To: Valve Corporation; video game developers and publishers

On behalf of Polish gamers, the #PolishOurPrices initiative and with endorsement from Polish Ministry of Digital Affairs urge Valve Corporation to be more transparent about its methodology for calculating regional prices available in the Price Management Tool.

We also urge developers and publishers to re-evaluate their regional pricing based on economic factors. We believe that video game prices in Poland are not properly adjusted to the purchasing power of consumers, which negatively affects Polish gamers.

This issue is widespread across both console and PC storefronts, including Steam. Despite changes to regional pricing tools introduced by Valve in March 2026, the pricing situation for Polish gamers has improved only marginally.

In the Price Management Tool for developers and publishers, Valve currently provides three optional methods for converting the baseline USD prices into regional prices: based on exchange rate (FX), purchasing power (PP), and Multi‑Variable Conversion (MVC), which is selected by default. As a result, this value often becomes the final price, since many developers and publishers choose to use Valve's defaults, believing them to be accurate.

According to Valve, one of the factors used to calculate the MVC price is "the expected cost of comparable entertainment goods." This wording is vague, and Valve has not provided any details on how this “expected cost” is determined, what it includes, or how it affects the final MVC calculation. This lack of transparency is troubling, as a comparative analysis conducted by #PolishOurPrices reveals multiple contradictions and inconsistencies.

According to data from Valve’s Price Management Tool, the purchasing power (PP) price in PLN is, on average, 47% lower than the base USD price. Meanwhile, the default MVC price in PLN is, on average, 126% higher than the PP price. This is the largest MVC-to- PP price uplift among all 36 non‑USD currencies. As a result, the default Polish MVC prices are the fifth-highest on Steam.

The only currencies with default MVC prices higher than the Polish złoty are the Norwegian krone, Israeli new shekel, British pound, and euro. Furthermore, default MVC prices are lower in several countries with significantly higher purchasing power than Poland, such as Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, Switzerland, and the United States.

We call on Valve to raise its level of transparency by publishing the methodology of calculating regional prices presented in their Price Management Tools, especially regarding the MVC conversion method.

Greater transparency will facilitate a constructive public dialogue about readjusting the value of the default MVC price to better reflect the economic realities of Poland (and other potentially affected countries).

At the same time, we ask game developers and publishers to re-evaluate their regional prices, including those in Polish, so that they better reflect the purchasing power of customers in all affected regions. This will help create a fair gaming market for everyone.