Steam price hikes (non- USA)

[Trifle]

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/ste.../1100-6448088/

Basically Steam has to collect tax for other countries now, so looks like they're just going to raise prices by that much to compensate. Which normally I'd think is fine, except since a while back when the physical distributors got all stroppy, Steam artificially raised prices in many of its markets to be more in line with regional physical copies. So the price Steam sells a game for in USA is probably about 3/4 of what it sells the same game for in NZ/Aus etc.

Which is why I usually just buy the steam code from Green man games and add it to my Steam library that way. Which btw will presumably still work as then Steam won't be the entity selling the goods, so the tax codes probably don't even get involved.

In short, fuck you Steam, and everyone in general that does regional pricing of digital goods.

[Unhinged]

Aus/NZ get price gouged on everything
Why should digital things be different.

[Masark]

In short, fuck you Steam, and everyone in general that does regional pricing of digital goods.

Talk to your government. They're being legally required to do this.

[XDurionX]

So it basically has to adapt to how it works in the rest of the world. The sky is falling, guys.

And if i understand it correctly, you don't pay a single cent (or shell or whatever the currency is) more, the only difference is how the prices are displayed. So this whole thread is pretty pointless.

[Mormolyce]

Not that I really approve of this, it's basically a government defending a dying business model, but I imagine this has no effect on Steam sales which is the only time I buy games anyway.

[Trifle]

As noted in the article, the prices will be raising by the percentages listed (presumably. It is slightly open to interpretation, so maybe not, but I'm not holding my breath).

And as I said in my initial post, I have no problem with them charging tax, I just have a problem with them raising prices to do it, as they currently artificially increase the price (comparative to US steam accounts) by more than the amount they have to pay as tax. So there's nothing stopping them just absorbing the cost, and still making more money than they do off their American customers.