I wonder how much of this has to do with the currency change in late 2023. I used to buy lots of tiny indie games, which offered a couple of hours of entertainment, and didn’t cost more than a few cents.
Then they complained to Steam, others abused VPNs, and Steam itself didn’t enforce tying the payment methods to the country, therefore they had a lot of people buying from places like Turkey or Argentina (as in, pretending to be from those places).
But much like the piracy debacle, does someone cheating the price translate as a potential buyer at full US price? I don’t think so. I imagine only a small percentage would have paid full price, and only for big or well promoted games (aka Big Name Devs). I can’t imagine how having a handful of “correct” buyers vs a ton of “incorrect” buyers would tip the scale in favor of the former.
Edit: And for the record, I’m from the LATAM region, so I was buying legitimately.
Another factor is as people’s libraries grow new titles are also competing with past large budget games that now go on discount cheaper than indie games. PC has more games that are backwards compatible compared to consoles, so that’s decades of cheaper games that a new title has to compete against.
ow did they limit it? I still see all the regions in steamdb. I know the exchange rates haven’t been updated in a while so their suggested regional prices haven’t been pretty bad
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I wonder how much of this has to do with the currency change in late 2023. I used to buy lots of tiny indie games, which offered a couple of hours of entertainment, and didn’t cost more than a few cents.
Then they complained to Steam, others abused VPNs, and Steam itself didn’t enforce tying the payment methods to the country, therefore they had a lot of people buying from places like Turkey or Argentina (as in, pretending to be from those places).
But much like the piracy debacle, does someone cheating the price translate as a potential buyer at full US price? I don’t think so. I imagine only a small percentage would have paid full price, and only for big or well promoted games (aka Big Name Devs). I can’t imagine how having a handful of “correct” buyers vs a ton of “incorrect” buyers would tip the scale in favor of the former.
Edit: And for the record, I’m from the LATAM region, so I was buying legitimately.
Another factor is as people’s libraries grow new titles are also competing with past large budget games that now go on discount cheaper than indie games. PC has more games that are backwards compatible compared to consoles, so that’s decades of cheaper games that a new title has to compete against.
ow did they limit it? I still see all the regions in steamdb. I know the exchange rates haven’t been updated in a while so their suggested regional prices haven’t been pretty bad