When will Steam be fair about regional pricing in Egypt?

[Yawnz]

First of all, I am from Egypt.
In case you didn't know, Egypt is a 3rd world country, which makes it as poor as Turkey for example. I have noticed that you've regional pricing for countries like Turkey, Argentina, etc. (3rd world countries) but never had the same for Egypt.
Please note that the conversion rate for Egyptian Pound is ($1 = 19.7£) THIS IS A HUGE conversion rate! So, imagine wanting to buy a ($70 = 1,380.78£) game... The average income in Egypt is around ($200 = 3,935.94£)!!!
This is awfully unfair and I know many people asked before for regional pricing for Egypt and we almost never get any response from steam!
Epic Games Store ALREADY did this since they started day-1 of their client, Microsoft XBOX on Windows also have regional pricing for Egypt as well and they're very fair prices! Even EA has that for -some- of their games.
I am disappointed that until this day there's no move from Steam towards this fair regional pricing for Egypt.
I know I can raise a petition for this and I know there are thousands if not millions of Egyptian gamers that face the same problem and refuse (or end up not even able to) buy games from steam and instead go to Epic Games Store because of this regional pricing difference (I am one of these people). So, I kindly ask you to reply to this issue and actually discuss that with me because I have a very important case that can benefit both of Steam as a company and us as Egyptian Gamers' community.

March 2023 UPDATE:
1USD = 34EGP, in other words, a $70 Game now is worth more than 2400EGP!!!
And still not even the slightest!
Microsoft, EpicGames and others have fair regional pricing for Egypt, but Steam still doesn't!

[Bee🐝]

Steam suggests regional pricing for all games - it's up to the developer to choose to follow those recommendations.

[Crazy Tiger]

Sure you can raise a petition, it just won't actually achieve anything beyond being a list of people saying they like something. Akin the threads in the past by your fellow countrypersons.

Valve adds currencies every now and then. I'm not sure whether they adjust regions often. They'll likely get around to changing things at some point in time.

The biggest reason I can think of why Valve hasn't come around to it is one you probably don't like, namely that your market simply isn't important enough for them.

[cinedine]

Originally posted by Bee:

Steam suggests regional pricing for all games - it's up to the developer to choose to follow those recommendations.

They can only put up regional pricing if there is a region to be regionally priced. Everything else is lumped under ROW and gets one price.

[SinCanDory]

Being 3rd world country doesn't matter I think or the worth of currency.

It's more about the country itself. Why I say this? You gave Turkey as an example but Turkey was a developing country with a strong economy until recently. The currency rate sank in recent years. Prices on the other hand (on Steam) started to change accordingly.

You can check on steamdb and see that the game prices started to catch up with western prices. I remember some 60€ game being 20€ in Turkish region and now newer games are equal 50-60€ in Turkish liras. Which is about 1/3 of an average salary.

So yeah, currency and prices don't mean much, once the Devs/publishers set the prices.

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

This won't help it at all...

https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2022/09/egyptian-pound-continues-lose-value

[hazyblue]

Hey there my fellow Egyptian! I am made a similar post not that long ago and got no response as well. We just have to keep asking until they listen. There is absolutely no reason we should be paying in USD. Not only is the exchange rate high, we also get charged FX mark up fee by the local banks and that is absolutely not fair. It's also not fair that countries in the region who have their currencies pegged to the USD pay in their local currencies and we get charged in USD!

[JVC]

Originally posted by Eiswolfin:

Originally posted by Xenophobe:

here's an explanatory article on the subject ... https://gameworldobserver.com/2022/10/20/steam-regional-pricing-recommendations-update-valve#:~:text=How%20does%20Steam%20regional%20pricing,or%20set%20their%20own%20prices.

This really doesn't apply to Egypt since Egypt is in the same pricing region as the USA.

It does. The EGP isn't stable so people outside of Egypt protect themselves by demanding payment in hard currency, in this case US dollars.

https://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=USD&to=EGP&view=1Y
This chart doesn't say "stability".

People living in Egypt get the short end of the stick with this situation but this is entry level economics. Noone outside of country X will accept country X's currency if it unstable and there's a high risk that you'll lose money by accepting it.

[𝘚𝘛𝘌𝘈𝘔𝘎𝘖𝘋]

warhammer is free in egypt today only.

[ReBoot]

See if enough Egyptian customers gather to get something done. There's a couple of Steam competitors listed in the OP. Should there be a notable exodus of purchase power, that would most certainly send a signal.

