PS5 games will cost $136 USD... in Argentina

TheIdiot · Sep 16, 2020

Yesterday the government announced that starting today any purchases made in dollars will have a 35% tax added to the purchase... This is on top of a 30% tax they added last year for purchases made in dollars. Yes, you read that correctly. Two separate taxes, for a total of 65%. Furthermore, there's an 8% tax for digital purchases and 21% of VAT.

Given the news that AAA games on the PS5 can be up to $70 USD, such as Demon's Souls, by adding a total of a 94% tax, next-gen PS5 games will cost up to $135.80. Real talk. And this is with an Argentine wages in pesos.

It's a sad reality that this means a LOT of people that as of last year, with some sweat and tears, were able to afford current gen games... Now they're out of the running. It's just not within our budget.

It's a shame. It's projected that this 65% tax will be here for years.

Feels bad man.

Deleted member 5491 · Sep 16, 2020

Kitano · Sep 16, 2020

Feels bad

rpm · Sep 16, 2020

I'm sorry for you and all the other Argentines out there. For reference, what's the minimum/average wage?

cursed knowledge · Sep 16, 2020

rip PS5 for us brasileiros and our hermanos

cursed knowledge · Sep 16, 2020

rpm said:
I'm sorry for you and all the other Argentines out there. For reference, what's the minimum/average wage?

im not from there but i *think* the minimum wage is U$150 monthly, not sure tho

Marano · Sep 16, 2020

Will still be cheaper than here in Brazil if I had to guess, this is why gamepass is huge.

Mark It Zero! · Sep 16, 2020

rpm said:
I'm sorry for you and all the other Argentines out there. For reference, what's the minimum/average wage?

After today.. who knows. Below 300 usd for sure.

Nazgûl · Sep 16, 2020

Fucking sucks !
they going to refund us that 35%, but it will not worth the same. I hate my country

guilhermessg said:
im not from there but i *think* the minimum wage is U$450 monthly, not sure tho

I wish. It's 150 USD

reKon · Sep 16, 2020

holy shit that's crazy

plake · Sep 16, 2020

Excuse my lack of knowledge, but are you forced to buy the games in usd or can you pay using pesos? Anyways, I'm sorry for your situation.

Rosebud · Sep 16, 2020

Marano said:
Will still be cheaper than here in Brazil if I had to guess, this is why gamepass is huge.

$136 would be more than R$700,00 here

cursed knowledge · Sep 16, 2020

Nazgûl said:
Fucking sucks !
they going to refund us that 35%, but it will not worth the same. I hate my country

I wish. It's 150 USD

shit it was a typo, i was kinda aware bc i know some people from there

Kurt Russell · Sep 16, 2020

TheIdiot said:
Yesterday the government announced that starting today any purchases made in dollars will have a 35% tax added to the purchase... This is on top of a 30% tax they added last year for purchases made in dollars. Yes, you read that correctly. Two separate taxes, for a total of 65%. Furthermore, there's an 8% tax for digital purchases and 21% of VAT.

Given the news that AAA games on the PS5 can be up to $70 USD, such as Demon's Souls, by adding a total of a 94% tax, next-gen PS5 games will cost up to $135.80. Real talk. And this is with an Argentine wages in pesos.

It's a sad reality that this means a LOT of people that as of last year, with some sweat and tears, were able to afford current gen games... Now they're out of the running. It's just not within our budget.

It's a shame. It's projected that this 65% tax will be here for years.

Feels bad man.

The digital tax is 30%+35%
The other two (8% and 21%) are the 30% total. With that explanation out of the way, yes, we are getting fucked hard, and the excuse being given for the new tax is stupid. The people who buy a game or two to be able to enjoy themselves for a while since we can't afford vacations, traveling, etc aren't the people who are making their dollar reserves go away.

rpm said:
I'm sorry for you and all the other Argentines out there. For reference, what's the minimum/average wage?

Minimum wage is around 150 usd a month.

psynergyadept · Sep 16, 2020

Damn....

