Regional converter

[Adi]

I would like to inform you that the Polish price of Rimworld on Steam is 5 highest in the world, due to Valve's automatic exchange rate for PLN which is outdated and does not reflect current purchasing power of Polish currency.

This injustice associated with the erroneous conversion rate is even more visible at DLC

Ideology - 2 Highest in the World
Royalty - 2 Highest in the World
Biotech - 3 Highst in the World
Anomaly - 3 Highst in the World

There's an awareness campaign about unfair prices called #PolishOurPrices that already resulted in multiple devs lowering their unintentionally unfair prices of games such as Hades 2, Silent Hill 2, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, Starfield, Factorio, No Rest for the Wicked, Selaco, Mullet Mad Jack, Into the Radius 2, Retropolis, Felvidek, Dusk, and many others (you can ask them for references).

Please, don't rely on Steam's default regional pricing - adjust it for the Polish market! This will encourage Polish gamers to buy your games directly on Steam

I also recommend reading this tweet:
https://x.com/HardwiredStdios/status/1830984251262804383

[Veylox]

Do you have evidence for it being unfair pricing ?

[Simplex]

The price value compared to prices in other regions is the evidence. Did you read the tweet linked in the post?

[Phénomènes Mystiques]

They simply just need international regulation of the gaming industry.

[Adi]

Publicado originalmente por Veylox:

Do you have evidence for it being unfair pricing ?

Hmmm ... I could have an effort here and send official earning statistics for Poland and Western European countries, and comparing the price relative to the euro and Polish PLN relative to the American dollar, but this is not rather needed because it is obvious that it is obvious that Poles earn on average much less , in a much cheaper currency,
And yet, pay more than the inhabitants of Western countries, for every person who does not live in a cave such evidence is not needed (oh, wait) just look at these tables https://steamdb.info/app/294100/ and tables in the case of DLC to know that something is wrong.

[Veylox]

Publicado originalmente por Simplex:

The price value compared to prices in other regions is the evidence. Did you read the tweet linked in the post?

I read it, and it has no indication as to why Poland should be below. Poland is second place, the rest of Europe is fourth, so clearly Poland is pretty close to where its neighbors are, except... Poland doesn't use Euro as a currency, so it's susceptible to its own currency's worth, like Switzerland and Great Britain, who also happen to pay more

[Astasia]

Steam doesn't care about minimum/average purchasing power, they only look at the cost of doing business in an area compared to the sales they can get from it. The Polish prices are set to what they are because it makes Valve money, and they, as a multibillion dollar corporation with a team of economic experts, have determined they would not earn more money by lowering the price in that region, so they don't. It's not a mistake. Further, the difference in converted price compared to most other regions is a few percent, you are paying within like 5% of the price the game is selling for in Euros or USD. Poland isn't some backwater 3rd world country, Poland has one of the best economies in Europe right now, like 5th or 6th.

[Flocc]

Publicado originalmente por Astasia:

Steam doesn't care about minimum/average purchasing power, they only look at the cost of doing business in an area compared to the sales they can get from it. The Polish prices are set to what they are because it makes Valve money, and they, as a multibillion dollar corporation with a team of economic experts, have determined they would not earn more money by lowering the price in that region, so they don't. It's not a mistake. Further, the difference in converted price compared to most other regions is a few percent, you are paying within like 5% of the price the game is selling for in Euros or USD. Poland isn't some backwater 3rd world country, Poland has one of the best economies in Europe right now, like 5th or 6th.

Agree with the first part.
FYI: If it's within 5%, it means that the developer lowered their price after our intervention. Cheers

[Simplex]

Publicado originalmente por Astasia:

Steam doesn't care about minimum/average purchasing power, they only look at the cost of doing business in an area compared to the sales they can get from it. The Polish prices are set to what they are because it makes Valve money, and they, as a multibillion dollar corporation with a team of economic experts, have determined they would not earn more money by lowering the price in that region, so they don't. It's not a mistake. Further, the difference in converted price compared to most other regions is a few percent, you are paying within like 5% of the price the game is selling for in Euros or USD. Poland isn't some backwater 3rd world country, Poland has one of the best economies in Europe right now, like 5th or 6th.

