Steam Dev Days is well underway, and although the press wasn't invited to the party, they can't stop us from pressing our ears up against the window trying to catch snippets of what's being said. Hey, it's a living. The latest snippet came in the form of a sneaky tweet from Coffee Stain Studios' Armin Ibrisagic, whose captured slideshow image reveals that Valve is planning to add support for a bunch of new currencies to Steam sometime this year. The Australian, Canadian and New Zealand dollars appear to be included, as do the Japanese yen, the Mexican peso and the Singaporean dollar. Metro 2033's bullet-based currency is notable by its absence.
Ausgamers and VG247 have thankfully interpreted the slide for me, which suggests that currencies from Australia, Canada, Indonesia, Japan, New Zealand, Malaysia, Mexico, the Philippines, Singapore, Norway, Thailand and the Ukraine will soon be supported by Steam. Currently we can only buy games using our British pounds, US dollars, Russian rubles, Euros or Brazilian Reais.
It's hard to tell yet whether this will have a positive or negative effect on the often dramatic gap between game prices in the US and UK and those in, for example, Australia. As VG247 note, while the move should eliminate exchange rates and conversion fees, it will make it more difficult to check whether a game's price has been jacked up by its publisher.
