New Steam update finally addresses huge disparity in regional prices between countries "to help developers price games in 35 currencies and 4 region groups worldwide"

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Valve was previously under fire as regional prices were sometimes 20-30% more expensive than their USD equivalents

Steam logo from Valve
(Image credit: Valve)

A new Steam update aims to help developers more accurately price their games in worldwide currencies, hopefully getting rid of the sometimes huge disparities between game costs in the US and abroad.

Valve was previously in hot water after players increasingly started to realize that games were sometimes 20-30% more expensive in countries such as Poland or Argentina than in the United States due to Steam's wonky regional pricing system. The backlash prompted several developers, including Arc Raiders' Embark Studios and JRPG studio Nihon Falcom, to manually go back and adjust prices for local currencies. But Valve's making some big changes starting from now.

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Then there's something called the purchasing power conversion method, which uses "public data about the average purchasing power of customers within a given country and/or region," and a multi-variable conversion method that's built on "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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Kaan Serin
Kaan Serin
Freelance contributor

Kaan freelances for various websites including Rock Paper Shotgun, Eurogamer, and this one, Gamesradar. He particularly enjoys writing about spooky indies, throwback RPGs, and anything that's vaguely silly. Also has an English Literature and Film Studies degree that he'll soon forget.

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