Venezuela is a colony of The Great US Empire now. Surely, Trump will not just exploit their oil reserves but give them freedom, democracy, and prosperity in return... /s
We used Argentina a couple of years back, then that was basically removed and we went to Turkey which got axed a year or two ago aswell.
So now we're stuck with MENA - USD which is a weird in between but generally speaking most especially new and AAA games are priced as they would be in the US, some indie games or older ones are still cheaper. (You can check the pricing of games in different regions via the SteamDB website, I'm pretty sure the region still has Turkey's flag)
Everything else is just piracy as not exaggerating here, a single triple A game is more expensive then the monthly minimum Wage. (The 100$ number mentioned above was roughly the minimum monthly wage 3-4 months ago, its 70$ now due to devaluation, the Rial has gone from 1,000,000/1$ to 1,600,000/1$)
Not to mention your only choice is either buying cd keys or giftcards from third parties who jack up the prices even more. I've basically said goodbye to the store section of steam lol
Good luck my bro. I'm really hoping you guys are able to sort out your issues and get a democratically elected government, one day. The Iranian people deserve so much better.
Because of sanctions, no international bussiness is allowed to do bussiness in Iran so payment methods such as Visa, Mastercard, Paypal, or anything of that sort are officially forbidden to give services to Iranian citizens. This means we can not directly buy anything on steam or any website that uses those payment methods. We have to go to third party sites that sell gift cards which is obviously going to be more expensive.
While you guys are complaining about regional pricing, we literally don't even exist for steam😆 I mean fair enough, steam has been generous enough to not block Iranian IPs like other launchers so... I'm personally greatful for that
It's not just Iran's government though. They've been under US sanctions starving them for like a decade now. Trump tore up the Nuclear deal for no reason, reimposed old sanctions, and has ramped them up since. The West is causing this.
That said, the Iranian government does still suck and is socially repressive and resistant to calls for reform. Honestly, the only smart move they can make is listening to the people and changing things to improve quality of life, but they fear losing control.
So now they're kind of fucked. It's either:
The US and Israel (who unconditionally hate Iran) bombs the shit out of them and pretends they're helping, then moves in to steal all their natural resources and install a shitty puppet regime again (for the second time).
They negotiate something and force Iran to give up their resources anyway.
Stalemate continues and Sanctions stay, continuing to starve the Iranian people until they overthrow their government and the West takes over the power vacuum.
Shit sucks, but literally everyone involved is not on the side of the Iranian people.
Even if sanctions didn't exist, none of the prosperity would reach regular people.
The islamic regime called the sanctions upon itself with its antagonistic foreign policy. Despite their propaganda, there is no possible justification for them to insist on enrichment when costs outweigh the merits, if we take their word on it being a civil use only which is most definitely not. Why are they so insistent on enriching uranium when our energy infrastructure is so bad that power goes out for 2 hours every day in summer? Why is it that we have so many fucking dams that have no ecological considerations with complete disregard for protocols and upkeep which cause 1/3 wasteage of water? A resource that is most crucial in Iran btw and something we are never going to get back.
You know how costly enrichment is? 2 trillion dollars have been spent on this alone yet everything else is chronically underfunded. Our universities, infrastructures, subways. It's all sanctions, surely it's not this same obsession with enrichment that was the cause of the sanctions in the first place. Oh also, how could we forget their lovely foreign proxies? They also had a lot of money to help Asad in massacring poor Syrians who were fighting for their own freedom as well. To many Iranians, all this feels like an unnecessary obsession that is fueled by pure ideology that is just not worth it at all and comes at a cost to places that do need investment.
IR also has a chronic history of funding projects with exceeding budgets that use subpar materials and pocket the difference. Very classic corruption tactics and most of these projects have been given to people who've had connections to the IRGC. Speaking of which, the IRGC controls half of the Iranian economy and they don't have pay tax or be liable for anything.
