Valve has reportedly altered its region-change policies on Steam once again, looking to crack down on people exploiting them to find cheaper PC game prices. Switches can now only be made once every three months, making the trick extremely impractical except under rare circumstances.
Because of exchange rates and other factors, the pricing of Steam games differs from country to country, with Argentina frequently having the lowest costs as a result of its devalued currency. Shoppers get to keep their games when switching - a necessity for people moving internationally - so those hunting for bargains were once able to use a VPN to spoof their region, buy a game, then switch back. Valve has been cracking down on the tactic, however, most recently in 2020 by forcing people to use a payment method from their selected region.
The new rule was reported on Twitter by the unofficial Steam-tracking entity SteamDB. It's uncertain when it was implemented, but will probably deter most cross-border purchases except for binge shopping, for example during Steam's imminent summer sale. Even then most gamers don't have easy access to foreign payment methods, and Valve is known to sometimes ban people caught using VPNs. The company once had a two-week "cooldown" period to slow region changes.
A risk of Valve's tightening grip is that it will actually increase piracy. Most of the people using the region-change exploit are probably unwilling - or unable - to pay full price in their home countries. With an easy loophole closed, the alternative may be illegal downloads that leave Valve and developers with zero income, rather than the small amount they would collect from purchases in Argentina. Valve has so far been quiet on the financial impact of region exploits, but explains some of its rules in a Steam help article.
Another possibility is that gamers will turn to other storefronts like GOG, the Epic Games Store, and itch.io. Steam is the most popular venue for PC games, though, and often the default platform for game developers as a result. That makes being unable to shop there a serious problem, especially given the popularity of some of Valve's own titles like Portal 2, DotA 2, and Half-Life: Alyx. Indeed, even some third-party VR games like Pavlov are dependent on SteamVR to run. On consoles like the Xbox Series X and PS5, the only legal shopping option - at the moment- is a hardware maker's own online store. Steam has sometimes been rumored as coming to Xbox in some capacity, and vice versa, but this has yet to occur.