Question Regarding The Steam's Regional Pricing Structure

[GRIMREAPER ALVA]

So I came up with a few publishers who hasn't set a regional pricing structure in one of the region Steam has recently introduced. I emailed some publishers and asked them if they would adjust / reduce the prices of their games on Steam according to Steam's regional pricing structure. However, they've told me that they don't control the prices on Steam...that only Steam sets the prices of those games.I was under the impression that it was the developers / publishers who are in control of Steam's pricing structure and Valve / Steam can only provide them with a suggested price.

So my question is this. Does Steam control the regional pricing structure of all games from all developers / publishers or does the developers / publishers themselves control the Steam's regional pricing structure ? TIA

[Spawn of Totoro]

https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/store/pricing

Overview
Partners on Steam are responsible for setting and managing pricing for their products. The Steamworks Developer site provides tools to configure pricing and discounts in all the currencies supported by Steam. Initial pricing as well as proposed pricing adjustments will be reviewed by Valve and are usually processed within one or two business days. We recommend pricing strategies based on our experience and we may suggest prices based on currency conversions and other factors. During processing we will attempt to check your prices for input errors, but we can't guarantee we will catch every one so please check your prices carefully before submitting.

[Satoru]

Generally support for giant corporations have no idea how steam works so firstly ignore what 'support' says because while they're 'technically' correct with regards to how most store they interact with work. So they're not wrong per say. Its just that it doesn't apply to steam specifically.

Steam works in 2 ways

1) A dev sets a price in a desired currency (USD/Euro/etc) Steam then applies a conversion algorithm to set the pricing in the 3 dozen currencies it supports. This is primarily for indie devs who wouldn't have the foggiest clue what a Malaysian Ringgit is let alone what to price a game there. Most games use this method.

2) Large publishers, will generally MANUALLY set their prices per region. This is due to the fact that they need to harmonize pricing for both digital and physcial products.

https://www.kotaku.com.au/2012/12/green-man-gaming-blames-australian-price-hikes-on-publishers-and-local-retail-feedback/

Thus they will attempt to set the price on steam to be as similar to their retail pricing so they don't make the retailers angry that steam is undercutting them.

Or where DayZ atttempts to unify all pricing digitally to be as close to the USD pricing as possible

https://steamdb.info/app/221100/

Again in this scenario the dev/publisher is in control and must set the pricing manually for each region, and must manually set the pricing for any new regions that go live on steam. steam sends out notifications to all devs/publishers months ahead of time before a region goes live to update their pricing.


But functionally, on steam, developers set the pricing. Whether thats via method #1, or by manually setting every price manually per region in #2, the dev/publisher is responsible for the pricing. And is responsible for updating pricing if new regions go live on steam

[GRIMREAPER ALVA]

Thank you for the quick and comprehensive answer. Now it makes more sense now. I had confusion because there are still some publishers out there who, despite having Steam's regional pricing structure, did not change their game's prices accordingly. I don't know if they will in the future that's why I emailed them.


What's more concerning to me is that I've seen a few publishers who have initially set a lower price of their games according to the regional pricing structure....only to jack up the price considerably in just mare weeks / months afterwards without warning, to the point where the price of those games are very close to the US dollar counterpart, making the whole point of having a regional pricing structure obsolete. Can they actually do that ? Is there any laws or regulations on Steam against such dubious practices ?

[Satoru]

Originally posted by GrimReaper 𐌀𐌋𐠨𐌀:

Thank you for the quick and comprehensive answer. Now it makes more sense now. I had confusion because there are still some publishers out there who, despite having Steam's regional pricing structure, did not change their game's prices accordingly. I don't know if they will in the future that's why I emailed them.

Its up to each publisher to do so.

What's more concerning to me is that I've seen a few publishers who have initially set a lower price of their games according to the regional pricing structure....only to jack up the price considerably in just mare weeks / months afterwards without warning, to the point where the price of those games are very close to the US dollar counterpart, making the whole point of having a regional pricing structure obsolete. Can they actually do that ? Is there any laws or regulations on Steam against such dubious practices ?

This can be a mis-communication between divisions as to what the specific regional pricing needs to be in each region. some games in low cost regions are expensive due to the fact that physcial copies are heavily taxed. Thus the games are more expensive because they are priced as if they were physcial goods since as I stated before, physical retailers dont like getting shafted by lower cost digital games. Team A sets a specific price, then suddenly retailer Z from region Q sends a letter screaming about the steam price to Team B, who then has to tell Team A to change the price or they're gonna lose retailer Z.

The situation can be quite complicated and even more so for larger publishers, with dev divisions, publishing divisions for every region imaginable, sub-publishers for sub-developers, contracts between vendors, an entirely different company being in charge in some region (1C is notorious for basically owning almost all Russia/CIS region publishing), etc

If you think about it, traditional publishing of physical games only required the team to figure out the pricing ONCE. When the game is released. After that its not needed because they just stop printing physical copies so there's no need to 'update' anything. But with digital you can have a game on the 'shelf' forever that requires constant updates. A lot of big companies probably arent well designed to deal with this 'long tail' model since its not something they've had to deal with.

