World of Warcraft's subscription is about to get almost 3,000% more expensive in Argentina—and it'll 'only get worse with inflation'

Last month, Argentinian World of Warcraft players found a nasty surprise in their inbox—an email from Blizzard announcing two separate price hikes to their World of Warcraft subscriptions, making the game prohibitively expensive. Firstly, though, some context is in order. 

Last November, fellow PC Gamer writer Joshua Wolens covered the explosive increase of Steam prices in Argentina and Turkey. In Argentina specifically, inflation means that one US Dollar is around 824 Argentine Pesos (ARS).

As per WoWHead, World of Warcraft players were informed in January that the monthly WoW subscription would increase from 650 to 12,000 ARS—which is bad enough on its own, except Blizzard's new policy includes a one-two punch.

While the right hook hasn't come in just yet, Blizzard plans to charge Argentinian players in USD in Battle.net going forward. This is huge for two reasons: firstly, $14.99 converts to 12,460 ARS, a whole 460 ARS more expensive than the initial price hike at the time of writing. Secondly, Argentina's tax on currency exchange via credit cards is around 60%—so if you've gotta convert, you're paying extra. 

To scribble this all down, Argentinian players had a monthly subscription of 650 ARS. Now they have to pay (with tax) around 19,936 ARS a month to keep playing a game they already own. That's a 2,967% increase. If you converted all of that to dollars, a WoW sub used to cost less than $1 and now costs around $24—but the minimum wage in Argentina is around 118,000 ARS, making $24 the equivalent of $140. Less affordable by some massive margins.

I got in touch with a couple of Argentinian players—one of which brought the issue to the wider community on the game's subreddit. The thread's author, Zutsa, writes: «I asked my real life friend if he would keep playing WoW after this, and even though he actually does own The War Within, he probably won't play anymore due to these changes.»

Zutsa tells me that they've seen a variety of responses from the community