At long last.
Support for the Australian dollar on Steam has been a long time coming. After announcing its intent to support the currency in 2014, the service began collecting information on the region officially last year through the developer backend.
Valve staffers then announced during Melbourne International Games Week that front-facing support for dollarydoos would be enabled in mid-November, and an official email sent around to developers confirmed that support was scheduled to turned on by 1000 AEDT, just in time for the next Steam sale.
Here’s some before and after examples of the initial change:
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Most of the pricing is within a dollar of what Australians would have paid this time yesterday, once currency conversions have been factored in. Artifact, Valve’s upcoming digital card game, would have cost Australians $US19.99 early this morning. Now, it costs $27.95 – and if you add the extra few percent that banks usually charge, that’s a small saving.
The price of AAA games is now much more reasonable – but only compared to what was originally charged on Steam. Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey was selling for $US59.99 earlier this morning, and that’s still the global USD price. However, Aussies can now buy the game digitally for $69.95 – not the cheapest offering, but it’s also not absurdly overpriced compared to retail the way blockbusters on Steam used to be. Civilization 6 is currently available for $20.98, which is incredibly reasonable given that Americans are being charged $US18:
More to come…
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