The days of calculating exchange rates are coming to an end: over the next year Valve is looking to introduce a range of local currencies to its Steam marketplace, including those of Australia, Canada and Japan.
Other nations listed on a slide smuggled out of the no-press Steam developers conference include the New Zealand Dollar and Mexican Peso.
If you live in one of the included countries, your first instinct may be to celebrate. Don’t. You’re often getting a bargain buying things in US dollars. A Steam marketplace available in your local currency may just make it easier for publishers to charge people like Australians their regular exorbitant prices.
Comments
41 responses to “Loads Of Local Currencies Coming To Steam”
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Welp there goes our last line of defense on arbitrary price increases on steam.
We’re also quite capable of getting ripped on in US$ as well. We’re often charged $80 US still for something that’s $50 US in America. It mightn’t be that different in the end.
I’m going with cautious indifference on it, and we’ll see how that goes.
Yep, gg. “Oh the exchange rate changed in the last 5 mins” Which ex?
What?
With local currency, prices will be static, rather than changing each day depending on the exchange rate.
Current Steam prices don’t fluctuate.
They USD prices don’t fluctuate. But the exchange rate with AUD does. The money comes out of our accounts in AUD, so it varies day-to-day based on the exchange.
DAMN IT
Please – if you must change currency, keep uninflated pricing!
I dont’ think it will make a huge difference, publishers already charge extra for Australians, just in USD, not AUD. We’ll get more of the same, just now we’ll have to go to a second website to work out exactly how badly we’re getting ripped off.
There is only a select few publishers who already charge extra. A majority of games are not loaded, a majority aren’t when you get into the older or indie titles.
Having a price set here they will have a standard calculation that will make things more complex and publishers will want to keep things at round numbers but not losing money. So a $20 game will be convert to around $22.50 so they will round that up to $25
The different to now is that will be across the board.
Right, but all the AAA everyone WANTS to buy is marked up ridiculously. And there are more of the big publishers that do it than don’t. 🙁
Honestly, why do I even bother buying games on steam anymore
Because they have that gun to your head?
Oh… wait… that’s right….
If this had to be smuggled out you can bet it wont be good for us
There’s nothing wrong with the idea itself, but if they try to use it to mask price increases for the Australian market, I’ll be buying all my keys from GMG in future instead of just some of them.
Its ok, my current strategy is wait to buy games on sale if they don’t have ullay. Now it will just be, wait for games on to go on sale. If they are still too expensive or have uplay, pirates ahoy!
Lets hope we dont get screwed over because of this. Will have to keep our eyes peeled. Maybe a future piece for kotaku to analyze the price difference if any when this goes live.
Honestly, having Steam in one currency is better than fragmented, especially as it almost certainly won’t adjust with exchange rates.
What’s really needed is an end to region pricing.
Bloody Hell.
I allready know whats gonna happen. The games we can get for $10 now on special, we will be paying $20 in AUS currency for specials.
Valve will have to up the prices for Aus, which defeats the purpose of what steam is. So every other country gets a bargain, while Australia get the shit end of the stick as usual.
Well that brings an end to the lovely Steam-can-do-no-wrong train.
If a game is US$5 and they simply make it AU$5, that would be great (like they do for the Euro, but that screws the Europeans). However, I can see them increases prices to that above a converted US price.
Ever since Xbox switched to currency from points the Arcade Games have gotten cheaper but the Games on Demand have become way more expensive – overall I feel this will be a bad thing for Australian Steam Users
When L4D2 was free on Steam. It was “50%” for just over $20 AUD on XBL. Total Ripoff.
What pisses me off (as a guy with a non-gaming PC) is they’ve (M$) put L4D2 on special twice this year yet the superior (in Australia) first game is never discounted!
I would rather see a basic currency conversion where it has the US price and then the local price in brackets just as an indication.
As long as we can choose which currency we pay in, I’m happy
I’ll get the anal lube ready. 🙁
DO NOT WANT
Why is everyone up in arms about AUD pricing?
I don’t think they should jack up the price to obscene levels. But since when did only having USD as an option stop them from pricing regionally?
At least AUD will give static prices. Prices which are still proportional to our income and standard of living. Is it a perfect system? No, of course not. But when you have multiple nations with multiple domestic economies, it is impossible to make it fair for everyone.
Dealing with FOREX from a business perspective is an absolute pain in the arse.
“At least AUD will give static prices”: thats the problem: with a varying exchange rate, there are times when games get “cheaper”, however with static AUD prices, they’ll stay the same, and most likely be more expensive than they’ve ever been with a USD price because Australia tax.
Everyone is up in arms because every piece of software in australia is always priced well above international prices have you not heard of the Australia tax?
You mean how games are still a lot cheaper a s a proportion of our average income? Yeah I’ve heard of it.
Forex rates are not an accurate representation of two different domestic economies. And business that spans borders is not as simple as simply applying a forex rate to a price.
You may feel ripped off because the forex companies make you think you are paying more for something compared to those in the US, but let me ask again, if you want their prices, do you also want to take a wage cut to make things totally fair?
Ultimately, our games still aren’t that expensive in the grand scheme of things. We are arguably the most privileged people on this planet. This is a piss in the ocean.
They should start accepting Bitcoins
The prices on TPB never change.
I would like to point out that Steam already enforces Australian regional prices on Steam. There is no indication prices will change.
Difference is that now they have several excuses for increasing local prices. Instead of before when they could not justify it.
The thing is, publishers have to make the effort to set them. More often than not, they’ll set a US & a Euro price and that’s it.
Now there’d be more chance of getting shafted with prices approaching console games, not to mention the inflexibility with exchange rates (if our dollar rises against the USD, it’s highly unlikely that the price of the game would change to reflect that).
Won’t make much difference in the end, if they had a local currency, it would just be the US price automatically converted to the currency in question.
If that’s all it is then it would be a good service they’re doing – however I’m pretty sure they’ll want round numbers which means the price is going to be rounded up or down a bit – and if history is any indication it will be up more often than down for us Ozzies.
If worst comes to worst – I’ll just get an even larger percentage of my games through my Russian and Brazillian “friends”.
oh look it’s 2015, still no AUD
Oh Look it’s already April 16th “2015”!!!! Still no news!!! (Lucky NZ got it first) 🙁