Install Steam
login
|
language
简体中文 (Simplified Chinese)
繁體中文 (Traditional Chinese)
日本語 (Japanese)
한국어 (Korean)
ไทย (Thai)
Български (Bulgarian)
Čeština (Czech)
Dansk (Danish)
Deutsch (German)
Español - España (Spanish - Spain)
Español - Latinoamérica (Spanish - Latin America)
Ελληνικά (Greek)
Français (French)
Italiano (Italian)
Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian)
Magyar (Hungarian)
Nederlands (Dutch)
Norsk (Norwegian)
Polski (Polish)
Português (Portuguese - Portugal)
Português - Brasil (Portuguese - Brazil)
Română (Romanian)
Русский (Russian)
Suomi (Finnish)
Svenska (Swedish)
Türkçe (Turkish)
Tiếng Việt (Vietnamese)
Українська (Ukrainian)
Report a translation problem
Discussions Rules and Guidelines
Report this post
When users pay Valve in whatever pesos, Valve actually gets USD, they never see any pesos, ever.
When Valve added a currency, it took developers a long time to add an about for the new currency as well. My guess would be that in a year, most will have finally updated their prices.
Best thing to do for the moment is contact the developer/publisher of the game you want and remind them they still haven't updated their price for the new region.
First, hyperinflation is correct. Since 2020, Turkish Lira dropped by almost 5 times. Actually right now, it has been slowed down, probably getting better in few months. Because this was a politics. They couldn't handle to push it further. This is not the topic, but giving this information to you is important for understanding the situation in here.
Turkey isn't a country like other Middle-Eastern countries. Most of them doesn't produce anything. Even if they, they can't sell to other countries because of political statuses or it's worthless. 5 times sounds insane for any people who doesn't live high-inflation country, I can totally understand. If you ask me, what are the effects of this inflation for your life, buying house or car requires too much effort. Is it possible, yes.
On the Steam's aspect, game prices has been increased with Turkish Lira's devaluation. People still was buying the games.
Especially for Turkey side, I don't know what they'll do the companies but even for the citizens, we have to pay extra %1 if we want to buy dollar. This is probably more for companies. Also, Steam could think about if they can't get their money from Turkish banks, because the situation was going to there. So many times it happened, as an example, I know the Lebanon's lollar.
This is another topic btw. If you want further information about them, you can contact me.
But for TL:DR, Turkey has hyperinflation but the situation does not like the other Middle-Eastern countries. People still have money, but publishers doesn't want to sell their games on here. So be it.
I think they won't. One of the triggers which they stopped the Turkish lira support was God of War release. Sony Turkey was made the price as 25$ for Turkey at release. So many people bought game from Turkey. As I understand, they won't allow this situation again.
God of War isn't the only one. Elden Ring also priced 30$ in Turkey. We afford to buy it, but people also bought in Turkey.
Valve put things in place to prevent cross region purchasing long ago, so that isn't really much of an issue anymore. This is why one can only change their region every three months and it requires someone to use a payment method, with an address from that region tied to it. The amount of cross region purchasing has dropped quite a bit. What little still happens isn't really enough to cause an issue.
I read all the explanation done by Steam end regarding the MENA pricing strategy. You as Steam also released a recommended price list. However almost 90% of the game developing companies do not apply this. Did they forget or this is the situation that we need to deal with as Turkish players.
You stated that due to the fluctuating currency rates we do this. But that fluctuating exchange rates are happening due to high inflation rates in my country. So day by day we lose the purchasing power, this is simple economics. So in such enviroment as the market leader you have taken such decision which will endanger your business sustainability. I am a 38 yold sales manager, I earn good, I can buy anything anytime from Steam. However the average age is way below, mostly students even toddlers are your community. Also as I mentioned above, for a country such as Turkey with low purchsing power is not fair at all.
In these circumstances I really recommend you or ask from you to reconsider this strategy. People on social media, youtube channels calling for boycotting Steam.
I understand the concern as well, there are purchases made via VPN from Turkey from other countries. But as the supplier you are the responsible to take precaoutions for those kind of defects. And YOU must find a solution to the VPN topic, however again YOU chose the easy path, and switched to USD.
I dont think as an individual this ticket of mine will not resolve anything, but I really want you to reconsider. Also push the developers at least to the recommended pricing. There are games which increased their sales price by 100's of percents.
And the specialist who read this, please make sure this message of mine is sent at least one level above yourself, nothing personal just trying to make sure that this topic is taken serious.
All the best!
Not.
Look, things are really straightforward. Steam is a store; developers decide the price for which they put their goods on said store. Steam suggests prices in different regions in comparison to a US price for the same product, but it does not mandate things nor can it "push" developers.
Developers have been slacking off with respect to setting a MENA-USD price, and this seems to be standard practice what with e.g. many prices in Polish zloty also still being at pre-EU levels due to having in years never been updated. Valve has notified developers of the needed change but I've seen at least one developer say that Valve spams them nearly daily with all sorts of useless nonsense anyway so that they never payed attention.
