Regarding Ridiculous Turkish Lira (TL) Pricing on Steam

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Avi Oct 24, 2014 @ 6:52pm

Steam has recently enabled payments by Turkish Lira (TL), enabling market-specific pricing for Turkey, which was both to the surprise and delight of the Turkish gaming community (us Turks like delights, as you'd expect).

At first, publishers adjusted their prices considering market conditions, and prices were set at fair value, with a 10-15% margin in which it could still be adjusted.

Many AAA titles were priced at approx. 35 USD (on-par with the Eastern European pricing scheme, which is very fitting and realistic for the Turkish market).

However, the price of some titles, specifically those of 2K, EA and Ubisoft, have been jacked to 170 TL overnight, which is approx. 76 USD, making Turkey the HIGHEST PRICED MARKET. Here is another post[1] by /u/kofteburger[2] regarding this situation.

I, myself, am among the lucky ones to have purchased Civ:BE at the lower price of 75 TL upon initial enabling of TL by Steam, but this doesn't bode well for future releases.

You can check this from the following link: https://steamdb.info/app/65980/[3]
Here is also a screenshot: http://imgur.com/5QGAUNV[4]

[drag to resize or shift+drag to move]

As a market which has been battling software and gaming piracy since the dawn of video gaming, the recent price adjustments both hurt the anti-piracy cause in Turkey, is completely void of logic, and very obviously against the interest of game publishers worldwide.

Many publishers have an exclusivity agreement with Aral A.Ş. for the distribution of video games in any media throughout Turkey, which is likely to cover online distribution. It is highly likely (although not proven) that the new pricing was probably forced upon the distributors by Aral, since the new pricing almost exactly matches that of Aral's.

If this is true, we the gamers are calling upon them to reconsider their deals with Aral, with regards to digital distribution. The said company is a monopoly on physical distribution in Turkey and is notorious for its ridiculously high pricing strategies (approx. 120 USD for console titles, 80-90 USD for PC titles).

The market prices for Turkey must be evaluated by the publishers immediately. The publisher has the right to choose their distribution platform and should never be bound by an exclusivity agreement.

Prices are not in Steam's control, and that the publisher is only provided with a guideline on how to set the pricing. Posts already started to pop up on online communities regarding replies from the Support departments of some publishers, where the blame was shifted onto Steam.

2 minutes after initial post: I have just received a mail from 2K Support for a ticket regarding this issue.

Hello /u/spincrus[5] ,deliberately censored my name

Thank you for contacting 2K Customer Support.

We appreciate you taking the time to bring this issue to our attention.

We are aware that the recent currency conversion introduced by Steam has caused a fluctuation in the pricing for all 2K Games.

Our Production Team is currently in communication with Steam but unfortunately, at this moment, there is nothing we can do to influence Steam pricing directly.

We apologize for the frustration this change may have caused but hope you will still enjoy our titles.

Kind regards,

Barry B. 2K Support

Seems like the blame is still being put on Steam. What a shame :(

15 minutes after initial post: PlayStore[6] , which is a Turkish digital distribution platform, owned by TTNet, the largest ISP of Turkey, which despite its privatization is still partially owned by the government, is selling legit and legal Steam keys for Civilization: Beyond Earth for 120 TL (approx. 54 USD, which is ok but still higher than US pricing).

This may indicate that Aral may not be holding digital distribution rights, and the rights they own may be limited to physical copies on all platforms. Their website, in Turkish, states that it's the official distributor for all media, but 2K is not listed among the companies for which it's the official distributor. EA and Ubisoft are.

CREDITS TO /u/spincrus on Reddit for the OP

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Showing 1-3 of 3 comments

f1r31c3r Oct 24, 2014 @ 7:15pm

This is no suprise as Turkey's economy is not inline with the rest of the world.

What did you all expect?

The price of a product in Turkey in comparison to the price of a product elswhere is massively seperated. You have just been able to see it better with the technology steam provides.
Years back maybe 10 years or less, you could take a working mans wage to Turkey and be a very rich man after converting it to their currency.

It has changed but not masively. Just bare that in mind.

Price of normal living in Turkey is not the same as that of the rest of the world so an exchange rate does not work alone to meet the correct value of an item.

Last edited by f1r31c3r; Oct 24, 2014 @ 7:24pm