Two important pieces of info today for both players and game developers, as it will affect both quite a bit with release date changes and pricing changes.
Firstly, prices! Valve announced to developers various updates to how they handle multi-currency. Developers and publishers are still free to set their own pricing but now Valve are giving developers a new tool to make it easier, along with adjusting their recommendation on prices across seemingly all currencies on Steam. This may result in price increases across many games on Steam in many different regions, as Valve said "with purchasing power and foreign exchange rates constantly evolving, we needed to make significant changes to those conversion recommendations to stay current".
SteamDB, as always, keep tracking changes on Steam and did their own blog post to highlight the changes. According to SteamDB the only currencies not changing have so far been CIS - U.S. Dollar, Costa Rican Colon. Israeli New Shekel, Kuwaiti Dinar, Singapore Dollar, South Asia - USD and U.A.E. Dirham. They included various tables, showing the changes against the dollar at various price points with this one showing just how big an increase it can be:
$59.99 USD difference:
| Currency | Old | New | Diff |
|---|---|---|---|
| British Pound | £46.49 | £49.99 | +8% |
| Euro | 49,99€ | 58,99€ | +18% |
| Russian Ruble | 1085 ₽ | 1900 ₽ | +75% |
| Brazilian Real | R$ 109,99 | R$ 162,00 | +47% |
| Japanese Yen | ¥ 6290 | ¥ 6500 | +3% |
| Indonesian Rupiah | Rp 249999 | Rp 449999 | +80% |
| Malaysian Ringgit | RM95.00 | RM133.00 | +40% |
| Philippine Peso | ₱1219.95 | ₱1670.00 | +37% |
| Thai Baht | ฿699.00 | ฿1100.00 | +57% |
| Vietnamese Dong | 480000₫ | 705000₫ | +47% |
| South Korean Won | ₩ 61000 | ₩ 63000 | +3% |
| Turkish Lira | ₺92,00 | ₺510,00 | +454% |
| Ukrainian Hryvnia | 699₴ | 1125₴ | +61% |
| Mexican Peso | Mex$ 527.99 | Mex$ 614.99 | +16% |
| Canadian Dollar | CDN$ 68.99 | CDN$ 77.99 | +13% |
| Australian Dollar | A$ 84.95 | A$ 87.95 | +4% |
| New Zealand Dollar | NZ$ 76.49 | NZ$ 85.99 | +12% |
| Norwegian Krone | 412,00 kr | 670,00 kr | +63% |
| Polish Zloty | 214,99zł | 274,99zł | +28% |
| Swiss Franc | CHF 57.50 | CHF 65.99 | +15% |
| Chinese Yuan | ¥ 163 | ¥ 198 | +21% |
| Indian Rupee | ₹ 1299 | ₹ 2400 | +85% |
| Chilean Peso | CLP$ 22500 | CLP$ 28500 | +27% |
| Peruvian Sol | S/.102.00 | S/.115.00 | +13% |
| Colombian Peso | COL$ 82500 | COL$ 130000 | +58% |
| South African Rand | R 329.00 | R 499.00 | +52% |
| Hong Kong Dollar | HK$ 258.00 | HK$ 365.00 | +41% |
| Taiwan Dollar | NT$ 858 | NT$ 898 | +5% |
| Saudi Riyal | 89.95 SR | 114.95 SR | +28% |
| Argentine Peso | ARS$ 649,99 | ARS$ 3800,00 | +485% |
| Kazakhstani Tenge | 7100₸ | 14000₸ | +97% |
| Qatari Riyal | 114.99 QR | 119.99 QR | +4% |
| Uruguayan Peso | $U1199 | $U1700 | +42% |
Thanks SteamDB.
Another big change is how release dates are presented on Steam. Soon, gone will be the days of developers setting whatever format they wish for their dates, along with some including funny messages instead of an actual date. Instead, Valve will have a standard way to present dates that can be correctly formatted to your region so there will be no more confusion on days and months too.
Take Dwarf Fortress for example:
What is changing is that developers will need to put an exact date that only they and Valve can see, and then pick between these types of public views:
- The exact date. “Aug 24, 2023”
- Month-and-year. “August 2023”
- The quarter of the calendar year. “Q3 2023”
- The year. "2023"
- No date at all. “Coming Soon”
This change makes sense, and was a long time coming.
With this change, it will also affect how developers have their games shown in upcoming lists on Steam. Valve will position games "at the last possible date of that time range", so if developers pick to have just a month and year they will appear as if they select the last day in that month. Hopefully this will also help fix the issue of some developers repeatedly changing their date to keep bumping their game in the upcoming lists.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Quoting: crseQuoting: x_wingQuoting: ArehandoroNearly 500% increase for Turkey and Argentina...
Plus a 100% taxes in Argentina.
Isn't Steam pricing already include tax?
When tax for games is introduced in my country (Indonesia), Steam said that it already counted in final pricing; without even any additional price change.
Nope. It depends a lot of your local legislation, but for Argentina Steam would have to have a local representation in order to include taxes in the final price. For example, we have a 21% VAT, which is a tax payed by the end consumer (or most of them, as there are exceptions) and every local commerce works as retention agent for it (i.e. by the end of every month they have to transfer the collected tax to our local tax agency). So, as that would be a complete nonsense for Steam, in the end all taxes are added by your credit card. This is: 21% VAT, 8% international service tax, 40% income tax retention (you can use this one as credit), 1-2% IIBB taxes (province dependent), 1,2% seals taxes (almost sure this one is federal).
Doing the math you get 73.2% in the worst case scenario... but last week there was modification so people that spend more than 300 USD per month in their credit card will have to pay an extra 25% for "personal property" tax (works as credit, but it's a tax restricted for high income people that now everyone has to "pay"). The problem is that people can have more than one credit card, so banks cannot check if a physical person already spent more than 300 USD. So, for now, credit cards makes you pay that 25% extra no matter what.
So, long story short, we will pay around 100% taxes on any steam price (or anything that requires USD) until the government setups a way to validate how many USD a person is using per month (AFAIK, they already implemented a solution, but it's yet to be deployed).
but is is Published by 3D Realms and Interplay so it is likely going to be the same as Duke Nukem forever was forever in development
Currency exchange rates have shifted A LOT recently.
Last edited by TheSHEEEP on 27 October 2022 at 2:18 pm UTC
Quoting: x_wing1,2% seals taxes (almost sure this one is federal).Geeze. What if you don't even own a seal?
StoneColdSpider Oct 27, 2022
Koopacabras Oct 27, 2022
( Steam recommended price of 3800 ars is not 60 usd doing the currency conversion, but I suppose taking purchasing power into consideration and other variables it's what steam considers "fair" for a 60 usd game?)
So regarding big studios AAA releases, we have "unregional pricing", this is clearly not working at all, it does work with indie studio releases and older releases (because old releases don't adjust monthly price accordingly to our inflation)
My opinion on what's happening it's because big studios don't want to be bothered chasing down and being informed on our inflation, tags games on future inflation. Like prices of some AAA are really the prices of 6 months into the future.
Last edited by Koopacabras on 27 October 2022 at 10:43 pm UTC
fenglengshun Oct 28, 2022
And the release date system change is good -- I love month represented as letters, so much clearer than "01/02/2022" which could be Jan 02 or 01 Feb. I don't particularly care for the humorous dates either -- just give me clear information and leave your jokes in the game.
Patreon
PayPal
See more from me