You need to address the developer of the game(s) you're interested in and tell them they should be explicitly adding a MENA-USD price on Steam since they're otherwise priced as US-USD, i.e., too expensive for MENA. Supposedly 80 or so million Turks together will in the end get through to a fairly large percentage of developers.
What's left after that is that some games will still be significantly more expensive according to MENA-USD than they once were in Turkey -- and that's exactly right since you due to your inflation rate in many cases payed the lowest prices on the planet without being entitled to that as a matter of your expendable income.
That's it.
They found some methods. Some of them which I've heard
First, There are several reasons to visit Turkey. Summer or Winter vacations especially. Some people took a credit card while they're leaving. You don't have to be a Turkish citizen to take a card. You can easily find an address from Turkey. I don't think Valve controls the addresses. They're taking a Turkey based new Steam account. With using VPN, new account and Turkey based credit card, you can access the game. While playing the game, they are keeping their VPN's online.
Second one, you can purchase via third party key seller. VPN and Turkey based Steam Account is a must. There are some retaillers can sell the keys cheaper than Steam sometimes. They've bought the game from this sellers and plays the game, credit card barrier has been resolves with that.
Third one, and I think not only problematic for only MENA countries, there are some sites which rents Steam accounts. As far as I can see, these accounts only contains one game, and you don't have to buy the game, you only rent. After they've finishes the game, it's done.
Maybe some of them changes their main account the Turkey account while their vacation, after the buying the games, they changes back to their original country. It's possible. Steam allows this.
I think there are some several solutions to solve this issue.
First, like Netflix's effort, Steam can blocks the VPN's. On Netflix, there is really few VPN's work which I've seen.
Second, this is about the Turkey, Turkey has all digitilazed, I don't know is it possible but Steam can verify the person as a Turkish citizen.
Third, these accounts are not always active. Their activity is almost clear, they buy the game, plays the game and doesn't use that account until they find a game cheaper in that country. These accounts could be tagged as suspicious, and could be blocked for manual confirmation. Easiest one like in the second option, requires to send their citizenship card. Until that confirmation, Steam can blocks a new purchases and access the game.
Forth, like community market solution, especially new account and instantly bought games, Steam won't allow to play the games more than 2 hours. After their investigation, if that account is a fake, they can claim back the game and refund the money. That anonymous cards won't supports the money transfer. This is a problematic solution I see but at least could blocks that activity.
Fifth, you can freely create a new account. Steam could choose the countries which they want to sell cheaper than the others. If you want to access that prices, there must be a verification, These could be harsh. If you don't want to get this, still you can purchase the games, but without any regional pricing.
These are the solutions which I've found right now. I hope in future, they try to find something like this solution.
Go email a few game developers instead :)
Clearly you have no idea how currency exchanges work.
Please stop misinforming people and move along.
First you say they never did - now you say they did but it ends up being USD.
Stop trolling and confusing people.
I don't think so. There are many groups which are following these "deals" for them. Why should developer accepts to earn 30$ for who can afford 60$ price? There wasn't any region lock when Steam starting to support local currencies. After that abuse, that happened. Developer loses 30$ for each sell for that people. Isn't it same for the for example Turkey? If you ask me, no.If the people can't afford the price, what is the reason the sell that game? Selling 3 copies with 30$ better than selling 1 copy with 60$ price. I think this is one of the big reasons.
Actual reason is, Turkish government is almost 20 years old. They are really above the law. Government could block your all invesments are all money. As a company, what you can do about it? Let me say, nothing. If you want to convert your money to dollar, you also spend extra cash for government, for using USD, Euro etc. Valve could keep the Turkish Lira support, but every price could be changed by dollar rate, they didn't want it.
I'm not saying this because I'm a Turkish citizen but, Turkey is a great market for every company. Population is really high in here, also in normal times, there is acceptable income for every citizen. Also, there are so many gamers exist. A game price is constant, you've already spent that amount. Selling extra copies is a extra income for them. I don't see any reason to don't want to sell extra copies.
I wrote that wall of text, maybe if region restriction works perfectly, we can see mean pricing. Blizzard doing that in my country right now. I don't see any reason to Valve is not doing that.
I'm a customer and I'm going to spend money, why would I want anything less?
Can't say more/other than that.
Guys are right OP. unfortunatly we have no option but boycoting the Steam and move along. Perhaps with EPIC.
As before this MENA s..t, Devs had already began to charge more in Liras, after that Steam put an end to it for preventing confusion of the market . They decided to go MENA pricing, and putting Turkey into this market - making it almost impossible to buy products of any developers.
If Steam steps back and decieds to take Turkey from MENA region problems might get solved. Otherwise, only option is NOT BUYING.
ps. from Turkey as well
However, then there's the other issue, i.e., the Turkish Lira and more generally your economy being a dumpster fire, meaning that this is not the right time to have or re-introduce any such country-specific pricing for anyone other than you yourself.
And finally then, very much once again after all the above and in a practical sense most importantly even, that the prices that you are looking at now are for a large percentage not by Steam or even the developer intended MENA-USD prices. Many developers simply failed to set a MENA-USD price, meaning their games got the US-USD price also in the MENA-USD region.
Therefore, still, that you just really, really need to contact individual developers and not Steam. Steam doesn't set prices; they only recommend.