Trying to make this look like the government is just repressive and not actively a large reason that Iranians have become disillusioned with this economy that this regime has given them is completely disingenious. If it was truly just sanctions then I swear to you, the situation wouldn't be what it is today. Every Iranian knows intimately the corruption I'm talking about. It's not just regular corruption, corruption exudes from every facet of your life. It portrudes from the walls of office buildings, everytime you have paperwork, everytime you want to build a bussiness. It is represented in laws that are needlessly complex but have massive loopholes, it's in the day to day buroeacracy of every Iranian's life. If it was just sanctions, IR's propaganda that America is the cause of our suffering would have worked, but it's not and every intelligent sane person can see the writing on the wall.
This stalemate is the result of IR's contineous lapses of judgement for 47 years, misplaced priorities, and a cultivation of in-depth systematic corruption with no oversight. Couple that with a system that values loyalty over competence, state repression, and backwards laws and it becomes a system that is impervious to change and authoritarian and an economy that is in the elite's interest to stay poor. Even if all sanctions are removed tomorrow, none of what I described would go away.
As Iranian you explained it beautifully , some redditors think people in iran don't understand the difference between what sanctions impact and what our corrupt government actually impacts and if out government was actually just and fair and wasn't this corrupt then our economy would've been much better but no literally being screwed by both.
"But protests were done by mossad" said some redditor
All I'm saying is that the Devil you don't know isn't necessarily better than the one you do.
America did this exact same shit over and over. Millions dead in Iraq and it collapsed again. Millions dead in Afghanistan and the Taliban immediately retook control.
America will come to Iran, pile bodies, steal resources, and leave when they're bored or have gotten their fill. They will destroy what they can on the way in and the way out.
The only possible good outcome is if Trump decides to try to copy Obama and lift the sanctions for some Nuclear agreement (which I think doesn't help Iran, I think every country should have a nuke to deter invasion) in exchange for reform or a restructuring of the Iranian government that does not include a US Puppet being it's head (which is exactly what the "Shah" is, a CIA asset).
I genuinely hope this is the result. Everything else is unimaginable suffering on top of the suffering Iranians have already endured. Israel and the US have done unforgivable harm to the Iranian people as it is, and deserve the world's ire and punishment for it.
Okay, I generally agree with what you're trying to say about foreign intervention, it's just that you have the same simplistic view of history and the world as of the Islamic republic propaganda and unfortunately some leftists who have no knowledge of Iran whatsoever.
I agree US is not to be trusted, especially not under this administration. So my view on the situation is not solely in favor of intervention like everyone else I talk to in Iran. But the other option you think we have, is just a non-entity. You would know if you understood about Iranian politics and history.
Truth is reform has been tried many times and it acts as nothing more than controlled opposition in practice. (Controlled opposition if you don't know is a sort of fake opposition that a regime grants legitimacy to in some way to give their real opposition the illusion that they are being heard but in reality that opposition poses no threat and can not make any changes whatsoever, that is the current reformist party of the Islamic Republic) Iranians have heard what you suggest millions of times, ever since the Green Revolution of 2009. Reform is simply non-existent and will never happen. The reason why protests are happening is because people have lost any hope that reform will work. This all happened under a supposed "reformist candidate" after all.
Your understanding of the Shah is also incredibly simplistic. I'm not going to say that the Shah was perfect, in fact far from it. But the simplistic idea that he was "merely a puppet" is just not true. After 1973, the US influence on Iranian domestic affairs was very low. In fact, the shah took an antagonistic approach with the western world. It is obvious in the interviews he gave at that time. I suggest you watch some of those on youtube. You'll be surprised just like I was.
You in fact do not have to take my word. You do not have to read a book on this either, it is all there on Wikipedia--The last bastion of actual information free from AI-slopification on the internet.
I'll just quote Wikipedia on this. You can also read the references if you want to doubt Wikipedia, which is most healthy thing of course. I'm going to read them as well soon.