Lant_War · Sep 16, 2020

Yeah, the price hike really sucks for latin america right now. I really hope the Demon's Souls on PC thing is true because that's easily the game that interests me the most.

rpm · Sep 16, 2020

guilhermessg said:
im not from there but i *think* the minimum wage is U$450 monthly, not sure tho

I tried looking it up and I found a lot of different numbers, the most common one I found was 16,875 Argentine pesos a month which is like $224 USD, which is why I was hoping OP/other Argentines could shed some light

Booker.DeWitt · Sep 16, 2020

Buy digital, this is your best bet

z1ggy · Sep 16, 2020

Yep but OP we should worry less about gaming and more about real life stuff since everything seems to fall apart here. Its pretty sad.

Kurt Russell · Sep 16, 2020

rpm said:
I tried looking it up and I found a lot of different numbers, the most common one I found was 16,875 Argentine pesos a month which is like $224 USD, which is why I was hoping OP/other Argentines could shed some light

The thing is that there's "minimum wage" and minimum wage. Lots of places pay under minimum wage and you take it anyway, because that's all you can get and it's that or not eating (and the official USD conversion rate isn't exactly the real one either, especially after this new tax)

GuEiMiRrIRoW · Sep 16, 2020

Aorry argetina member. Things are rough there.

¡ B 0 0 P ! · Sep 16, 2020

plake said:
Excuse my lack of knowledge, but are you forced to buy the games in usd or can you pay using pesos? Anyways, I'm sorry for your situation.

Because of the exchange rate most games outside of America will always be much more in the local currency. Here in Canada new AAA games cost $90 CAD. With the arrival of next gen it's going to pass the $100 amount for sure.

Midgarian · Sep 16, 2020

Why do countries like Argentina and Turkey have these weird taxes? What is the logic? Just governments wanting as much money as possible?

Koppai · Sep 16, 2020

Kurt Russell said:
The digital tax is 30%+35%
The other two (8% and 21%) are the 30% total. With that explanation out of the way, yes, we are getting fucked hard, and the excuse being given for the new tax is stupid. The people who buy a game or two to be able to enjoy themselves for a while since we can't afford vacations, traveling, etc aren't the people who are making their dollar reserves go away.

Minimum wage is around 150 usd a month.

What if you just make a US account and purchase digitally? You could just send money to someone in the US to buy you store cards.

Kurt Russell · Sep 16, 2020

plake said:
Excuse my lack of knowledge, but are you forced to buy the games in usd or can you pay using pesos? Anyways, I'm sorry for your situation.

Digital purchases are in USD, in some cases, converted to pesos, and then USD again on the credit/debit card bill.

Levitates · Sep 16, 2020

Marano said:
Will still be cheaper than here in Brazil if I had to guess, this is why gamepass is huge.

Not really. If we just convert the currencies, we pay less than U$ 60,00 for most of the games.

Kurt Russell · Sep 16, 2020

Kurt Russell said:
Digital purchases are in USD, in some cases, converted to pesos, and then USD again on the credit/debit card bill.

Koppai said:
What if you just make a US account and purchase digitally? You could just send money to someone in the US to buy you store cards.

The tax applies to buying dollars, paying in dollars (or things that are converted to dollars by the card company), etc. The only way what you propose would work is if the person doing it got paid outside of the system, in dollars (which isn't the case for most people, I'd wager)

Nazgûl · Sep 16, 2020

Midgarian said:
Why do countries like Argentina and Turkey have these weird taxes? What is the logic? Just governments wanting as much money as possible?

Short answer: Yes

Long answer: Yes

Koppai · Sep 16, 2020

Kurt Russell said:
The tax applies to buying dollars, paying in dollars (or things that are converted to dollars by the card company), etc. The only way what you propose would work is if the person doing it got paid outside of the system, in dollars (which isn't the case for most people, I'd wager)

So your saying if someone sent me Argentine pesos on PayPal it would still be taxed to hell?

Just trying to help out my fellow gaming community.

Azelia · Sep 16, 2020

yikes! not good at all. Feel bad for Argentinians :(

Kurt Russell · Sep 16, 2020

Midgarian said:
Why do countries like Argentina and Turkey have these weird taxes? What is the logic? Just governments wanting as much money as possible?

