Valve has updated its stance on regional pricing in a bid to try and stop players from exploiting currencies to get cheap deals.
In updated wording on its pricing policy (via Reddit), Valve has stated that it'll be updating its price suggestions more regularly to try and stop customers region swapping to get inflated discounts on their games. This policy seems to be a response to volatility in the global market that is currently seeing currencies swing in value.
In an update to the policy, Valve states: "All of these factors have driven us towards the commitment to refresh these price suggestions on a much more regular cadence so that we're keeping pace with economic changes over time."
"Many games choose to ignore our recommendations and determine their own pricing in each currency, and that’s just fine."
It's worth noting that these are merely suggestions being made by Valve as publishers and developers have the final word on their pricing. Valve will only be monitoring the currencies and spending patterns, then highlighting when a developer might want to change the price due to shifting values. It will then be on them to implement it.
That seems to suggest that, if customers do try to get around their region and find unintentional deals, they won't be punished for it. However, it's going to become much harder to do this with this updated policy.
The greater fear of this policy change here is, with updating inflating values, Steam could eventually price out customers who are situated in these countries in an attempt to stop foreign buyers from trying to take advantage of low currencies. That would be a real tragedy, as we could start to see some countries unable to afford to keep up with gaming.
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