[GRIMREAPER ALVA]

I see. That's very interesting. Its more complicated than I thought. Well, I just hope these publishers / developers figure it all out and give us a fair regional pricing. For example, the country I'm from is Bangladesh which falls into the South Asian Region on Steam which was introduced late last year. Our neighbor country is India who also has regional pricing model on Steam. Both of the countries have similar economic standards. And yet, there are some developers / publishers who have drastically reduced price of their games on Steam in Indian region but chose to only minimally reduce those same game's prices on Steam in South Asian Region


For example,

Far Cry 5

Indian Region price - 44.42 US dollars

South Asian Region price - 56.69 US dollars (Previously was 43.99 US dollars)

https://steamdb.info/app/552520/

Styx Shard of Darkness

Indian Region price - 23.68 US dollars

South Asian Region Price - 34.99 US dollars (Previously was 12.99 US dollars)

https://steamdb.info/app/355790/


There are just some examples. All in all, it just seems like unfair pricing to us as both India and Bangladesh (South Asian Region) shares similar economic standards. Most other developers and publishers do have a fair regional pricing on Steam however. I just hope the rest of them figures it out.

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

Originally posted by Vo3kr:

i think that regional pricing should really depend on steam using a certain algorithm for a country, converting games price automatically, some games on steam have no regional price conversion while others are really cheap. i think valve should figure it out so that game prices are updated automatically according to a ratio set for that country instead of each publisher setting it themselves. i think it would be better because many games remain underpriced while other are overpriced, if currency exchange has shifted, they aren't really updated.

And that is when the devs/pubs leave because they lost control of pricing on their products. Epic would love that.

[GRIMREAPER ALVA]

Originally posted by Vo3kr:

i think that regional pricing should really depend on steam using a certain algorithm for a country, converting games price automatically, some games on steam have no regional price conversion while others are really cheap. i think valve should figure it out so that game prices are updated automatically according to a ratio set for that country instead of each publisher setting it themselves. i think it would be better because many games remain underpriced while other are overpriced, if currency exchange has shifted, they aren't really updated.

After doing some more research, I found out that Steam already has that regional pricing algorithm set in place and by default it suggests those prices to developers / publishers. From what I've seen, Steam's suggested regional prices are pretty good for all the countries involved, especially countries with lower economic standards. Problem is, its the developer / publisher who sometimes overwrites Steam's suggested regional pricing structure and comes up with their own. In which case, increasing the prices. This is where we see price discrepancy where a typical 60 dollar game costs 20 dollar in Brazil, while another AAA game costing more than 80 dollars.

All in all, developers / publishers are the one who have full control over the pricing model / regional pricing model and can overwrite Steam's suggested default regional pricing model. So the next time you see unfair regional prices for some games, we should blame / take it up to the devs / pubs.

[The Crazy Gringo]

So, would it be true to say that regional GDP, average salaries and standards of living are taken into account in Steam's algorithm?
And can devs override that algorithm?
I'm looking at Gears 5, for example. The pre-purchase base price is US$60, but in Turkey it's listed as US$15, with an extreme example being a Euro price of 76.
So Turkey has an average lower take-home pay, if that's the logic.
On the other hand, Argentina has this game listed as US$51, but that doesn't fit the maths of the income algorithm.
Source:
https://steamdb.info/app/1097840/

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

Originally posted by The Crazy ♥♥♥♥♥♥:

So, would it be true to say that regional GDP, average salaries and standards of living are taken into account in Steam's algorithm?
And can devs override that algorithm?

Yes.

Yes.

https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/store/pricing/currencies

Complain to them and not Valve.

[wuddih]

Originally posted by The Crazy ♥♥♥♥♥♥:

So, would it be true to say that regional GDP, average salaries and standards of living are taken into account in Steam's algorithm?
And can devs override that algorithm?
I'm looking at Gears 5, for example. The pre-purchase base price is US$60, but in Turkey it's listed as US$15, with an extreme example being a Euro price of 76.
So Turkey has an average lower take-home pay, if that's the logic.
On the other hand, Argentina has this game listed as US$51, but that doesn't fit the maths of the income algorithm.
Source:
https://steamdb.info/app/1097840/

if you would have read the thread then you would get the gist that bigger publishers don't follow Valves price recommendations. Xbox Game Studios is Microsoft.
if you dont like the price on Steam, try looking on other stores, maybe the xbox store.

and please stop calling it algorithm. nothing with Valves price recommendations is an algorithm. it is mostly a manually maintained conversion rate for each supported currency, rounded to the next psychological relevant price, that is basic math.

it is a dumb button, which is optional to use to begin with. nearly nothing on Steam is ever enforced onto developers/publishers.