In this specific case, it's a difficult answer. People here are used to thinking that the peso is worthless, so people who have some money to save, buy dollars. That's why there's a 200 dollars per month cap on buying dollars. Then there's big evaders doing shit behind the scenes, but governments usually find it easier to just go after the guy who saves a few dollars per month instead of those (meanwhile, the central bank's dollar supply goes lower and lower every month)
This new measure is stupid, because it basically goes after anyone who pays for netflix, spotify, digital games, etc.

Mark It Zero! · Sep 16, 2020

rpm said:
I tried looking it up and I found a lot of different numbers, the most common one I found was 16,875 Argentine pesos a month which is like $224 USD, which is why I was hoping OP/other Argentines could shed some light

That's far from 224 usd. The official exchange is about 80 pesos/usd, but after today you have to add 35%, plus there's a 200 usd limit per month.
Services like Netflix offer regional prices, as in they charge a fixed amount of pesos regardless of the exchange, but in the end they get usd from the federal reserves. That's where all those taxes come in, so to the 270$ from Netflix you have to add 21% + 8% + 35%. It's the same for every international purchase, like Steam PSN or whatever else.

Nazgûl · Sep 16, 2020

guilhermessg said:
rip PS5 for us brasileiros and our hermanos

yeah we (Br and Ar) are fucked lol

Kurt Russell · Sep 16, 2020

Koppai said:
So your saying if someone sent me Argentine pesos on PayPal it would still be taxed to hell?

Just trying to help out my fellow gaming community.

Yes, because they'd have to use a credit/debit card from here. The only way that would work if they got paid for their job with paypal money. That's not exactly common here, so it's a niche scenario.

Mark It Zero! said:
That's far from 224 usd. The official exchange is about 80 pesos/usd, but after today you have to add 35%, plus there's a 200 usd limit per month.
Services like Netflix offer regional prices, as in they charge a fixed amount of pesos regardless of the exchange, but in the end they get usd from the federal reserves. That's where all those taxes come in, so to the 270$ from Netflix you have to add 21% + 8% + 35%. It's the same for every international purchase, like Steam PSN or whatever else.

Correct.

tapedeck · Sep 16, 2020

The fuck..

daCuk · Sep 16, 2020

And that's why piracy has always been popular in Latin America

JDSN · Sep 16, 2020

Yeah, im gonna buy half of Cordoba province when I resell my Switch

Kurt Russell · Sep 16, 2020

daCuk said:
And that's why piracy has always been popular in Latin America

And to this, add big publishers going "hey, let's give them US prices"
US prices+65% in taxes= not a lot of people buying anything.

z1ggy · Sep 16, 2020

Midgarian said:
Why do countries like Argentina and Turkey have these weird taxes? What is the logic? Just governments wanting as much money as possible?

Argentina has a (de facto) bi-monetary system and sometimes our central bank runs out of money, that combined with a huge deficit and the never ending money printing we end up like this.

We had some major crises in the last 45 years:

- 1975
- 1982
- 1989
- 1994
- 2001
- 2009

And personally, im getting tired of this shit. Ive been thinking on selling my stuff and moving to another country.

Baloota · Sep 16, 2020

the PS5 or Xbox Series X will probably be $900 in Egypt if not more..i'm not even joking lmao

Jebusman · Sep 16, 2020

Is Sony one of the few gaming companies that still don't offer games in local currency for Argentina? I know Steam started to as of last year.

Koppai · Sep 16, 2020

Kurt Russell said:
Yes, because they'd have to use a credit/debit card from here. The only way that would work if they got paid for their job with paypal money. That's not exactly common here, so it's a niche scenario.

Correct.

Man that's really scummy!

tecl0n · Sep 16, 2020

Ah, yes.
The fallout has been a thing to behold these last 24 hours.

But at least, PS5 Digital edition is ARS 76,000. Could have been worse.

I was waiting for the quest2 announcement to finally purchase.
But with import taxes the amount totals USD600.
I can relay the new 35% as wealth tax, but stil....

