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At the end of March, Valve issued an announcement to game developers on Steam about changes to how games get priced across different regions.

With Steam being available in so many different places with so many currencies, dealing with all the exchange rates can be tricky business. And we've seen some developers get hit with complaints about their regional pricing, so hopefully this update will help and goes to show how Valve are always trying to give developers the tools directly to run their games how they want and hopefully make more gamers happy.

As Valve said in the post:

In order to sell games to customers worldwide, Steam supports pricing in 37 different currencies and 4 region groups. As always, how you choose to enter prices for your game is entirely up to you.

We know that many developers aren’t familiar with all of these currencies and even how many digits each should have, and so the tools we provide can assist in finding prices that fit within expectations of various markets around the world. Given that market conditions change over time, pricing data is periodically updated to help developers maintain an appropriate price for their products on Steam.

Valve have updated their pricing data, along with launching three different ways developers can choose between for pricing their games:

  • Exchange Rate Conversion - This method uses a simple currency exchange rate at the time indicated on the page.
  • Purchasing Power Conversion - This method uses public data about the average purchasing power of customers within a given country and/or region. 
  • Multi-variable Conversion - This method uses multiple data sources for each currency, including local purchasing power, the expected cost of comparable entertainment goods, and exchange rate  (this most closely matches the method that was previously presented in the pricing tool).
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Valve have also reminded developers that increasing a game's price will result in a 30-day cooldown on discounts in all regions.

So you may see games over the next few months have their pricing tweaked in various regions thanks to this.

Source: Valve

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Tags: Misc, Steam, Valve
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6 comments

damarrin 11 hours ago
Yeah, this is something I've been stung by a number of times. We (PL) get some of the highest prices on Steam, often on par with Switzerland, even though we're not even remotely as well-off as people Western-European countries.

I get developers/publishers would have no clue about all those different currencies and just put in whatever Valve suggests, so I put the blame firmly on them.
pb 11 hours ago
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I hope devs (and especially publishers) warm to the Purchasing Power Conversion method, it's the only fair pricing really.
I also hope that it won't be abused by the users, unfortunately I have little faith in that...

[edit] I took a peek at https://partner.steamgames.com/pricing/explorer and multi-variable conversion is totally broken as of now. Exchange rate is fair (basically it's back to pre-2022 prices for PLN), Purchasing power rate is great, but milti-variable is way higher that both of them, for whatever reason. And it's not only for PLN, same goes for euro and GBP prices. It's almost like one of the "multi variables" was greed. 🤔

Last edited by pb on 3 Apr 2026 at 11:54 am UTC
Ehvis 9 hours ago
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Quoting: pbPurchasing power rate is great, but milti-variable is way higher that both of them, for whatever reason. And it's not only for PLN, same goes for euro and GBP prices. It's almost like one of the "multi variables" was greed. 🤔
It's not really. Don't forget that $ prices don't include VAT. It says $100 is €85 and 100/85 = 1.176, so it accounts for 17.6% VAT, which is lower than most (if not all) of the eurozone.
Koopa 4 hours ago
This seems like a double edge sword, prices could go down or up depending of which option devs stick to, and tbh with how things are with the economy around the world I have no hopes of prices going down... My bet is most studios will stick with the less favorable option for gamers regarding price.

Last edited by Koopa on 3 Apr 2026 at 6:56 pm UTC
CatKiller 2 hours ago
Quoting: KoopaMy bet is most studios will stick with the less favorable option for gamers regarding price.
The rational choice is to choose the price that maximises profit in each region. Setting the price too high reduces the number of units sold, and so reduces profit.
hell0 1 hour ago
Swiss here, maybe I'll buy games through Steam again. Currently, the difference is so ridiculous that it's often a better deal to pay the full price in a third party store than to buy on sale through steam. Also nobody, beside fellow swiss steam users, can send me gifts.
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