Due to hyperinflation in these two countries, Steam will convert the local currency of Argentina and Turkey to USD next month.
Steam is a great medium to find new titles, pre-order upcoming games, and get great bargains on your favorite games. Back when it was new, it only had the USD currency for purchasing games, but as time went on, Steam became more and more global, accepting each country’s unique currency. In 2014, both the Argentinian Peso and Turkish Lira were added to the compatible currency list, but recently, Valve made a decision to pull currencies from their list of accepted currencies.
These two currencies tend to have every game cheaper than well-known currencies such as the USD and Euro, and some people exploit this to get games for cheaper by converting their currencies to Peso or Lira to purchase games. One of the most well-known database operators, SteamDB, lists all the available prices for certain games, and those two currencies always have the lowest prices listed. This is due to hyperinflation hitting those countries, and Steam has to evaluate the prices for those countries.
The recent change adds those two countries into LATAM- Latin America- and MENA- Middle East- countries, respectively, and those countries also use USD currencies to purchase video games on the Steam platform. With a sudden change, almost all the people are in panic mode as they buy games left and right before the change arrives. Unfortunately, they are right to do so because, with the arrival of the USD currency on Steam, most of the games are going to be unreachable by many.
The reason behind the change is stated to be the profit loss of some developers and how they cannot earn a good profit from the sales in these countries. Their titles tend to go for extremely low prices, and they lose profit in the transaction, which makes total sense. But from the perspective of the consumers, this change is going to ruin everyone financially, or resort to piracy.
There is still hope, though. In the announcement, the prices will still be low compared to the United States of Europe, such as a 60USD AAA title might go for 35 or 40USD in those regions due to regional pricing still being active. There is also the fact that most developers suggest a certain price for specific regions, so some titles can be cheap if the developer decides to opt for reasonable prices for those regions as well. Still, users in Argentina and Turkey are now in a race with time to purchase any game they can until the 20th of November, which is the date when of Peso and Lira will change to USD.
