically. That's the standard definition, but ofc there's lots of poverty, but that doesn't make you a poor country in economics standard categorization.

The regional pricing is very recent, 3 years ago we were buying in usd dollars, like everyone, that's proves my point, we are just passing a huge economic and debt crisis since 2 years ago.


Last edited by Koopacabras on 2 August 2020 at 1:17 am UTC
slapin Aug 2, 2020
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Quoting: F.Ultra
Quoting: slapinWell, in case of Ubisoft or when you either VPN or torrent, this choice will bias things towards torrent which I don't like. I wonder why Sony Playstation managed to do it right and Steam can't do it...

What do you mean by "Sony Playstation managed to do it right"? AFAIK they have both regional locking and prices.

Sony made sure everyone gets the same content for regional prices, so you do not get poorly localized version without ability to switch to original language. On playstation you get the same game with all the stuff in it, not crippled version.
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