On November 20, Valve changed its pricing policy in Argentina and Turkey to pivot from their pesos and lira currencies to the U.S. dollar. This move resulted in severe price hikes for the majority of games, with extreme cases resulting in multi-thousand percentage price increases. " The end of Steam " has already been declared by many Argentinian and Turkish Steam users, resulting in both humorous edits and cold, hard data outlining just how bad this issue will be.

Now, to be fair, there is evidence to suggest that these pricing conditions won't remain quite so severe. While Valve sent out warnings to developers to set region-appropriate pricing changes prior to this update, many of them didn't, and the result was many games defaulting to full USD pricing, making them unaffordable to users in the regions. The base game version of Civilization VI is the most extreme example, with a price hike of 4298% to $60 USD, where it used to be only $1.36 USD (equivalent) prior to the policy change.

If you're doing the math or you've been keeping up with Valve news, you may already have an idea of why this is happening. Basically, some Steam users will spoof their region to be in one of these "cheap" locations in order to get access to lower priced games. There's your profit motive right there. Additionally, the lira and peso are so inflated (and fluctuate so frequently), that Valve stated it was unfair to developers to have to constantly adjust prices with those market conditions.

Unfortunately, those market conditions are a hard reality for Argentinians and Turkish folk. Turning PC games into an unattainable expense for these users is almost certainly not going to increase sales. In fact, many are already openly stating that they'll be returning to piracy, which reminds me of Gabe Newell's own statements on piracy.

According to Gabe Newell, founder of Valve Software and owner of Steam, " piracy is a service problem ". As much truth as I think there is in that statement, particularly in wealthier countries like the United States I call home, it seems clear that Argentinian and Turkish PC gamers are actively being priced out of legitimate PC gaming if things don't change, and soon. Otherwise, Steam might really be dead in the water— at least for these regions.