Dead Cells price hike in Argentina & Turkey due to cross-region purchases

Quoting: fagnerlnLook, sadly I will reach to politics. They have a "fat state", too much populism and less freedom, which increases taxes and inflation.

Sadly, your politics is inaccurate. So, first, lots of the most successful states in the world are "fatter" than Argentina's. But in terms of proximate causes--Argentina's economy is in trouble largely because of debt issues, both the sheer size of the repayments and the conditions imposed by the IMF. Doubtless the government is doing imperfect things, but not unusually so--the big problem is the debt payments and the conditions attached.

And the debts in question were run up in the first place by governments that were totally into a "thin state"--right wing neoliberals, who cut taxes (mainly on the rich), reduced revenue, and also dumped the fairly successful manufacturing base established in Argentina by import substitution strategies, in favour of free trade. I expect that loss of a manufacturing base due to cheap free-trade imports also had something to do with revenue loss. When you reduce revenue, you end up with deficits, which unlike deficits from spending the money on things like infrastructure or education, do not generate economic growth, so your debt to GDP goes up and up.
So. Right wing free-trader governments ran up debts, which Argentina could not pay. This caused the crisis of 2000; the centre-left governments that resulted stopped paying those debts, and Argentina recovered some. More recently, weird court shenanigans in the US, combined with new right wing president Macri who went along with them, blocked Argentina's attempt to come up with a compromise that gave creditors a haircut, reinstating the whole unsupportable debt (plus tons of interest, of course); Macri went to the IMF for a "relief" package which, again, Argentina would not be able to pay, and which came with the usual IMF conditionalities which the IMF itself has admitted are wrongheaded and ruin economies, but which they have continued to insist on as if they never said it.


Last edited by Purple Library Guy on 19 August 2022 at 5:27 pm UTC

Quoting: Purple Library GuySo. Right wing free-trader governments ran up debts, which Argentina could not pay. This caused the crisis of 2000; the centre-left governments that resulted stopped paying those debts, and Argentina recovered some.

You are informed about it, Do you live in Argentina?

Quoting: Mischief

Quoting: Purple Library GuySo. Right wing free-trader governments ran up debts, which Argentina could not pay. This caused the crisis of 2000; the centre-left governments that resulted stopped paying those debts, and Argentina recovered some.

You are informed about it, Do you live in Argentina?

I pay a lot of attention to political economy. I tend to follow Latin America in particular because some of the most interesting politics, with the most potential for shifts from the rather putrid status quo, happens there.

Quoting: Purple Library GuyI pay a lot of attention to political economy. I tend to follow Latin America in particular because some of the most interesting politics, with the most potential for shifts from the rather putrid status quo, happens there.

I agree, you can't get bored in Latin America, sadly I live here in Argentina. Stuck between the hyper corrupt left or the riged and incompetent right. The mid doesn't exist, or at least people can't see it.
Enough politics tho, this is not Twitter. lol

Quoting: Mischief

Quoting: Purple Library GuyI pay a lot of attention to political economy. I tend to follow Latin America in particular because some of the most interesting politics, with the most potential for shifts from the rather putrid status quo, happens there.

I agree, you can't get bored in Latin America, sadly I live here in Argentina. Stuck between the hyper corrupt left or the riged and incompetent right. The mid doesn't exist, or at least people can't see it.
Enough politics tho, this is not Twitter. lol

I'm a leftist myself, but I can tell the left-ish government in Argentina can't be that great because there hasn't been a coup attempt.

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: Mischief

Quoting: Purple Library GuySo. Right wing free-trader governments ran up debts, which Argentina could not pay. This caused the crisis of 2000; the centre-left governments that resulted stopped paying those debts, and Argentina recovered some.

You are informed about it, Do you live in Argentina?

I pay a lot of attention to political economy. I tend to follow Latin America in particular because some of the most interesting politics, with the most potential for shifts from the rather putrid status quo, happens there.

Argentinian here. Sorry but you are wrong, and the previous poster was right. We have probably one of the fatest and dumbest states in the world.

Some examples of this freak show off the top of my head:

- We have about 11 different exchange rates for the USD. It depends on who is buying or selling, or for what, or how many taxes he has to pay on top.
- The cheapest rate to buy is the "official" one, but almost no one can buy at that rate. 99% of people are banned from buying dollars for one (made-up) reason or another. The few that can buy have a cap of 200 USD per month (minus what they spend using a credit card), and they have to pay a taxes of 30% + tax retention of 35% (not sure if this is the proper english term tho)
- The "official" rate is roughly 135 ARS, while the corporate and "illegal" rates are about 290 ARS (yes, we have a black market for US dollars)
- If you work as freelancer for foreign clients (like I do), you are legally forced to convert your USD to ARS. At the worst exchange rate, of course.
- We have a yearly inflation of 71% by now (august), private estimates put it in about 112% by the end of the year. But these are only averages, food products have already accumulated way over 100% increases. This is what happens when you spend more than you earn and "fix it" by printing money.
- If you buy things in USD using a credit card you have to pay 30% taxes + 45% tax witholdings. Depending on what you are paying there are slightly different taxes. You also have to pay municipal taxes, in my case that's an extra 2% (depends on your province, your legal conditions, etc)
- The Fernandez have been printing non-stop since they took office. At one point, we had companies printing the bills in Spain and Brazil and then bringing them here because the machines we had couldn't keep up.
- Macri hasn't been right wing since the late 2000s. He's center left. When he was in power, he mutliplied welfare plans by 2x (some analists argue by 5x), refused to do any deep cuts on public spending or actually open up the economy. He gradually opened up a few things, with barely any effect in the long run (which help bring us here).
- We have far more people working in the public sector, and receiving welfare plans than legally registered workers. And it's been this way for years, we haven't had any real growth since about 2011.
- Electric power, gas and water have been subsidized by the state for years. The current goverment has been avoiding any reductions on them for political reasons. So rather than removing them slowly over time, now that things are getting tight they are removing them fast fast (faster than what wages can keep up). This is going to add even more fuel to inflation and push even more people into poverty
- We received the biggest loan the IMF has ever given and we smoked it in two years. Then they gave us more money and some goals we've barely met. We also burned through that. We are also smoking through our gold reserves and a (I think?) the chinese swap. Now the govt is trying to get money from the saudis. In the end they will either push even further into debt (and into defaulting), or devaluate our currency into oblivion.
- I could go on for _days_, but I think it's pretty clear

Now onto the topic of steam games.
I recently bought Horizon Chase Turbo + DLC in one the sales. I paid about 117 ARS, which even with the mythical standard rate is about 0.8 USD. Axiom Verge 2 at full price is about 224 ARS, which is about 1.65 USD. Celeste is on sale now at 56 ARS, about 0.4 USD. The new spiderman game is about 5000 ARS (36.72 USD)

Price hikes suck for us, but this is extremely unfair to developers and they have every right to bump the price, even if it wasn't being abused by others. It's not the devs nor Steam's fault, it's our own fault for letting our country become the living example of Socrate's criticisms of democracy.

Sorry for the getting political here (and writing a wall of text!), but I think it helps paint the whole picture on this issue.

I don't have any sympathy for regional pricing of digital goods. That deserves to be circumvented for its very existence.

Data is infinitely copyable...

P.S. I'd like to elabourate a bit. I don't begrudge people in other countries getting their games for less money than we do. At the same time, I also don't begrudge people who exploit that, just like I don't begrudge people that decide to just download infinitely copyable data. Thinking that can be stopped on the Internet is what's wrong.

I'm happy to pay for games personally, I'll be there at 12:01 AM on release day saying "please, take my money" when it's a game I want. I typically don't mind, say, $100 for a Deluxe edition of a big commercial ("AAA") game for example. I've also got money for anyone else that impresses me too, it doesn't have to be big names.

There's also another side to this. Any Aussies here? I'll bet they have an opinion on regional pricing, they pay considerably more for digitally distributed games than North Americans and Europeans.


Last edited by Grogan on 19 August 2022 at 10:21 pm UTC

Not surprised. I know plenty of people who have Argentina steam accounts in order to get stuff dirt cheap.

I don't do it myself because I have a feeling eventually steam will put a IP lock in place..

I mean that is the only real way to solve the problem, but it does mean if you move outside of Argentina or disable your Argentina VPN then you loose access to your steam account.

It would suck. Which is why I've avoided it so far... I already had this problem in past when Russian copies of games would get removed from my account because it was detected I wasn't in Russia.

Quoting: GroganThere's also another side to this. Any Aussies here? I'll bet they have an opinion on regional pricing, they pay considerably more for digitally distributed games than North Americans and Europeans.

PS. I'm South Australia.. who pays $100A for a game? I guess that's 70USD, I might pay that for Bulder's Gate 3 like quality game!

We have stuff like G2A and such, pick up odd cheap game from there. Prices aren't always that bad for us on Steam. Wanted to get The Forest the other night, but $28AUD.. I think its like $1 in ARG or whatever.


Last edited by TheRiddick on 20 August 2022 at 12:20 am UTC

Quoting: Comandante ÑoñardoValve and only Valve is THE guilty of this situation.

Valve must eliminate right now the online availability of Steam wallet codes in Argentinian and Turkish currencies.
To require credit cards from the country you are is the only way to sort this.

It's very difficult to get a credit card here. Only prepaid debit cards are available for the middle class, and myself personally, a few digital banks that popped up because we don't want to use our coin anymore.
To put it in perspective, Argentina is the country with most dollars on the outside than in the local banks. Government taxes are like 70% the value of what you buy.
It's an old model that will change next year because elections and a right wing capitalist leader figure waiting to become president by the people.

But this will happen soon to 1st world countries too if inflation keeps rising, therefore, I have studied a lot different economic systems, and crypto seems to be the only and best solution for everyone. You can see there popped out many sites that sells Steam cards for USD or crypto.

if the IP lock happens, then Steam Deck will lost its meaning because mobility is the Steam Deck main purpose.