Overview

Partners on Steam are responsible for setting and managing pricing for their products. The Steamworks Developer site provides tools to configure pricing and discounts in all the currencies supported by Steam. Initial pricing as well as proposed pricing adjustments will be reviewed by Valve and are usually processed within one or two business days. During processing we will attempt to check your prices for input errors, but we can't guarantee we will catch every one so please check your prices carefully before submitting.

Pricing Types

Steam supports multiple business models that games use to price content, whether it be the single purchase of a full game, DLC, in-game microtransactions or recurring subscriptions. This article focuses mostly on package pricing, which is the purchase option that shows up to customers on the game's Steam store page.

Other pricing include in-game microtransactions and recurring subscriptions. More information can be found here regarding implementation of these pricing types:

• Best Practices for Microtransactions
• Microtransactions Implementation Guide
  
• Recurring Subscriptions

Required Permissions For Editing Pricing

Only certain publisher accounts have the necessary permissions to enter or adjust pricing or configure discounts for your products on Steam. For new Steamworks partners, the default account is the Steam account that completed the digital paperwork for the Steam Distribution Agreement. But the appropriate person at your organization may vary.

If you don't have the necessary permissions as detailed below, the best bet is to contact one of your Steamworks administrators, which is a user within your organization that has the ability to grant permissions. A list of your Steamworks administrators can be found on the right column of your Steamworks home page (unless you are an administrator yourself).


The following permissions are required for a specific account in order to set or adjust pricing for a product:

• The Steamworks partner that you are a member of must be the partner getting paid for sales of the product. For example, if you are working on a game with another studio and that other studio is marked as the entity getting paid for sales of the game, then only members at that other studio will have the ability to change prices.
  
• Your account must have the specific permission: "Manage pricing and discounts" for the product in question. See Managing Users & Permissions for more details.

Pricing Best Practices

When thinking about the launch price of your game, you'll want to consider a few different factors.

• How long will it take customers to play through your game?
  
• Is the game highly replayable?
  
• Does it offer multiplayer?
  
• Are you launching in Early Access?
  
• How are games of a similar nature priced?
  
• Are you pricing with future promotions in mind?

If you’re serious about the business of selling your game, you should treat it like any other business endeavor, and do some market research. Buy and play other similar games. Read user reviews and customer feedback to get a sense of how much value customers are getting, and use that data to make your own pricing decisions. It’s not about trying to undercut competition with a lower price. Instead, focus on understanding the market and making sure your customers are getting great value for the money they’re spending.

About Regional Pricing

The price for each product on Steam is specified and displayed using 37 different currencies and 4 region groups. As always, how you choose to enter prices for your game is entirely up to you. Steam offers tools to help you set and manage the price of your game at appropriate levels for each market.

For a quick overview, please check out this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKiuS0Iysdo

Optional conversion tools

There are three conversion methods built into Steamworks to aid in pricing your game across all available currencies and region groups. Check out the About Regional Pricing page for an interactive tool that demonstrates how each of these methods convert to all supported currencies for each major USD price point.

Each of these methods takes a different approach to generating each of the supported currencies based on the USD price point you have chosen:

1. Exchange rate conversion only - This method uses a simple currency exchange rate at the time indicated.
   
2. Purchasing power conversion only - This method uses public data about the purchasing power of customers within a given country and/or region.
   
3. Multi-variable conversion - This method takes into account multiple factors for each currency, including local purchasing power, the expected cost of comparable entertainment goods, and exchange rate.

Factors to consider when determining appropriate regional pricing

You likely put a lot of work into choosing the price of your game, considering the value of your experience, the cost of comparable products, and what fits with customer expectations.

The same care should be taken when determining how that price is converted into each currency and adjusted based on the economic conditions that affect customers in the regions served by each of those currencies.

Steam provides the conversion tools noted above, but you may want to do your own research and find the right fit for your price in any or all of the currency and region groups that Steam supports.

Many developers choose to determine their own pricing in each currency, and that’s just fine. We hope the provided conversion methods are a useful data point for developers who don’t have the time or interest to research pricing in each currency themselves.

Minimum Pricing Thresholds

There are two minimum price thresholds on Steam:

1. The minimum base price that can be entered for any and all products on Steam must be at least equivalent to Steam's Multi-Variable Conversion method for the $0.99 USD tier. For details, you can see a breakdown of minimums per-currency.
   
   
2. The lowest possible transaction price which is 50% off that minimum base price, which allows for some discounting off the minimum base price. That minimum transaction price is roughly $0.49 USD.
   
   • A product priced at the $0.99 USD tier could discount up to 50% off
     
   • A product priced at $1.99 USD tier could discount up to 75% off
     
   • A product priced at $4.99 USD tier could discount up to 90% off

If you have one or more products with pricing or discounting below the new minimums, this could cause one of the following issues:

• If your product's base price is below Steam's lowest possible transaction price in a currency, it is no longer available to purchase in countries that use that currency.
  
• If you have a scheduled discount that would result in your final price falling below Steam's lowest possible transaction price, that product will not be available to purchase by customers in countries where the end price is below the minimum allowed.
  
