Recently the most popular app for buying and downloading games on PC, Steam , decided to stop accepting payments in Turkish Lira as a currency in their platform.This meant that users in Turkey no longer could buy games without converting their money to USD from their bank.This lead to widespread discomfort among the gaming community since this meant that the games would no longer be cheaper and that they have to pay a comission to banks to convert their money to USD.But why exactly did Steam decide to stop accepting Turkish Lira?
Since Turkey’s economy is volatile and unstable, the value is always decreasing and this makes it harder for Steam to put reasonable prices for both the users and the game developers, since they want users to be able to buy the games comfortable and the game developers to earn as much money as they can. But as Turkish Lira decreases in value, it is harder for game developers to take it as a currency as Steam always kept the value of the game in TL lower than USD to make it easier for Turks to buy games.But in the long run, this method started to prove inefficient as TL was too invaluable to use as a currency for Steam and game developers so Steam stopped transactions with TL to avoid money loss.
There are also international policies and regulations for buying games. Changes in financial regulations or government policies can impact how international transactions are conducted. Platforms like Steam may need to comply with regulatory requirements, and this can sometimes result in adjustments to the supported currencies. Since USD is a default currency for most websites because of it’s stability, it was a much more reasonable currency to use in transactions within Steam.
Overall, there are multiple, and good reasons for Steam to stop accepting TL and switching to USD, but it still doesn’t ease the pain the gaming community felt as buying and playing games on Steam was one thing both rich and the less fortunate could do for years despite the horrible economical management of Turkey.