[Aviation Gamer X]

Originally posted by Baby Dwight:

Originally posted by hazyblue:

Hey there my fellow Egyptian! I am made a similar post not that long ago and got no response as well. We just have to keep asking until they listen. There is absolutely no reason we should be paying in USD. Not only is the exchange rate high, we also get charged FX mark up fee by the local banks and that is absolutely not fair. It's also not fair that countries in the region who have their currencies pegged to the USD pay in their local currencies and we get charged in USD!

You will not get a reply from valve as these are user forums. Steam is not the ones setting the price of games they may have suggestions, but at the end of the day publishers are the ones that set the price.

Problem is, they don't have Egypt as an option for publishers, publishers decide if they have the option to, you can on some websites that show the data bases, and no sign of it being an option. So it's up to steam to leave the option in the first place. I just hope they do, it's been really unfortunate the amounts of games I wish to get, and gotta pay a lot for so little, even in sales. While countries with similar currencies or better, get the chance of cheaper games. If a 6 dollar game is s good price for Saudi Arabia, then why is it defaulted to 20 here, it is all defaulted to USA, some European countries get even a slightly reduced price.
We need this, even with similar countries like Algeria need it. Millions of people here, if not everyone, downloads pirated games only due to the prices, people get confused why I don't, that's the norm now. Steam won't lose a thing, just as they did it in Turkey, why not here.

[ZZZZZ]

turkey, egypt and argentina are very far away from being 3rd world countries in terms of economy..
ppl living in 3rd world countries have usually $50 or less per month

[Seris]

1- Whoever is saying it is about stability needs to take a look at a few currencies real quick. Japanese Yen and Argentinian Peso have fallen by 50% since last year alone, yet they have their own currencies just fine. Turkish Lira as well.

2- What do you mean Steam recommends regional pricing for all games/it is the publisher's who set the price? There is no such thing. Publishers/devs cannot set a price for an unsupported currency. This is common sense. Egypt and many other countries are unsupported

3- Egypt is not as much of a developing country as to not have its own currency on steam. There is precedent for similar economies if not worse. For example, Middle Eastern Kuwait has its own currency so its neither about the region nor about the GDP. China, Malaysia, Indonesia and South Africa have their own currency and they are very similar in GDP per capita PPP if not worse in case of Malaysia and Indonesia.

4- Regional pricing isn't particularly impossible in Egypt like some make it seem as if its an inherent problem of the economy. Both Netflix and Spotify regionally price their subscriptions to fit the economy here, and so do many Mobile games due to the market being so massive here.

Hope this clears up a lot of the repeated and frankly uneducated takes some people have here.

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

Originally posted by Seris:

1- Whoever is saying it is about stability needs to take a look at a few currencies real quick. Japanese Yen and Argentinian Peso have fallen by 50% since last year alone, yet they have their own currencies just fine. Turkish Lira as well.

2- What do you mean Steam recommends regional pricing for all games/it is the publisher's who set the price? There is no such thing. Publishers/devs cannot set a price for an unsupported currency. This is common sense. Egypt and many other countries are unsupported

3- Egypt is not as much of a developing country as to not have its own currency on steam. There is precedent for similar economies if not worse. For example, Middle Eastern Kuwait has its own currency so its neither about the region nor about the GDP. China, Malaysia, Indonesia and South Africa have their own currency and they are very similar in GDP per capita PPP if not worse in case of Malaysia and Indonesia.

4- Regional pricing isn't particularly impossible in Egypt like some make it seem as if its an inherent problem of the economy. Both Netflix and Spotify regionally price their subscriptions to fit the economy here, and so do many Mobile games due to the market being so massive here.

Hope this clears up a lot of the repeated and frankly uneducated takes some people have here.

1. Those currencies have been on Steam for years before they crashed.

Adding new currencies now, while the currencies are trashed is not a good business decision.

Once things stabilize again, Valve will add more support for more currencies.

[Chompman]

Originally posted by Eiswolfin:

Valve could at least make it so dev/pubs can make a price specific for Egypt even if it is in USD.

That would get abused too easily with vpn's sadly and game devs would not appreciate that.

[Chompman]

Originally posted by Eiswolfin:

Originally posted by Chompman:

That would get abused too easily with vpn's sadly and game devs would not appreciate that.

If VPN can be abused, it is already happening anyways because there are already countries with significantly cheaper prices. So adding in Egypt regional pricing isn't going to make that problem any worse.

If they did the prices in USD as you suggested it would be much easier then having to use the regions currency as happens now.

As for countries with the cheaper prices this is one of the reasons steam adjusted their recommended prices to help combat this abuse.