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And for others it made prices higher by 30 to 60% -- of course those markets are still using local currencies.
But, yes, it sucks that low income regions are being punished because Valve and other stores allowed easy access to region hopping for far too long. While Valve stamped out the vast majority of loop holes on their end, it seems it was too little, too late.
Then again, if this is a publisher driven change (which it very well could be with prices rising around the world), you might want to prepare yourself for when other sites implement similar moves. =/
https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/2720-4EC7-B95A-1D2A
You do understand that USD stands for United States Dollars, right? Yes, the currency is changing to the American currency. LATAM-USD is the name Valve are giving to the region band that will now apply to those countries. It is not a special currency in itself, but a name for developers an publishers to understand that pricing should be adjusted for that region.
And as it says right at the top of the link you posted:
FYI, Steam has two other similarly named regions because they, too, are charged in USD:
CIS - U.S. Dollar
South Asia - USD
In fact, after this change there will be four such named regions, as there will also be:
MENA - USD
Yet. The status quo today may not project into the future indefinitely.
When a currency becomes this devalued they want another option and had steam implement this change not to mention the regional abuse that happened.
Eventually more and more stores will do the same.
Other stores do not have to follow this. The world does not spin around Steam. For example, Epic Games Store won't follow this and they will get so many customers. Steam is not like the old days. They lost so many customers and Counter Strike addicted mad people are leaving as well. Ubisoft left Steam and they still make so much money. They are making the latest Avatar and Star Wars games. The games look amazing. They put their old works here to make some extra budget.
This change is so as the Lira fluctuates the base price the dev's set remains constant. They don't want to get 10% of what they listed it at if the Lira drops 90% in value. Now if your currency strengthens you will pay less actually.
The companies that sell their product has more say then a customer in this case and they either get this changed so they can use a currency with a value or will simply no longer sell games in those regions as some have already stopped.
As for ubisoft you may need to relook at that as they have listed more of their games back on steam because they are having serious issues.
Blaming steam for this when it's not their fault but these countries currency devaluation that caused it is the reason.
Ubi got contracts for the latest Avatar and Star Wars games. They don't put their games on Steam. Because they don't need Steam. Big developers care putting the same prices on different stores. Because they have agreements with so many different distributors and this is actually not about Steam. They also sell physical copies. Indie developers do not care prices like this.
They will also release it on their own store, and get 100% of the sales from all the early adopters, then when sales die down they can always release it on other stores to get the holdouts.
They are working with Epic Games Store. They put their new games there. Epic Games Store get lower cuts and they also pay some developers to support their games.
Nope, those 2 games are NOT being released on EPIC's store atm, JUST Ubisoft's store. They figure hype is enough that people will buy from them. Fair odds of it being released on Steam/EPIC later though