EA have price hiked a bunch of their games on Steam
Hands—and wallets—in the air.
On Wednesday, EA raised the prices for a large portion of their game catalog on Steam. The increases seem to have affected most regional currencies outside the United States. Price changes are inconsistent, with some regions seeing small increases and others being slapped with 300% price hikes on certain games.
As spotted by "MJuniorDC9" on Reddit, the Steam prices for a number of games have suddenly increased in quite a few regional currencies, though the percentage increase seems to vary more widely than would be explained by routine adjustments to the fluctuation of the currencies themselves.
According to records on SteamDB, The Mass Effect Collection, for instance, jumped 30% from £23 to £30 whereas the Swiss Franc only bumped from CHF 33.50 to CHF 35.00. The Canadian Dollar price for the same collection increased by 31% while the Australian Dollar price was reduced by 8%.
Brazil was hit particularly hard, as another user points out in the same thread. The Brazilian Real saw markups of 300% for a number of games including Medal of Honor, Dead Space, Dead Space 2, and Mirror's Edge. Other games saw Brazilian price changes of anywhere from a 100% markup to 200%, defying any obvious rhyme or reason. Some games were already more expensive to buy on Steam than on EA's own Origin store, but the new overhaul is a very large shift.
For several years, only older EA games have been available on Steam, with newer releases only being found on the Origin store. Breaking the trend, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order was the first to be sold on Valve's platform in quite a while. Its prices have not been affected. EA haven't appeared to publicly comment on the pricing changes.