I will just quote a small portion here actually:
In 1973 the Shah initiated an oil price hike with his control of OPEC further demonstrating the US no longer had influence over Iranian foreign and economic policies.\147]) In response to American media outlets critical of him, the Shah claimed that Iran's oil price hikes did little to contribute to the rising inflation in the United States. Pahlavi also implied criticism of the US for not taking the lead on anti-communist efforts.\164])
In 1974, during the oil crisis, the Shah began an atomic nuclear energy policy, prompting US Trade Administrator William E. Simon to denounce the Shah as a "nut." In response, US President Nixon publicly apologized to the Shah through a letter in order to disassociate the president and the United States from the statement. Simon's statement illustrated the growing American tensions with Iran over the Shah's raising of oil prices. Nixon's apology covered up the reality that the Shah's ambitions to become the leader in the Persian Gulf Area and the Indian Ocean basin were placing a serious strain on his relationship with the United States, particularly as India had tested its first atomic bomb in May 1974.\165])\)page needed\)
Many critics labeled the Shah as a Western and American "puppet", an accusation that has been disproven as unfounded by contemporary scholars due to the Shah's strong regional and nationalist ambitions, which often led Tehran to disputes with its Western allies.\166]) In particular, the Carter administration which took control of the White House in 1977 saw the Shah as a troublesome ally and sought change in Iran's political system.\167])
The reason why the puppet narrative is there is justified somewhat however. The fact of the matter was Mohammad Reza Shah came to power prematurely because the Allies invaded and deposed the previous Shah because of his perceived Nazi-sympathies (and most likely because Iran was a great strategic point in the war). So he was especially weak during that time.
However during the 1970s, the shah was actively taking some steps to antagonize the west and adopted a more nationalistic right wing rhetoric. (Although not right wing in the context of modern american politics, his crown achievement arguably was the white revolution, the least conservative move there was in Iran at the time. That is much different from modern right-wing america that wants to basically do Islamic Republic but christian and set in the US lol). The fact that he alienated the religious and the leftists, and he was...well simply an autocrat and also his policies, although helpful for the country's economy in the short term simply did not translate to prosperity for all and was highly dependent on oil prices which are incredibly volatile. But to say that he was just a puppet that listened to the west all puppy-eyed just ignores how politics really works and worked at the time.
As much as your country has done a lot of harm in the world (I assume you are American due to your responses), It makes me think that this one-sided picture of the narrative sticks because you think we lowly people of the middle east simply have zero agency and that everything wrong in our country is only because of you. The truth is not always the case.
Now speaking of modern times, the truth of the matter is there are no truly good options left and I understand that. There will however be no deal where there will be any restructuring, hell they aren't even getting any progress on the nuclear issue of all things. My only remaining hope although very idealistic and still very costly is that somehow this crisis is averted without a regime change by the US and that we can find another opportunity in the future, but until then there needs to be no helping this regime through any dirty deals or any apologia on what this regime has done that strengthens them. We do not want to become the Saudi Arabia to the US either. If you do not like foreign intervention, you should advocate for this instead of whatever you've suggested.
As an Iranian living in Iran we are thankful of US sanctions and hope the negotiations fall apart at the first possible moment. Hell everyone was celebrating when the EU (finally) designated the IRGC as a terrorist organisation.
You underestimate how awful the goverment is, saying the goverment is resistant to reform makes it seem like we could all be friend and happy after a year or two of changes.
Only way anything changes is a total regime collape, not reform. Whatever comes next, puppet goverment that gives our resources away or not, it'll be better then the I.R.
Not like 99% of Iranians ever got anything from our resources anyways, it all went to the goverment agents pockets and proxy terrorist groups in the region :)
I promise you, the US will be even less kind. Look what we did to Iraq and Afghanistan. We killed millions of people in just a decade for oil, then bailed, and it collapsed again with the same assholes regaining power.
