Regional pricing on Steam

Hello

As you should know, Steam has the policy of regional pricing, which is meant to charge fair prices for consumers around the world, based on their country's economic situation.

Having that in mind, the price of Battlefield 2042 Standard edition on Argentina Steam Store have increased from night to day (September 20th), from ARS$ 3.599,00 to ARS$ 5.499,00, a sudden increase of ARS$1900,00 which represents a 57% price raise.

Plus, in Argentina, a tax of 65% is charged whenever you buy a digital game. Therefore, in the end, the value of ARS$ 5.499,00 will end up becoming around ARS$ 9.075,00, which converted to US currency is equal to U$92 American Dollars.

Summing up price raise and taxes, the difference between the price before the change and the price between the change is around ARS$ 3.100,00, which is equal to U$30,00

So, from night to day, the game price on a Third world underdeveloped country, that is currently under a severe economic crysis, have increased 30 dollars (which represents +50% of it's original cost).

To have an idea, the minimum wage in Argentina, which is most people income, is around ARS$ 33.000,00 (nearly U$330,00).

This game is basically charging 30% of an average Argentinian month income to get to play it. In this situation, or you play BF 2042 or you eat.

The original price was already expensive. But now this new price is just ridiculous and just looks like a joke.

By the reasons explained above, I come here in Answers HQ to ask to EA to have a look at that and study not only Argentina economic situation, but also every South American countrie's economic situations, so you can put a good and fair price on your game, or at least return with the previous price, that will not only allow people to buy it, but also make the playerbase big enough for the game to be playable here in South America.

I forgot to mention the discussion about the regional pricing exploit on Steam, in which people from all around the world changed their store country to Argentina to buy games at lower prices.

This exploit has been already corrected by Steam after the events of Sea of Thieves, Horizon Zero Down, Deathloop, and another games that came out cheaper in Argentina in 2020 and other countrie's peoples did this proccess to buy the game cheaper.

Now to move your steam account to Argentina you need to do a purchase with a native payment method, plus you can't add funds to your steam wallet with foreign steam gift cards anymore, which makes moving steam accounts to argentina to buy games completely impracticable, unless you are phisically in Argentina. Even if some insistent exploiters still afford to access Argentinian steam store somehow, they would be overwhelming minory and it can't justify getting rid of regional pricing for thousands of native argentinian buyers.

If EA have changed the regional pricing for Argentina, it is because they want to. Either to weaken BF2042 in Steam and make people buy it on Origin, either because of another random reason.

Thanks for the attention,

Lamp.