After Sony, now it's up to Valve to raise the prices. the company behind Steam has in fact decided to update the recommended price table, obviously raising the costs for the end user. A decidedly extraordinary situation, probably taken to try to fight inflation and the high cost of living that is gripping the whole world a bit, with a particular focus on European countries, such as the United Kingdom and obviously Spain.
What's going on, exactly? The issue is slightly more complex than expected. In short, Valve has always advised prices to developers. Prices are almost never followed in reality, but price changes have still influenced the cost of video games, just as it happens on the console market. With these new prices, the risk is that developers and publishers decide to further raise costs for the customer.
In the table, released online in the last few hours, certain increases are clearly highlighted. For territories adopting the Euro, for example, Valve now recommends pricing video games on Steam from 49,99 Euros up to 58,99 Euros, an 18% increase over the past. It is much worse in all those territories that adopt the Turkish lira, with an increase of 454%. The Norwegian krone was also bad, with an increase of 63%. Great instead for the Yen: for Japan Valve has increased the MSRP by only 3%.
We don't know if and when developers and publishers will decide to comply with this policy. Certainly, however, in the future new price increases for this hobby seem practically obvious, especially after the words of Phil Spencer, who has not ruled out a higher price for services, consoles and video games. The hope is that the cost of living will somehow be able to adjust to the income of private citizens, but it seems a decidedly unlikely scenario, especially in times like this.