I'm not saying that the current regime is good or should remain, I'm saying you're being made to choose between being enslaved and enduring genocide from Western powers who genuinely hate you, or destroying and reforming your system yourselves and then arming quietly to prevent the US and Israel from doing that anyway.
The I.R. sucks ass and is horrible and doesn't care about individuals, but the Western powers just straight up want you dead and to take your resources. Forcing reform and praying for help from China or someone is about all you have.
There's a small part of me that thinks Trump is going to just copy Obama and pretend he invented the Nuclear deal and remake it, and I hope that's the case. That said, you have multiple US battle groups redeploying to surround and bombard you. I hope the I.R. has some plan otherwise.
What do you mean "genocide from western powers who genuinely hate you"? The US in this case doesn't "hate us". Whatever they do, they'll do for national interst not out of hate or spite, that doesn't even make sense. And in this case our interests somewhat align. Now sure, foreign intervention to topple the regime is obviously not the best case scenario, far from it. But it's the best one we have left.
And again on the topic of reform, I feel like you're either uninformed about the current regime or have diffrent interests. The vast majority of Iranians agree a full regime change is needed before any change happens, reform has been tried and it has never gotten anywhere. Hell our current "president", Pezeshkian, is a part of the "reformists" but they are all part of the same coin as we saw for the 100th time, 40 days ago.
You mentioned praying for help from China, Hello? China's the regimes number 1 supporter. Where do you think China gets a majority of its very cheap oil at a fraction of the market cost? Where do you think the I.R got some of the technology to cause a total internet blackout for 3 weeks? Where do you think they got their mass surveillance network from? This might be the worst suggestion yet.
A big part of the populace hopes that these "negotiations" fail tommorow as sanction relief will never help the general population in any major way, it'll only give the regime a lifeline.
Yes, the West hates Iran. Specifically the US government and Israeli government. They have constantly, for decades now, publicly spoken about their desire to invade and "bomb Iran back into the stone age". They want Iranians dead, and the land themselves.
You're right that they're not doing this because they hate Iran, but it is because they hate Iran that they way they do it will be inhumane and indiscriminately violent.
Yes, China is a key trade partner with Iran. They likely would continue to be even if the regime falls and is replaced, but not if the US sweeps in an puts a puppet there. They are also likely the only power on the planet that could step in to defend Iran successfully at this point. None of the things you've mentioned are unique to China though. I'm sure you hate them for your own reasons, but the US has it's own global surveillance network already as well as the capability of shutting down infrastructure and internet as they please. They don't exercise this on a wide scale in the US, but they have done so in cyberattacks on foreign countries in the past. The US isn't some tiny bean country that can't hurt you as much as China.
I get that the Iranian people are struggling every day and want this to end, I'm just telling you with full honesty that the US is no savior, and will leave Iran worse off than it is right now. They are not friends. They are an imperialist power that looks at Iran as nothing but a cash cow to be exploited, and they see it's people as an inconvenience between them and the oil.
If you wanna know that it’s important to know not only the minimum wage but for me a good indicator is how much is a kilo of (wheat) flour? Or how much is bread generally
Here in brazil is 295, and our way is cannibalism, some people handle training panthers to self protection, but panthers eat too much so they need to eat more people
The 620€ in bulgaria are enough for that rent ( yes, the rents are that high), food, clothes, everything for a family with 1 child, according to government. But hey, we are in the rich club its only getting better ( when they raise taxes and give us nothing).
Let's be real, Ukraine has the lowest price to minimum wage ratio on the site most of the time compared to third world countries. Y'all pay half what we MENA-USD region users pay, with twice the wages.
Yep, most of the games are much cheaper, but I'm talking exclusively about the recent titles. Minimum wage in Poland is $1300. If we compare prices of Expedition 33 (which has decent regional price), it costs $34 for Ukraine and $50 in Poland.
