Rates moving closer to Steam’s recommendations

Hi everyone. Valve has recently released their new recommended currency conversions for Steam games and many game studios are beginning to implement these.

We are planning to follow Valve’s recommendations and update some of our non-USD price conversions. (Note that none of our base USD prices will change – this is only about updating currency conversion rates.)

In most cases our prices will remain lower than what Valve recommends. The major currencies will generally see increases of 2-10% – this includes Euros, Chinese yuan, British pounds, Canadian dollars, Australian dollars, Japanese yen, and Korean won. Biotech will change less than other products, since its prices are already more up-to-date.

Some currencies stand out since Valve is recommending larger changes. In Brazilian reals, Steam recommends 101.99 BRL for RimWorld; we are planning 79.99 BRL. In Polish zloty, Steam recommends 161.99 PLN; we are planning 149.99 PLN. In Russian rubles, Valve now recommends 1200 RUB; we’re planning on a price under 800 RUB. In Chinese yuan, Valve recommends 128 RMB; we are planning for 114 RMB.

The biggest changes will be in currencies which are currently selling at 90% off compared to the direct exchange rate. Unfortunately these huge price deltas have led to a large amount of cross-region arbitrage fraud. It is so extreme that the overwhelming majority of purchases in these regions are fraudulent. From our metrics it seems clear that we lose far more to fraud in these currencies than we gain in legitimate sales. This has been an issue across the industry which is why many games have already adjusted prices in these currencies, including Valve games, Dead Cells, Deep Rock Galactic, Factorio, Rust, Grounded, DayZ, Mount & Blade II, Euro Truck Simulator, etc.

Price updates will occur on November 17. You can of course buy RimWorld and its expansions at their current prices until then.

The world has changed a lot since we last set our prices back in 2018. While we’re not going as far as Valve and others already have, we do need our prices to make sense for the world as it is today. I appreciate your understanding and will be listening carefully to the conversation on this.

In other news, on top of the ongoing 1.4 refinement updates, we’ve got a chunky mid-term 1.4 update on the way with a variety of new cross-expansion integration content. We’ve been absorbing feedback voraciously and knocking down issues and concerns one by one. I’m looking forward to telling you more about that – hopefully next week.

-Ty