Valve’s Updated Minimum Price Policy for Steam Might Hurt Gamers in More Ways Than One

When you think about PC gaming, you can’t get past one name: Steam. This game store has been at the pinnacle of PC gaming since its launch. Be it catering to a huge library of games, being the first place for first-day releases, or dishing out titles at an affordable price, there is no match for Steam as far as PC gaming is concerned.

But as things stand, Valve, the creator of Steam, has updated some policies regarding the pricing of the games. This could have a huge impact on Steam as well as all of its users.

Valve’s Minimum Pricing Policy on Steam

Valve has updated a new policy: the Minimum Pricing Policy. As Gizchina has published, this policy applies only to non-USD currencies. It clearly syncs with the suggested exchange rates that Valve released in October last year. According to the new policy, all the games and their expansions on Steam cannot be priced below 99 cents. Also, the DLCs and discounted games cannot be priced under 49 cents.

If we take a closer look at the examples, we can understand the situation. Vampire Survivors is a shoot ’em-up game that was released by Poncle in 2021. It is currently priced at $0.85 in Argentina. So, according to the latest policy, if Poncle wants to sell this game in Argentina through Steam further, they have to increase the game’s price by at least $0.99.

These policies can still be sometimes complicated. So, Valve has launched a price management and discount tool in Steam itself to clear up the complications.

Consequences of this policy

This policy is mainly introduced to bring about long-term and effective currency change adjustments. As of now, it will affect the games and expansions that are currently priced below $5. Sells may have dipped because sometimes an increment in the price is not always justifiable. But still, the developers have to maintain the policy. Unless the game might not run in some places.

This policy is not going to affect the developers and buyers of certain AAA and popular titles, which are priced way above $4.99. But if the policy affects the sales of indie developers, then they might have to shift their selling platform.

Not only must developers reconsider absolute game prices, but they must also reconsider discounts in order to maintain transparency of the new minimum pricing policy.

Read More: Valve Shocks Gaming Community by Denying AI-Generated Games to Join Steam

This policy will have major implications for continents like Europe, North America, and Asia, as the local currency rates of these places don’t have a favorable exchange rate with the US Dollar. It will affect users heavily who used to log in from different Steam accounts from different regions to take advantage of the price differences. Last but not least, with this significant increase in pricing, the biggest threat that developers are going to face is piracy.

Valve’s minimum pricing policy clearly shows that they are focusing mainly on fair and balanced pricing on Steam. They have a very rational point, but this policy is not only going to affect the users and developers; it will affect Steam itself, too.

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