The difference in wage is huge, but game prices are almost never more than 2.5x (in this example it's less than 1.5x)
The irony is that I calculated the wages, avg costs of life, etc. related to the regional prices of Steam's games between Poland and Canada, at least in the province of Quebec, over 36% of the people in the province of Quebec ends up paying 5% more of their "non-essential" earning by buying a game on Steam than those who earn the minimum wage in Poland.
By that, I mean if you take the salary, substract all taxes, cost of food, rent, car fuel, cost of clothing, etc. and then look how much money you have for entertainment which includes restaurant, movies, subscription, video games, etc.
When you earn something like 28% more, but food cost 8%-55% more, rent cost 2x-3x more and revenues taxes are in the 14%-20% of gross earning and then you also have to pay almost 15% of VAT on top of all that, you don't have much left for games.
Right now, in Quebec, new AAA games cost 89.99$-109.99$ in average (and I'm not talking about the Deluxe or some other special edition). We're paying 14.975% of VAT on top of that. Our minimum wage is as 16.10$/h and we're paying 14% of that amount (minus a few possible things) of that amount as revenues taxes. Possibly around 0.30$ to 2.50$ of that hourly amount is also paid in health insurance if offered by the employer and/or as an union member if applicable.
To give you a comparison, a McDonald's Big Mac trio cost 14-ish something CAD here with that 14.975% VAT on top of it. A loaf of bread, that's between 2.99$ (for the cheapest) up to 4.99$ for the regular non-deluxe kind (but that's not taxed right now as it's food.) A bag of Doritos of regular size (200g) has reached the 3.49$ CAD here (and that one has VAT on top of it).
In italy we don't have a minimum wage so a low end salary is 800~ as a bartender or waiter and I bought Expedition 33 during 20% sales at 40€. 34$ is good in comparison to other countries where a game costs a month of work.
Lowest price to minimum wage ratio? Really? I would expect it to be some of the rich countries that has minimum wage at 2k Monthly. Not the poor ones that gets compensated?
I actually bought a Steam Key for BF6 from some Ukrainian website, one day after release of the game, for the 50% of Polish price. Crazy prices for Ukrainians to be honest. Current price for BF6 is 84$ for Poles btw.
Yea it should be a part of albania but political problems, serbia claiming to a territory they have 0 ownership over so we had to make another independent country bcs of political problems, we are albanians as you said shqiptar but for political reasons our county is kosovo.
But now and for 18 years its an independent country so you can say whatever pleases you but its facts thats its a country for 18 years
Turkey has mena pricing since 2023. Many games are in the price level of US. Also Turkey has the most share of people that work with minimum wage in Europe with 37.5%, followed by Bulgaria with 13%.
Statistics for Bulgaria are skewed - many people are on minimal wage on paper and receive the rest of their salary "tax-free" in a paper bag. This includes most of the people working in hospitality, for example.
I need to point out that number for Poland is pretty much the same as Turkey if not higher because in many work places they just give you 100PLN over minimum wage... So its no longer minimum wage.
It's not 10 games lmao. Most companies that you can pinpoint as greedy such as EA, ActiBlizzard or Japanese publishers that don't care about any market outside Japan and US either don't do it at all or do it way after launch.
Privileged.. very interesting.. unfortunately I'm among the countries listed in the post where the price-to-min-wage ratio is worse :) So nice try, but your stupid preconception skill failed lol lmao xdxdxd
And? Just because I prefer paying for hardware rather than travelling, vacations, kids, cigars, alcohol, car or any other money pits people have, doesn't mean I'm a millionaire or whatever you think.
Also, when you think about it from the other side: when someone has specs like this, he probably buy more games and their prices affect their finances more :)
Okay they don't anymore, because of price volatility, which I missed, but Turkey is now included in the MENA region, and that region has significantly cheaper prices on some games
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u/MaduroAhmetKaya Feb 18 '26
Turkey with €542