Steam E.U will not let me purchase because I am in UK (a full E.U member state), I want to buy Metro 2033 on Steam Eu for 6 Euros as opposed to almost 10 pounds in the UK. Every time I go to pay for it gives me an error message I now believe this intentional because i sent a support ticket hours ago and got no reply. After some internet searching I found similar posts http://igxpro.net/2011/08/21/steam-...wing-europeans-to-buy-from-the-uk-shop/188950. It looks like steam are violating EU consumer laws!
I didn't think you could purchase from Steam E.U. Hasn't the pricing for games always been different for Britain and the rest of Europe and because of the currency difference I don't think you can do anything buying from Steam E.U. Like the above poster said, you missed out on the great offer.
Count yourself lucky that you're expected to buy your games on Steam in pounds sterling. Those of us who get stuck in the western Euro region on Steam get absolutely ****ing shafted on game prices if you look at the actual conversion rates most of the time. Whether it violates EU consumer laws or not I've never been too sure, but all I know is that paying for games in british pounds generally works out cheaper in the majority of cases than paying the Euro prices. Steam's pricing model for Europe appears to be thus: UK: Take the game's price in USD and convert to GBP at the exchange rate, then round it up to the nearest 5 or 10. Western Europe: Take the game's price in USD and change the $ to a € regardless of exchange rates. Sometimes add an extra 5. Eastern Europe: Take the Western Euro price and discount it by about 15% to counteract the supposed higher rates of piracy in those countries. Is it legal? Hopefully not, so that something could be done about it. Is it fair? Not a ****ing chance. Does it make sense financially for them? Maybe, but if they were to price new games more reasonably on Steam some of us might actually buy there instead of buying retail or just waiting for the sales. When Steam first started selling games it used to be the best choice by far in terms of pricing because we bought our games in USD regardless of where we lived. Then they brought in local currencies and anyone paying in Euro suddenly got shat on. When games in a retail box on a physical disc from Gamestop are cheaper than digitally-distributed games from Steam, you know something is seriously wrong with the system.
Its probably because you missed the deal. It was 6 Euros earlier in the week, now it'll be more. It was also £4 here - which is even cheaper than the European price.
In fairness it's not the EU's fault that equalisation often makes things more expensive - they're upholding the principles of a single economic entity. I'm surprised no-one's thought about this before really, all it means is we'll end up with European prices though.
Possibly, unless we get lucky and Valve take into account the fact that reducing the Euro prices to match UK prices would result in more release-day sales instead of people like me thinking "Why would I bother with a download-only purchase at €50 instead of a shiny physical disc for €10-15 less from a brick&mortar shop?". GOG.com sells all of its games in USD despite being a Europe-based company. Hell, they even made a point of compensating European buyers of Witcher 2 with a free GOG game to make up for the exchange rate issue with a fixed-price game.
In order to by when you are somewhere else you have to remove your card information an start over. You get the error because the information you put in has your current country in it, and if this doesn't correspond with where your computer is registered to be you will receive an error message. So simply remove your card information from steam and enter it again, with your current country.
The point is that Steam are contravening the law, I as an EU citzen should be able to buy from the EU Steam and not be "ring fenced" into buying in the UK steam. Companys have been fined millions over this type of issue.
Use a debit card then. Visa/Mastercard have no problem in the EU. I do it for business trips all the time. No hassle with conversion then.
Steam EU will not me pay by credit, debit or Paypal. They also have not responded to my help ticket that I sent yesterday afternoon. The reason for the non reply I asume is because they know that they are contravening the law.
But 99% of the time, the UK prices trump the Euro prices that we have to deal with. Metro will be on sale again in short order. Hell, it will probably be next week anyway
I've had this issue. I've been stationed overseas and wanted to buy a game with my US credit card from Europe. When I log into steampowered.com, it obviously shows me the EU store and pricing. I talked to Steam Support and they said go to the app website (Eg. http://store.steampowered.com/app/37200/ for Chessmaster). They told me to append this to the website "?cc=US" without the quotes and it will move me over to the US store. You can play around with the codes, but I'm guessing ?cc=UK will take you to the UK site.