"experts" at Valve forgot to update prices with changing exchange rates. Check out prices of games in Norway and explain how it makes sense they are lower than in Poland. Norway is one of the richest countries in the world, they could afford to pay twice as much as they currently pay. Yet they pay less than Poland. Same with Canada, Australia, New Zealand - all these countries are much wealthier than Poland, but they were lucky - when Valve checked currency exchange rates their currencies were strong and later became weaker. For Poland it was the other way round. Valve checked exchange rate when PLN was weak, it is now much stronger but the prices remained unfairly high.

Also, compare game prices in Switzerland and Norway and then tell me Valve have any idea what they are doing.

Imagine this:
1 dollar is worth 10 pln for whatever reason (economic crisis, etc) .
So Valve sets a recommended price of games in Poland on a 1:10 ratio. 50$ game is 500 PLN. So far so good.

Then Poland economy recovers, now 1$ i worth 5 PLN. But steam changes nothing, so the 500 PLN game effectively costs 100$ pln in Poland while still costing 50$ in USA.

Does that seem OK to you? This is basically what is happening now, but on a smaller scale.

[Astasia]

Publicado originalmente por Simplex:

...

You are missing a key component here. How much of the economy is gaming? What is the social environment for gaming in these countries? Poland has one of the worlds largest gaming industries, many billions of dollars USD flow into Poland from game development and sales. Norway doesn't even rank, it's not at "billions" of dollars it's at millions, people in Norway spend their money on other things so prices would be slightly lower to entice people to spend on games when they normally wouldn't.

Publicado originalmente por Simplex:

Imagine this:
1 dollar is worth 10 pln for whatever reason (economic crisis, etc) .
So Valve sets a recommended price of games in Poland on a 1:10 ratio. 50$ game is 500 PLN. So far so good.

Then Poland economy recovers, now 1$ i worth 5 PLN. But steam changes nothing, so the 500 PLN game effectively costs 100$ pln in Poland while still costing 50$ in USA.

Does that seem OK to you? This is basically what is happening now, but on a smaller scale.

No that wouldn't be OK, but that's an imaginary situation. Again, the difference in value between what is paid in the US and in Poland is about 5-6% on all the games I've checked, including RimWorld. Second, the value of the Polish zloty hasn't really changed relative to the USD in the past 10 years. In 2015 1 polish zloty was 0.27 USD, in 2025 1 polish zloty is 0.25 USD. There also haven't been any extreme spikes in that period, in 2018 it was a 0.30 briefly, in 2022 it was at 0.20 briefly, those are the furthest outliers, recently it generally fluctuates between 0.23 and 0.25. How much of this is the value of Poland's currency changing compared to the USD I'm not qualified to answer. I can say, when there are economic issue in the US, the prices of games do not change, they have generally ignored US inflation for decades, so games worldwide are for the most part far cheaper today than they were 20 years ago.

[Pong]

Nobody cares to protest for the country with the #1 highest RimWorld prices? No, the world should focus first on the country with the #5 highest prices... #6 is too easy... #4 is a fight the world cannot win...

[Kondiq]

Publicado originalmente por Pong:

Nobody cares to protest for the country with the #1 highest RimWorld prices? No, the world should focus first on the country with the #5 highest prices... #6 is too easy... #4 is a fight the world cannot win...

The issue is about the country having one of the lowest wages in the EU, having one of the highest prices on Steam, higher than countries with way higher wages:
https://notesfrompoland.com/2024/10/28/poles-purchasing-power-33-lower-than-european-average/

[Flocc]

Publicado originalmente por Astasia:

You are missing a key component here. How much of the economy is gaming? What is the social environment for gaming in these countries? Poland has one of the worlds largest gaming industries, many billions of dollars USD flow into Poland from game development and sales. Norway doesn't even rank, it's not at "billions" of dollars it's at millions, people in Norway spend their money on other things so prices would be slightly lower to entice people to spend on games when they normally wouldn't.

