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. We recommend pricing strategies based on our experience and we may suggest prices based on currency conversions and other factors. 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:
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.
Updating Pricing and Adding Discounts
Below is a quick tutorial showing how to update the pricing and enter discounts for your products on Steam.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQHt1X33MKMPricing 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.
Regional Pricing Recommendations
Pricing decisions on Steam are entirely in the hands of you the developer, and we encourage you to always do what’s best for your players. And we know that figuring out the right price for your game across dozens of different currencies and countries can be pretty complicated.
As a service for helping you manage pricing across 35+ different currencies, Steam offers a recommendation for how to translate your base USD price into region appropriate levels. We base these recommendations on currency conversions, regional purchasing power, required taxes, and our own experience selling in particular regions. Purchasing power can vary significantly from country to country, and the price for goods and entertainment is affected by many factors. As a result, Valve's recommended pricing does not represent exact foreign exchange rates. We update these guidelines periodically, as foreign exchange rates or other market factors warrant.
When you are entering your pricing for your game, you will notice Steam fill in a set of recommendations based on your selected USD price. You are welcome to override any of those prices with your own selections.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: My game is missing some of the local currencies that Steam supports, does that matter?A: Not having pricing entered for all applicable currencies prevents users from making a purchase. 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.
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: We suggest that you wait at least two months after release before you change your price. That is the same period of time you should wait until you first offer a discount on your title.
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 28 days after any price increase. If you increase your price within 28 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 discount as you release V1.0 out of Early Access and then raise your price 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 28 days before you release out of Early Access, and then run a discount to go with your V1.0 release.
Q: Can I participate in major sale events if my product recently launched?A: Generally, you cannot submit a discount within 28 days of release or 28 days from when the launch discount ends. However, you can submit a launch discount to take effect when your game first releases, and if your product releases within 7 days of a major sale event (like the Steam Summer Sale, for example), Valve can help you extend that introductory launch discount to last through the sale event.
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 if your game will no longer have in-game purchasing when changing from Free to Play to a paid package, then we ask that you give your customers at least 28 days notice before removing in-game purchasing, so that customers have fair warning and get a chance to use up any remaining in-game currency or items before they no longer are purchasable or consumable. 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. Again, we'd ask that you give your customers at least a month's 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 to 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 model to ship on Steam. However if you have a game that is ad supported, and you want to ship it on Steam, you could consider having your game be a single purchase or making it free to play with microtransactions or additional content as DLC.
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, and we encourage you to always do what’s best for your players.
Q: How does Valve compute the suggested prices?A: We base these guidelines on currency conversions, regional purchasing power, required taxes, and our own experience. Purchasing power can vary significantly from country to country, and the price for goods and entertainment is affected by many factors. As a result, Valve's recommended pricing does not represent exact foreign exchange rates. We update these guidelines periodically, as foreign exchange rates or other market factors warrant.
Q: Does recommended 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
