Early morning on the first of May, online digital distribution community Steam was surprisingly overcome by a glitch in currency which valued Indonesian rupiahs exactly the same as the U.S. dollars.
The conversion market meltdown caused major confusion since in reality U.S. dollars are valued at 13,000 Indonesian rupiahs. The glitch caused the market items valued at 1 dollar to be the same as 1 rupiah, which is almost next to nothing for Indonesian buyers. Items that cost a few dollars in the US market dropped suddenly and significantly in relation to Indonesian prices. Items valued at 3 dollars were suddenly valued at 3 rupiahs.
On the other hand, there were also massive price spike in item costs for non-Indonesian buyers. Some items on the market were suddenly valued in the millions. Screenshots of users experiencing the glitch were posted on a thread over at Reddit. Valve subsequently disabled the market entirely and released a statement due to the surprising disturbance.
"Early this morning, a problem with our currency exchange rate data allowed users who use Indonesian Rupiahs in their Steam wallet to make purchases on the Community Market at heavily discounted prices. We have reverted as many of these purchases as possible. Steam Trading and the Community Market were both disabled while this rollback process was occurring, but are now enabled once again."
The disturbance in the market has been placated at the moment. The Steam Community will be happy to know that Valve has posted a message on the Community webpage that should appease the user's discord over the situation.
The glitch would hopefully be maintained from happening again. No new information has surfaced to suggest that the issue has happened or will be happening again. For now, Valve and the Steam Community is moving forward from the distressing incident.
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