Your reasoning logic only applies well to the (Norway, Poland) subset, but not for all of the regional currencies…

Publicado originalmente por Astasia:

No that wouldn't be OK, but that's an imaginary situation. Again, the difference in value between what is paid in the US and in Poland is about 5-6% on all the games I've checked, including RimWorld.

Imaginary situation for better understanding.

You didn't name any game you checked (besides RimWorld). As I said before, many games have lowered prices after our intervention.

Here, I extracted and processed the data from https://steamdb.info/blog/valve-price-matrix-2022-update/

|  Tier [USD] |   Valve PLN | Tier to PLN |  Difference |  Change [%] |
+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+-------------+
|       $0.99 |      4.49zł |      3.94zł |     +0.55zł |     +13.85% |
|       $1.99 |      8.99zł |      7.93zł |     +1.06zł |     +13.41% |
|       $2.99 |     13.49zł |     11.91zł |     +1.58zł |     +13.26% |
|       $3.99 |     17.99zł |     15.89zł |     +2.10zł |     +13.19% |
|       $4.99 |     22.99zł |     19.88zł |     +3.11zł |     +15.66% |
|       $5.99 |     27.50zł |     23.86zł |     +3.64zł |     +15.25% |
|       $6.99 |     31.99zł |     27.84zł |     +4.15zł |     +14.89% |
|       $7.99 |     36.99zł |     31.83zł |     +5.16zł |     +16.22% |
|       $8.99 |     40.99zł |     35.81zł |     +5.18zł |     +14.46% |
|       $9.99 |     45.99zł |     39.80zł |     +6.19zł |     +15.57% |
|      $10.99 |     49.99zł |     43.78zł |     +6.21zł |     +14.19% |
|      $11.99 |     54.99zł |     47.76zł |     +7.23zł |     +15.13% |
|      $12.99 |     59.99zł |     51.75zł |     +8.24zł |     +15.93% |
|      $13.99 |     63.99zł |     55.73zł |     +8.26zł |     +14.82% |
|      $14.99 |     67.99zł |     59.71zł |     +8.28zł |     +13.86% |
|      $15.99 |     72.99zł |     63.70zł |     +9.29zł |     +14.59% |
|      $16.99 |     77.99zł |     67.68zł |    +10.31zł |     +15.23% |
|      $17.99 |     82.99zł |     71.66zł |    +11.33zł |     +15.81% |
|      $18.99 |     86.99zł |     75.65zł |    +11.34zł |     +15.00% |
|      $19.99 |     91.99zł |     79.63zł |    +12.36zł |     +15.52% |
|      $24.99 |    114.99zł |     99.55zł |    +15.44zł |     +15.51% |
|      $29.99 |    138.99zł |    119.47zł |    +19.52zł |     +16.34% |
|      $34.99 |    161.99zł |    139.38zł |    +22.61zł |     +16.22% |
|      $39.99 |    184.99zł |    159.30zł |    +25.69zł |     +16.13% |
|      $44.99 |    208.49zł |    179.22zł |    +29.27zł |     +16.33% |
|      $49.99 |    231.99zł |    199.14zł |    +32.85zł |     +16.50% |
|      $54.99 |    254.99zł |    219.05zł |    +35.94zł |     +16.41% |
|      $59.99 |    274.99zł |    238.97zł |    +36.02zł |     +15.07% |
|      $64.99 |    299.99zł |    258.89zł |    +41.10zł |     +15.88% |
|      $69.99 |    324.99zł |    278.81zł |    +46.18zł |     +16.57% |
|      $74.99 |    346.99zł |    298.72zł |    +48.27zł |     +16.16% |
|      $79.99 |    369.99zł |    318.64zł |    +51.35zł |     +16.12% |
|      $84.99 |    389.99zł |    338.56zł |    +51.43zł |     +15.19% |
|      $89.99 |    415.99zł |    358.48zł |    +57.51zł |     +16.04% |
|      $99.99 |    462.99zł |    398.31zł |    +64.68zł |     +16.24% |
|     $119.99 |    549.99zł |    477.98zł |    +72.01zł |     +15.07% |
|     $129.99 |    599.99zł |    517.82zł |    +82.17zł |     +15.87% |
|     $149.99 |    689.99zł |    597.49zł |    +92.50zł |     +15.48% |
|     $199.99 |    919.99zł |    796.66zł |   +123.33zł |     +15.48% |