Then again, in a few months USD purchases will most likely be banned as this will not stop the Central Banks Reserves bleed out.

sythyx · Sep 16, 2020

OP or anyone from Argentina what could you do with 135 USD in Argentina?, what's the standard wage there in wages, kinda curious

And here it Mexico it won't be much better, they added a new 16% tax for all digital goods and with our mexican peso devaluating, we will end up paying like 85-90 USD for a game here

z1ggy · Sep 16, 2020

sythyx said:
OP or anyone from Argentina what could you do with 135 USD in Argentina?, what's the standard wage there in wages, kinda curious

And here it Mexico it won't be much better, they added a new 16% tax for all digital goods and with our mexican peso devaluating, we will end up paying like 85-90 USD for a game here

Let me tell you that like 3 years ago people used to earn around 700$ and in 2015 above 1k dollars.

We are reaching 55-60% of poverty, 20%+ unemployment and 7/10 kids are poor. Shit got totally out of control in the last idk, 8 years.

We used to have no poverty and full employment some decades ago.

rpm · Sep 16, 2020

Kurt Russell said:
Minimum wage is around 150 usd a month.

Kurt Russell said:
The thing is that there's "minimum wage" and minimum wage. Lots of places pay under minimum wage and you take it anyway, because that's all you can get and it's that or not eating (and the official USD conversion rate isn't exactly the real one either, especially after this new tax)

Mark It Zero! said:
That's far from 224 usd. The official exchange is about 80 pesos/usd, but after today you have to add 35%, plus there's a 200 usd limit per month.
Services like Netflix offer regional prices, as in they charge a fixed amount of pesos regardless of the exchange, but in the end they get usd from the federal reserves. That's where all those taxes come in, so to the 270$ from Netflix you have to add 21% + 8% + 35%. It's the same for every international purchase, like Steam PSN or whatever else.

Thank you both for the information. Damn, what a shitty situation.

tecl0n · Sep 16, 2020

For the others wondering.
The minimun salary is ARS 16,875, to the exchange rate that the OP is mentioning it totals 129 USD per month.
Please note that Argentina has a myriad of other problems, and as such people on the lower end of the income scale work in illegal situation so they earn between 60-80% of the minium wage. The median wage is 14,500 as of June.

50% of the country's population able to work earn less than USD 110 per month.

z1ggy said:
Argentina has a (de facto) bi-monetary system and sometimes our central bank runs out of money, that combined with a huge deficit and the never ending money printing we end up like this.

We had some major crises in the last 45 years:

- 1975
- 1982
- 1989
- 1994
- 2001
- 2009

And personally, im getting tired of this shit. Ive been thinking on selling my stuff and moving to another country.

It's getting tiresome, i agree.

Leo-Tyrant · Sep 16, 2020

Its not that far off in Costa Rica, even without such an aggressive 65% tax, we already pay around $110 for current gen games (the usual $60 PS4, Xbox, Nintendo game).

Consoles are also about 50%-100% more expensive and the minimum wage is about $350.

Its the same thing with cars, TVs... every single thing.

I believe most of Central and South America would agree: We have to pay MORE, while earning LESS per month, to get the same ballpark of gear/enjoyment.

Mark It Zero! · Sep 16, 2020

Jebusman said:
Is Sony one of the few gaming companies that still don't offer games in local currency for Argentina? I know Steam started to as of last year.

Offering local currency is not the same as regional prices. Steam did put arg peso as a currency here in the argentina store, but the prices of the games are not dictated by Steam but by the publisher. Valve cannot force publishers into a particular price, but instead offers an automatic conversion table for the supported currencies which is extremelly good for us, but pretty much no publishers uses it anymore outside of indies.
To give some pricing context, Half Life Alyx is $650 which is the Valve recommended price for a 60usd game. Right now that price is bonkers, I'd buy every game day one. But if you do the math that's less than 10 usd, so publishers change those prices to whatever they want without considering the economic situation of people here. CP2077 is $2100, RDR2 is $2500, Borderlands 3 is $3500 and RE3 is $4200. AC Valhalla is above $5000 on UPlay last i checked with the gold edition above 7K.
It used to be that those prices disparities where because of VPN abussers looking to buy games in cheaper regions, but nowadays if you want to purchase a game in a region you need to use a payment option that comes from that region, like a locally issued credit card.

krae_man · Sep 16, 2020

So if I understand this correct, There's a 30% sales tax, a 35% foreign transaction tax and an 8% Digital sales tax?

that's brutal.

You'd need to mail paper money to a pen pal to get around that.

PS5 games will cost $136 USD... in Argentina

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