This week, Steam rolled out new, native currency support for 11 new countries, including Argentina and Israel. As soon as the new support went live, it appeared to cause a wide range of strange pricing changes, ranging from lower prices to insane markups. Some games even ceased to be available for purchase.
From a report by PC Gamer, Steam users in various territories have reported all kinds of strange effects, for example prices in Vietnam dropping as low as 7%, and increases in Israel up to 4%. Steam currency support means prices are automatically calculated, generally speaking. The weird thing is, some of these changes are manifesting differently by publisher, with AAA games often trending up, while smaller published games going down.
In other cases, publishers can bypass the Steam-automated pricing, and opt to set their own prices on individual games, manually. This requires input from the publisher of course, and some simply haven’t responded as quickly as others. This has caused waves of games, including big, popular ones such as content from Rockstar Games, to simply cease to have a Purchase button entirely due to the games not having a price.
Other strange examples include some crazy markups in Argentinian currency, including a 60% markup for Injustice 2 and a whopping 185% increase in price for Metal Gear Solid V . Unless the publishers step in and manually adjust prices, there’s seemingly nothing anyone can do, as international pricing on Steam has a history of these sorts of issues.
Source: PC Gamer