Valve PLN - Valve's recommended pricing for Poland
Tier to PLN - Tier converted into PLN
Conversion rate: 1 USD = 3.9835 PLN

You probably use SteamDB, and you mentioned USD, so if the data doesn't match, it means:
- Dev has already lowered the price for Poland (mostly after our intervention).
- You evaluate wrong (percentage increase vs. decrease).

[Simplex]

Publicado originalmente por Astasia:

Publicado originalmente por Simplex:

...

You are missing a key component here. How much of the economy is gaming? What is the social environment for gaming in these countries? Poland has one of the worlds largest gaming industries, many billions of dollars USD flow into Poland from game development and sales. Norway doesn't even rank, it's not at "billions" of dollars it's at millions, people in Norway spend their money on other things so prices would be slightly lower to entice people to spend on games when they normally wouldn't.

Publicado originalmente por Simplex:

IImagine this:
1 dollar is worth 10 pln for whatever reason (economic crisis, etc) .
So Valve sets a recommended price of games in Poland on a 1:10 ratio. 50$ game is 500 PLN. So far so good.

Then Poland economy recovers, now 1$ i worth 5 PLN. But steam changes nothing, so the 500 PLN game effectively costs 100$ pln in Poland while still costing 50$ in USA.

Does that seem OK to you? This is basically what is happening now, but on a smaller scale.

No that wouldn't be OK, but that's an imaginary situation.

No, it's not an imaginary situation, it's already happening on a smaller scale. Here is the same story with current currency values.

Again - THIS IS WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED IN THE REAL WORLD:

October 2022: 1 dollar is worth 5 PLN (because of russia invasion of Ukraine, which borders Poland).

So Valve sets a recommended price of games in Poland on a 1:5 ratio. 50$ game is 250 PLN. So far so good.

BUT! Few months later Poland currency recovers, and now 1$ is worth 4 PLN. So the ratio of prices should be changed from 1:5 to 1:4, don't you agree?

But steam changes nothing, so the game still costs 250 PLN in Ponad, but now the same 250 PLN is worth 63$, not 50$. And it still costs 50$ in USA, which is equivalent to 200 PLN currently.
Again, are you OK with this?

[Astasia]

Publicado originalmente por Flocc:

You didn't name any game you checked (besides RimWorld).

Games checked on SteamDB using the price chart which lists differences to USD:
RimWorld: +0.66%
Anomaly: +5.70% (the polish price hasn't changed ever)
Biotech: +5.70% (the polish price was reduced slightly in early 2023)
Kingdom Come Deliverence: +6.33% (new game)
Path of Exile 2: +4.76% (new game)
Civ 7: +7.48% (new game)
Avowed: +7.48% (new game)
Baldurs Gate 3: +4.43% (this was adjusted in 2023)

Look, if we were talking about a 25-50% increase in cost over the rest of the world, I'd understand where you are coming from. I can't find any game on SteamDB above a 5-7% difference which is within rounding differences for sale prices (they don't usually sell games for like 27.53, they round up to like 29.99).

Publicado originalmente por Flocc:

- Dev has already lowered the price for Poland (mostly after our intervention).

Then why make this thread? It's clear on the price history for RimWorld and the older DLCs that the price went up in 2022, then dropped a little in 2023. You can see on the package details that the DLCs are selling for 9% below the Valve recommended pricing. I don't think Valve is unaware of the situation, I think they still believe the current recommendations are the best, it wouldn't be difficult for them to update them. Devs are free to set whatever prices they want though.

[Kondiq]

I don't think the recommendations are right, because Norway has wages higher than the average in Europe, yet their prices are below prices in Euro, while Poland has wages 33% lower than average, yet we pay more:
https://notesfrompoland.com/2024/10/28/poles-purchasing-power-33-lower-than-european-average/