Valve has announced that they have added support for rubles, Russia’s national currency, to Steam. This is a major step in making Steam more accessible to the millions of Russian gamers currently using Steam. Hopefully, we’ll see more currencies being added to Steam in the future. And hopefully Valve will take care of that pesky 1 dollar ≠ 1 euro thing soon as well! In any case, I have no doubt that Father Grigori and the Heavy are very pleased. If you’re Russian yourself, let us know what you think about the new functionality.
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Valve adds rubles to Steam… and removes 50 games that are even sold in retail stores in Russia (even the games that are intended for Russia and CIS, such as Fallout: New Vegas 1C (Russian, Polish and Czech version of Fallout: New Vegas) and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. (S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl with 50% price for Russia and CIS)).
I’m not from Russia myself, I’m from Ukraine, but I share thoughts of some Russian gamers. What they fear is that Valve is not only going to add support for rubles, some sources say they’re also going to lower the prices for Russia to make games more accessible for the “working class” and then to prevent others taking advantage of these lower prices they’re going to lock all games to Russian language if you live in Russia.
And that’s a bad thing for some gamers that like to play games in their original language instead of very poor Russian translation.
That’s just a rumor but if Valve will do this, I’ll just stop using Steam.
> What were RU users paying with before this was added?
With dollars, of course. At least for me all prices are displayed in dollars.
Looks like you’re right about the discounts.
http://galyonkin.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/steam-proof.png
Pricing Graph: http://galyonkin.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/wpid-Photo-3-avg.-2011-0811.jpg
Well, yes, I’m kinda afraid of this thing too. Some game jokes were totally ruined by our translators (For ex. like StarCraft’s “Overmind” is “НАДМОЗГ” in Russian Translition (instead of “Сверхразум”)). So it would be very unpleasant if original language isn’t able in the games bought for rubles but not dollars.
Ooh, this is news to me. What were RU users paying with before this was added?
Oh, and “=/=” ≠ “≠” 😛 (Unless you’re doing that so people don’t have compatibility problems with their browser/os)
Crap, I forgot to use that one! Thanks for reminding me! Don’t think there are any compatibility problems, but if anyone notices a problem, I’ll change it back.