Valve increases regional pricing for PC Games on Steam

Valve has updated the regional pricing for Steam games for various countries including India. This means, that PC Games in India will start ...

Valve has updated the regional pricing for Steam games for various countries including India. This means, that PC Games in India will start to get more expensive now, so if a PC game was originally sold for ₹1,299, it will now cost ₹2,400 on Steam. Let’s first take a detailed look at what exactly is regional pricing and how does it work?

How does Regional Pricing work?

In case you’re not aware of how regional pricing for video games works, Steam sells games in 39 different worldwide currencies, so it can be hard for the publishers to set the prices for their games. So for this reason, Valve offers a regional pricing recommendation tool which automatically suggests prices for various regions. 

With the recent updates, it has become even easier for PC developers to just accept a quick conversion. This regional pricing tool is purely based on a developer's chosen base USD price and the developers are not required to follow the recommendations set by Valve. This is the main reason why some of the games that come at the same prices in the US might differ in other countries like India.

How does this affect PC Games becoming more expensive?

As for how PC Games prices might get affected, if a certain developer followed the regional pricing recommendation set by Valve, the prices for their games can now be increased. This sudden change is due to evolving foreign currency exchange rates against the USD. The prices of existing PC games on Steam as well as upcoming titles may increase in the coming months. 

For instance, Half-Life: Alyx, which is priced at $60 in the US, was previously priced at ₹1,299 in India. However, with the recent regional pricing changes made by Valve, the same game now costs ₹2,400. 

Steam has revised their regional pricing tiers from today. Pic is regional pricing for $59.99 tier India:- * BEFORE - Rs. 1299 * AFTER - Rs. 2400 https://t.co/CuADSKjKt5

— Hemang Chauhan (@MegaApple18) October 25, 2022

In an official post, Valve said, “With purchasing power and foreign exchange rates constantly evolving, we needed to make significant changes to those conversion recommendations to stay current.” 

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