In his latest newsletter, games industry expert Simon Carless wrote about the different pricing strategies that developers could use on Steam. He also explained how dollar-to-euro conversion might impact a game’s revenue.
First, Carless says that a lot of developers might be underpricing their games on Steam, so they should act more aggressively. The important thing here is that a lot of prices are anchored to US dollars.
As Carless points out, the best strategy is to “price your game $5 more than you are comfortable with, and go with Valve’s recommended regional pricing.” However, most indie developers just use the same price for different regions, based on Valve’s suggestions. Carless cites examples of Dicey Dungeons, which follows Steam’s recommendations, and AAA action game Days Gone, which has its own price for each region.
Dicey Dungeons prices (via SteamDB)
Days Gone prices (via SteamDB)
A lot of times indie developers also just convert the prices from dollars to euros, not realizing that the difference between these two currencies’ exchange rate might have the biggest impact on revenue. So it might be a good option to price your game the same in dollars and euros. “That sometimes leads to complaints from players, but those were often 60 Euro games, not 20 Euro games,” Carless explains.
It means that if your game costs $29.99, you could also price it at €29.99. That’s exactly what the developers of Satisfactory did, and, according to Carless, the game makes around 8-10% more in lifetime revenue globally — all thanks to this decision.
You can read Simon Carless’ article in full here.