• If your base price is below Steam's lowest possible transaction price in any currency, you will be unable to schedule new discounts.
  
• If your base price is near to Steam's lowest possible transaction price in any currency, the discount you can enter may be limited to ensure the resulting price does not fall below the minimum allowed.

For more details, please see our August 15th blog post: Updates to Steam's Minimum Price Thresholds.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: My game is missing some of the local currencies that Steam supports, does that matter?
A: Any currency that is missing a price will make your game unavailable to users relying on that currency. For example, if you do not have a price entered for Japanese Yen, then users located in Japan will be unable to purchase your game.

Q: My game is missing packages, how do I submit pricing?
A: We encounter a bug from time to time where when an App ID is first created, the standard packages for that App ID are not. You can create these packages by going to the “All Associated Packages, DLC, Demos And Tools” page and hitting the green “Create Standard Packages” button up top. You can also send us a note to get help any time, via the Support button at the top of this page.

Q: What currencies does Steam support?
A: A full list of currencies can be found in the Supported Currencies page, which also includes information on which currencies support pricing and purchasing in partial unit amounts, how they're reported and in what increments.

Q: How often can I change the price of my product?
A: To protect user expectations about a newly released game, we ask that price changes wait until after 30 days from release. If you accidentally submitted a major pricing error at launch that you need to correct quickly, we’re able to accommodate that. Please contact us here for help with that kind of pricing error. After that, you can change your prices as it makes sense to you—but remember that increasing a price in one or more currencies will generate a 30 day cooldown on your ability to submit discounts. Check out the Discount documentation for more details on that topic.


Q: Can I schedule my price updates to happen automatically?
A: No, pricing changes cannot be scheduled to happen automatically, but you have the option to publish prices changes on your own schedule after Valve reviews them, or have Valve publish them immediately after review.

If you choose to publish price changes yourself, after the price changes have been reviewed by Valve, you will be notified via email. You'll be then given an option to publish your future price change at a time that is convenient for you. Once you publish the changes, they'll immediate be live for customers.

This option can be found in the Propose Pricing section of the package landing page.



Q: Can I raise the price of my game when transitioning from Early Access to fully released?
A: Yes. You'll need to request a price change a couple days ahead of your Early Access transition to ensure that it is approved prior to your transition.

Note that it's not possible to discount your product for 30 days after any price increase. If you increase your price within 30 days of your transition from Early Access to fully released, your launch discount will not apply.

If you're planning on raising your price at or around the time of releasing out of Early Access and want to run a discount to celebrate your V1.0 release, you may want to consider these scenarios:

• You could leave your price as is, run a launch discount as you release into V1.0 out of Early Access and then raise your price 30 days after that.
  
• You could raise your price as you transition out of Early Access and not run a discount.
  
• You could raise your price more than 30 days before you release out of Early Access, and then run a launch discount to go with your V1.0 release.

Q: Can I participate in sale events if my product recently launched?
A: Generally, you cannot submit a discount within 30 days of release or 30 days from when the launch discount ends. However, you can submit a launch discount to take effect when your game first releases. There are always future opportunities to put your game on discount, so you shouldn't feel pressured to change your release date for the sake of a seasonal sale event.

Q: What if I want to change my game from free to paid?
A: You're welcome to change your game from free to paid, so please use the support form here to contact us to change from a Free to Play game to a paid package. Treating customers fairly is the most important thing to us, so we ask that you give your customers at least one week notice via a News Event before removing any in-game purchasing (if applicable) and switching your app from free to paid. This gives customers fair warning to acquire the free license and/or use up any remaining in-game currency or items before your business model changes. Users that have the free license for your game in their account will continue to own and be able to play the game after it switches from free to paid.

Q: What if I want to change my game from paid to free?
A: Similar to changing from free to paid, if you would like to change your game from paid to free, please use the support form here to let us know. We ask that you give your customers at least one week notice before changing so that they can make an informed decision whether or not to buy a game that's intending to change its business model in the near future.

Q: Does Steam pricing support games with paid ads?
A: No. Steam does not support paid ads or referral/affiliate revenue from showing ads for other games and/or products or services. If your game's revenue relies on advertising on other platforms, you will need to find a new monetization model in order to release on Steam. Some options you could consider: Switch your game be a single purchase or make it free to play with microtransactions or additional content as DLC. Please see Advertising on Steam for details.

Q: Does Steam pricing support "paywall" games?
A: No. Steam does not support models where a customer is blocked and needs to pay to continue playing. If you would like to have a free demo to show off your game, you're welcome to do so. Your demo and full game can share files as well to continue game play. To figure out if a demo is the right thing for your game, please check out the Demos Documentation.

Q: What prices should I set for currencies I am not familiar with?
A: We suggest prices in the Propose Pricing tool, relative to a selected USD price, which you may accept or adjust at your discretion. Pricing decisions on Steam are entirely in the hands of you the developer.

Q: Do Steam's provided conversion methods for pricing include taxes?
A: Customers in some countries are use to seeing taxes included in the price of goods they are purchasing while customers in other countries are used to seeing taxes applied on top of the displayed price. Steam uses the expected local norms and regulations when displaying prices and taxes for customers. More about taxes can be found here: Tax FAQ