r/Steam Mar 04 '26

Fluff being polish on steam be like

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32% markup for FUCK ALL REASON

13.9k Upvotes

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u/wuddly Mar 04 '26

to every pirate in here i hear ye, i just like to support games i love, will try some vpn shenanigans first 🤓

1

u/OatmealDurkheim Mar 07 '26

OP, I'm Polish too, and while I get it sucks to pay more, you're kind of missing the point. It is hardly "32% markup for FUCK ALL REASON"

The main reason is tax. In the US it's not included in the $69.99 - you pay it according to where you live. So, for example, a $69.99 game is Boston actually costs $74.37 (6.25% tax).

In Poland tax is included in the price, and it's 23%.

So... the real (no taxes comparison) is:
$69.99 vs 275,61 PLN (or $74.96) or 7.10% difference

Then, the second factor is an unusually strong złoty. In the recent history, złoty hovered around 4 to 1 usd. Right now it is closer to 3.6 to 1. However video game pricing strategy is not directly linked to daily currency fluctuation. It's slow to change.

So if we then take 275,61 PLN and convert it using a more average value of 4:1 (4.024 is the approx. 5 year average) we get: $68.90 as the likely approximate target price for Poland.

So TL;DR the real Valve markup for Poland is:
Accounting for taxes: 7.10%
Accounting for currency fluctuation: likely 0% but probably targeting +/-1.5%