# Does anyone understand Steam's regional pricing?



## Splinterdog (Sep 3, 2019)

From what I've read on Steam community forums and numerous articles, it's up to the devs what prices are set for games on Steam. On the other hand, some are suggesting that Steam has its own pricing algorithm which they suggest to devs/publishers, but are not mandatory, so to speak.
That algorithm is said to be based on each region's cost of living index and is directly related to monthly income and purchasing power, although I can't find any evidence to back that up. Getting Valve to comment on matters such as this is almost impossible.
According to PC Gamer in 2014, Russian gamers weren't using credit cards so much to buy games and instead buying physical versions in actual shops. Then Steam introduced a local payment system for Russia in 2011 where you could pay cash through a kiosk (as per Arg). But Steam games still remain the cheapest in Russia, even today, with it's purchasing power listed as less than Argentina.
The reason I don't understand their regional pricing are the fluctuations, but more importantly, the relation of price vs the aforementioned purchasing power per region. For example, Gears 5 is on pre-purchase at Steam and is due for release on 9th September with a base price of US$60. Many Steam gamers from South America are complaining that the equivalent USD price of around (depending on ex rate) $52 for say Argentina is far too steep. At first, I thought this was simply whinging until I looked at Steamdb and found that the price in Turkey and Russia is around $15 -$17 and the price for more developed countries such as S. Korea and Hong Kong are less than say Argentina, Mexico or Colombia.
Having said all that, if you look at the worldwide cost of living index, you'll see that there is _some_ correlation, but there are also some pretty wild discrepancies if that index is taken as the yardstick.
Then I looked at Cyberpunk 2077 where the base purchase price is US$60, yet Argentina's price (I'm only using Arg as an example of a low-income country) is US$39.20 at a rate of exchange of AR$56. I'm also led to believe that the rate of exchange to the US$ is set on the day of publishing, but how often that is changed, I can't be certain.
I'm not an economist by any means and am just curious as to how Steam prices are arrived at. My curiosity was originally piqued when I started picking up games on Steam for bargain prices and I wondered why that was the case.
The more I look into it, the less sense it makes, although I'm inclined to think that many publishers are ignoring Steam's so-called algorithm, with Gears 5 from X Box Studios being a good example.


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## R-T-B (Sep 3, 2019)

You are allowed to ignore steams region pricing suggestions and set your own per region prices, is my understanding from my brief time working as a game dev.


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## Splinterdog (Sep 12, 2019)

This doesn't make sense if regional pricing is supposed to be geared so that regions with less purchasing power receive lower prices:
Gears 5 Ultimate Edition - US price $80, Argentina price $96.


			https://steamdb.info/sub/386492/


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## Chomiq (Sep 12, 2019)

Splinterdog said:


> This doesn't make sense if regional pricing is supposed to be geared so that regions with less purchasing power receive lower prices:
> Gears 5 Ultimate Edition - US price $80, Argentina price $96.
> 
> 
> https://steamdb.info/sub/386492/


Like @R-T-B this can be set on game dev basis, maybe MS decided it will increase the regional pricing for Argentina due to current state of affairs with the economy. Or they're intentionally driving users toward their own store, xbox game pass specifically.


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## potato580+ (Sep 12, 2019)

price can be variant, depending whih country you might got cheapest or pricey becouse reguon regulation aint same include tax


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## londiste (Sep 12, 2019)

Pricing decisions are generally not even developer question but a publisher one. Valve may have their guidelines but publishers seem to generally override this. Often enough they have preexisting agreements in terms of what the prices and regions are.  Regions often enough do not overlap with Steam's regions either.


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## Deleted member 158293 (Sep 12, 2019)

Regional pricing for anything is usually needed since done goods would be unaffordable in even certain G7 countries.  It's mostly an arbitrary educated guess to extract maximum money per region mind you.


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## FinneousPJ (Sep 12, 2019)

yakk said:


> Regional pricing for anything is usually needed since done goods would be unaffordable in even certain G7 countries.  It's mostly an arbitrary educated guess to extract maximum money per region mind you.


Exactly. The question they are asking is "how can we maximise profit", not what is fair or reasonable.


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## Deleted member 158293 (Sep 12, 2019)

FinneousPJ said:


> Exactly. The question they are asking is "how can we maximise profit", not what is fair or reasonable.



Yup, companies like EA, Ubisoft & Activision dedicate **A LOT** of resources to determine the maximum price a given local market will tolerate.

On the opposite end of the spectrum a company like Riot (League of Legends) makes sure to underprice their products relative to local markets to keep the player base consistently high which makes up for lower individual profit on a sale.

Both approaches can work as seen by AAA developers, and absolutely massive player base of Riot.


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## TheLostSwede (Sep 12, 2019)

Not just Steam, all the gaming services seem to be the same. I've picked up several games for way cheaper here than they go for in other countries.
I paid less for BF V in the recent sale than the price someone posted here in the forums (sadly not that fun) and I picked up Control for $30.99 on pre-order, now it's $54.99...
Steam actually tends to be nothing special in terms of prices here.


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## Splinterdog (Sep 12, 2019)

There is a definite price advantage on Steam if you live in Argentina and many games are way cheaper. The Gears 5 example is odd, since it bucks that trend.
Having said that, it's one of the very first games that Microsoft has put with Steam and clearly MS are dictating the price. No question about that at all.
It's the same price on MS Store Arg as Steam anyway.


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## windwhirl (Sep 12, 2019)

The Xbox Lead for Latin America confirmed that the price advantage for MS games and Xbox services (at least, on their own platform) is intentional, when asked about it in a recent interview during Gears 5 launch event.


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## killster1 (Sep 13, 2019)

Feel like it has a little to do with how much pirating the country has also, i remember when windows was pirated by 99% of the people in certain Asian countries and so they dropped the price of windows to 7$. (really i dont remember what year that was but it was in relation to pirating) 

damn i just checked cyberpunk 2077 i was hoping for a shadowrun type of game (sega or snes) Sega version was my favorite game of all time. but just looks like regular shoot everybody game ;( oh well no time to play games anyway.


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## londiste (Feb 28, 2020)

Nobility said:


> Yeah, maybe price depends on the cost of living and taxes.


Indirectly. Games are priced to the price points gamers are willing to pay and piracy does not get too widespread.


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