Steam regional pricing, explained

On 20 November 2023, Valve stopped selling games in Argentine pesos and Turkish lira and moved both countries to US-dollar pricing, in new LATAM-USD and MENA-USD regions covering 25 more countries and territories. Many games had never set a regional price for those regions, so they defaulted to their full US price. The most quoted case was Civilization VI, whose base game went from the equivalent of about $1.36 to $60. Players in both countries called it the end of Steam.

The episode is the whole argument for regional pricing in one week. A $20 game is an impulse buy in one country and a week's groceries in another, and the price Steam suggests, or the one you forgot to set, decides whether a player there buys it. Get it wrong one way and the game is unaffordable in growing markets; the other way, and you leave money on the table where players can and will pay more.

In Steamworks you choose a base price in US dollars and use the pricing tool to propose the others. Valve suggests a price for every currency with one of three methods:

• Exchange rate conversion only: the straight currency conversion at that moment.
• Purchasing power conversion only: adjusted with public data on what money buys in each country or region.
• Multi-variable conversion: local purchasing power, the expected cost of comparable entertainment, and the exchange rate together.

You can accept the suggestions, adjust any currency, or set every one yourself. One rule makes this more than a formality: a currency with no price makes the game unavailable to players in that currency's countries. Leave the yen blank and nobody in Japan can buy the game.

Valve's own recommendations are visible only inside Steamworks. What any developer can see is what games actually charge. On 18 October 2026 we read the list prices of 25 Steam top sellers priced at $19.99 in the US, region by region. The median in a selection of regions:

Three patterns stand out. First, most of the market follows Valve's suggestions: in many regions the middle half of games sits within a few cents of the median, which is what accepting the proposed prices produces. Second, the euro and the dollar are close to one-to-one in practice (€19.99 for $19.99), even though the exchange rate says otherwise, because Steam's suggestions weigh local entertainment prices, not just currency. Third, the USD regions sit at about 55% of the US price, which is why a game that never set a LATAM-USD or MENA-USD price looks wildly expensive there.

Our Steam regional price calculator shows the same read for every Steam region and for $4.99, $9.99, $14.99, $24.99 and $29.99 games.

• Review. Valve reviews initial prices and every change, usually within one or two business days. It checks for input errors but does not promise to catch them all, so check every currency yourself.
• The minimum. A base price must be at least the multi-variable equivalent of the $0.99 tier, and no transaction can go more than 50% below that, about $0.49.
• Discount depth at the bottom. The $0.99 tier can be discounted up to 50%, the $1.99 tier up to 75%, and the $4.99 tier up to 90%.
• No changes for 30 days after release, except to fix a launch error, which you correct by contacting Valve.
• Increases block discounts. Raising the price in any one currency starts a 30-day cooldown on discounts.
• No scheduling. Approved price changes are published by you, when you choose, or by Valve immediately; they cannot be scheduled.
• Early Access to 1.0. Request a price change a couple of days before leaving Early Access; an increase within 30 days of the transition cancels the launch discount.

1. Set the base price against comparable games, not your hours. List five to ten recent games of similar length and scope in your genre, note their US prices, and place yours honestly among them.
2. Run the multi-variable proposal. It is the method most of the market's prices look like.
3. Check every currency has a price, especially the LATAM-USD and MENA-USD regions, which are easy to miss.
4. Override only with a reason. Compare your proposed prices with what games at your US price charge in each region (the table above, or the calculator). Where comparable games sell for noticeably less, follow them.
5. Check the rounding. Local price endings (¥2,300, ₹915, R$59.99) read as normal prices; odd conversions such as R$61.37 read as a careless one.
6. Submit early. Price review is quick, but a price is part of what the release needs approved.

The case against low regional prices is key resale: keys bought cheaply in one region and sold in another. Steam's region locks for keys are the tool for that, and most indie games are not targets for it. The case against high regional prices is the one in 2023: a price set with no thought for a market tells its players the game is not for them, and they say so in reviews. For a small game, the cost of underpricing a region is a few dollars; the cost of overpricing it is the region.

Flockbay is a free AI game builder on the official Godot engine. Its Steam page drafts a US price from comparable Steam games it reads on their own store pages, for you to check, and exports the page as a .zip you upload in Steamworks yourself; the regional prices are set in Steamworks with Valve's tool. Preparing the page by hand and its .zip are free; the drafting is free in beta until 1 December 2026.