Valve has tightened the rules for changing the region on Steam -apkrig
Over time, the annoying topic of buying games on Steam at lower prices, corresponding to the offer in countries other than where the players are physically located, opens up again. Publishers have the opportunity to choose how much their games will be sold for and thus respond to the economy and market power of individual regions. However, players usually abuse this by bypassing the Steam settings via VPN, buy games from Argentina, for example, and then change the country back to where they come from in the Steam settings. Tens of dollars can be saved in this way, regardless of the fact that Steam’s rules forbid such actions, and in various measures, countries from economically weaker areas are heading for it, where the price increases precisely because the above-described procedure is no longer interesting for players. undergo. Some time ago, Valve responded with the need to pay using the method that is valid in the given country, but there is a new limit on the number of changes that the user of the parties to the regions or countries can make in a specific time.
In a further crack down on people buying games in cheaper regions, Valve added a limit on how often you can change your Steam account’s country.
Country may not be updated more than once every 3 months. Purchases can be completed using a payment method from your current region.
– Steam Database (@SteamDB) June 23, 2021
The unofficial SteamDB database draws attention to the new approach, stating that players can make a geographical change every three months. This effectively prevents regular rotation and machinations with the price tags of individual games, although even this does not completely eliminate the problem that Valve has been facing for a long time. Apparently no one can effectively prevent the creation of new accounts if the user is satisfied with the fact that he will not have a single library of titles anywhere, but from Valve’s point of view it may be a big enough obstacle that they will no longer be want players overcome. However, there are two sides to everything, and the players who commented on the report on social networks also point out shortcomings concerning, for example, the insufficient equipment of games with locations other than the one. local, which is related, for example, to Russia, where some of the titles do not offer English, even though in a specific case it is the native language of the title.
Players also point out that Steam does not support all currencies by far, and there are countries in which the conversion from dollars or euros does not correspond to how much the games in the local stores would cost. Players also boast tables showing price differences between countries and criticize Valve’s approach because the price tag set often does not reflect the economic situation. This is also paid for by the states of the European Union, for which – with the exception of the Poland type – a single price applies, regardless of whether it is Germany or Romania. In this respect, however, games entered the European Commission last year and even fined Valve and other companies a total of 7.8 million euros for geoblocking keys.
However, this only triggered a mechanism under which publishers began to offer games in the vast majority of EU Member States at a single price, which can be very high from the point of view of economically weaker countries, according to Steam’s modified conditions. As an example, we can use basically any title – randomly, for example, the PC version of Days Gone – which costs 49.99 euros and the only change comes with the price in zlotys, which after conversion is 37 euros. To put it in context, in the United States the price tag is set at $ 49.99, or 41.85 euros, and the only country where Days Gone is sold more expensive than within the European Union is Norway with 54 euros.
