Wolfire Games Forums

Brought this up on the Steam discussion page for Overgrowth, so I thought I'd put it here too.

Overgrowth is up at $30 on the US store, which is equivalent to just under £18. However, on the UK store, the price has been ramped up an extra £5 to £23. Is there some reason for this or are all the currency converters I've tried today wrong?

Don't get me wrong, I'll pay the money as soon as I have it at the end of the month, but it seems a bit unfair that there's a £5 conversion charge on my purchase.

I think this is a Steam related issue. I have just checked the price for the European version and it is listed as 27,99€. 30$ are only worth roughly 22€, though.
I bought the game directly from the website using Paypal and back then the dollar price mattered and was simply converted to Euros.

If I were you, I'd simply buy the game through the website and later redeem your Steam code, if you really think you need it in your library as well.This would also make it much easier for you to join the Secret Preorder Forum and get custom content right away, because you don't have to deal with the complicated process of verifying your purchase from Steam before verifying your purchase here again.

But this definitely needs to be addressed. If I had paid 28€ and later found out that I could have gotten it for a lot less I would be furious.

Yeah, I think it is a Steam thing. I just checked the US prices for Max Payne 3 and Civilization V, $20 and $30 respectively. The price for MP3 becomes £15, £3 more than what the converter tells me, and the price for Civ V becomes £20, still less than Overgrowth but still £2 greater.

Definitely very weird. I think I'll follow your advice and get it from the website here. And in the future, I'll be sure to check that a game isn't cheaper anywhere else given Steam's dodgy currency conversion.

Well, now that the Humble store now does UK and Euro transactions, I can get Overgrowth for the non-bullshit price of £17.99, saving £5 compared to getting it from Steam and avoiding a currency conversion charge from my bank. Awesome.

In all of this, has anyone emailed Valve about it?
I've never heard of this problem before and I think Valve should probably be informed.
Alternatively we could all swap to Dogecoin.

It could have something to do with taxes perhaps?

Silverfish wrote:It could have something to do with taxes perhaps?

The UK called Americans fat and lazy

Gabe Newell is American therefore they called Gabe Newell fat and lazy.

They now feel his wrath.

I know this reply's really late anyway, but in case anyone's somehow still wondering, it's probably because of taxes.

The UK's full of assholes that don't understand the importance of globalisation and think we have to be "independent", so they beg for the rest of the world to be put down. Unfortunately one of the ways in which the government agrees to work on that is by creating extortionately high import taxes.

So yeah, it's taxes.

It'll be even more expensive soon unless Wolfire lower the price themselves, as VAT's going to be applied to digital products.(VAT actually makes sense, but still, added to the import taxes, prices will be really high here in the UK)

Import taxes on a digital download...
On steampowered.com... COM...

Yeah, I'm not buying it (see what I did there?) until I get some official source validating that claim.

EPR89 wrote:Import taxes on a digital download...
On steampowered.com... COM...

.com = commercial, if any top level domain should have to pay import/export taxes then .com would be that.
Edit:
Actually it looks like these days .biz would be even more logical, since .com has become a more generic TLD.

Furthermore, money starts from inside a country, and moves out of a country, and there's no product with re-sale value left inside the country, just a service... which continues to operate from abroad, and to draw money from the country. Obviously it's in the interests of the country to tax this transaction in some way. I don't know if it's called import, or value-added or transaction or pixel tax or whatever, but it most likely exists.

The games are still more expensive in Europe (or at least part of it, there at least used to be 2 (and before 2009 3) tiers) and feel free to complain about that, but taxing services makes more sense than many other sorts of taxes.

And why doesn't Humble Bundle need to pay taxes then? The price there is a straight conversion.
And why does the price not differ from country to country? Europe is not a single unit that has the same laws and regulations all over. The Euro prices are the same everywhere and the UK prices are for some reason very similar to those.

I repeat my previous statement: until I see a source that shows undoubtedly that the price difference comes from taxes I will assume that Steam's price policy is simply screwed up. I find it much more likely that they just adjust the prices in Europe because they expect people here to be more willng to pay more for games.

EPR89 wrote:And why doesn't Humble Bundle need to pay taxes then?

http://techcrunch.com/2014/02/19/humble ... ble-store/

The outline two scenarios: Humble Bundle sets the price, which is equal across all regions, OR the publisher sets the price, which may result in skewed prices.

Also:
" If Humble Bundle handles the conversion, it will sell the game at the same price in USD, EUR or GBP, without adding any VAT."
I have no idea how that works then, I would've thought some sort of taxation would be enforced.

If you think that's annoying, check the Russian and Brazillian stores, especially during sales. 95% off on some of those things.

MidianGTX wrote:If you think that's annoying, check the Russian and Brazillian stores, especially during sales. 95% off on some of those things.

So you're saying that sales are a bad thing? Huh?

I've never heard of this problem before and I think Valve should probably be informed.