Steam Currency Change for Argentina and Turkey Has Gone Live

Last month, Steam announced something quite devastating for people in Argentina and Turkey, their own currency will be discarded from the pool of currencies available on the platform. This decision put people into panic mode and they started mass-buying games because the inevitable doom of not-being-able-to-purchase-games was coming pretty soon. Steam has marked the 20th of November to be the date when change occurs and it eventually happened for both of these countries.

Not to be blatantly obvious about the situation, but as a person who experienced it first hand, the change actually caused a mass problem amongst the regular users. The most notable thing from the change is the fact that some games that are deemed to be extremely cheap now cost a fortune.

For example, Stardew Valley, one of the coziest and fairly old games on the market, used to cost around 1.5 dollars on Steam when converted from Turkish Lira to USD, but now it is priced at 15 dollars, making it a 1000 percent increase in price. An indie game from 2016 should not cost a fortune for countries with general low income, but here we are.

 

Steam was clear about the intention of the crucial change, as they stated that most of the developers were at a loss while selling their games over said currencies. Profit was hard to catch and we cannot certainly blame the developers nor the Steam for taking a radical turn. These currencies were eventually added later on, as Steam used only to accept dollars when it was first established around 2003, the support for those currencies was added later on but as you can guess, they were more stable then.

While the situation seems quite depressive, some games have still fair pricing. Steam still offers games below 5 dollars and pricing gets chosen by the developers and publishers instead of Steam themselves. Therefore it is up to their initiative to bring the prices down and make it more affordable for players who want to snag a deal right off.

There is also the fact that the change can be reverted back in the future if Steam starts losing its reputation in those countries. The number of regular users or buyers will eventually drop and to countermeasure it, Steam might bring up a policy or a rule to create a price chart that is both affordable for buyers and profitable enough for the developers. But so far, Steam seems to be keen on their decision, and we have to wait and see if they back down from it eventually.

Atilla Turan (@burningarrow)
Editor, NoobFeed