Publisher: pls explain 80USD Australia price on Steam

[nerd]

Here in Canada the Value Added Tax is the GST. It is (usually)added to the marked retail price.
If 2K and Steam want to be honest and avoid all this flack, they could simply set a price in US$ or Euros (not one for each) and say Plus all applicable taxes and exchange rates Simple!
Somehow I doubt this will happen.

 

[Steven Aus]

I think you need to understand the background here.

The Australian dollar being week in the period around the year 2000 meant that prices went to the ~$100 Australian for games, which at the time was a fair reflection of the exchange rate. Now the Australian dollar is at near parity with the US dollar, publishers have been very reluctant to pass on the savings, and games still retail for the same as they did when the dollar was weak.

Note this isn't just a problem for games, us Aussies get ripped off on DVDs, music CDs, books, everything. When the exchange rate goes down the prices go up, when it goes up they don't come back down.

Naturally the publishers want to maintain this situation, and so many of them are now implementing regional pricing on digital delivery services such as steam. The steam price is set to compete with the local price.

Obviously people willing to pay the shipping and handling to buy from overseas stores can get it cheaper. In the digital world, people willing to use a proxy and buy from the US can get that price too. So there are ways around the regional pricing system.The publishers know their hold is weak, but they're going to cling to the extra profits as long as they can.

Now I don't think steam is completely blameless in this, the feature of regional based pricing doesn't write itself. If they wanted to push hard enough on it they could probably eliminate it (although I suspect they weren't in a strong enough position to do so when they first signed these guys up, if they'd said no they probably wouldn't have 2K on steam at all).

So I'm not saying steam is perfect, but to blame them for the pricing instead of the publisher is dead wrong. Especially given both Valve's public statements and their own practices (all Valve's games share the same price on the AU and US steam stores) suggest they think regional pricing is archaic.

So, do we want to do something about it?

Best regards,
Steven.

 

[Shakes]

So, do we want to do something about it?

Best regards,
Steven.

My personal solution: I've pre-ordered Elemental: War of Magic instead of Civ 5.

 

[12agnar0k]

@nerd, only in America maybe other weird places, is tax not included in the original pricing, i.e you go to a shop and buy something for $1 and they charge you extra, its like the madatory service charge in dutch restaurants o.0, all of which you won't know about until you get to the till. In England we have nice Tax. Included prices, so we only have the one price. I wouldn't appreciate it if Steam changed our easy way of knowing what you are paying for something so that other countries with weird tax laws know they aren't being ripped off.

 

[joasoze]

My personal solution: I've pre-ordered Elemental: War of Magic instead of Civ 5.

Me too

 

[Commander Bello]

I think you need to understand the background here.

I don't get your point.
Austalian prices may have evolved in which way ever, but the fact that Steam seems to be more expensive than competitors is not based on the history of price determination and setting, nor is it based on some obscure taxes.

(The paragraph below does not refer to you)
Claiming the higher Steam prices to be in the responsibility of the publisher (in this case: 2K) is another thing which I don't get.
Until there is any proof given for this claim, I take it as being a wild guess from people who want to "defend" Steam at all costs.

 

[Senethro]

Until there is any proof given for this claim, I take it as being a wild guess from people who want to "defend" Steam at all costs.

Can someone link that post by the Valve employee saying this, I've lost it. Bello will have forgotten it again by next week but we should at least act in good faith.

 

[The_Coyote]

They key question still is if the situation is the way like decribed here or not. So that online distribution is only a "a revenue sharing model."

But if this is the case there can´t be any competition between the online distributor for the benefit of the customer - there can be only a competition for the benefit of the publisher (fixed final price - only the share can be discussed). Because of this incorporated inability of competition in benefit of the customer it seems strange for me that this is the real situation. But reading the rest of the paragraph this publisher set fixed and obligatory prices scenario seems not to be the complete truth, because in the blog posts it´s also claimed that


"Although publishers do not directly set the price as previously believed, they can still require enough percentage to help influence the price."

This of course could be read as - the publisher defines a price. Using this set price as base the shares are calculated. But after this shares a agreed the online distributor has control over their own share - as long as the publisher got his "share" defined in the contract. And of course if the publishers share is high enough there is an effective minimum sales price on online distribution platforms (publisher share + platformn costs) to ensure that online distributors can´t be really cheaper than other retailers. But at least competitions is possible. (Edit: but of course this is only one possible interpretation)

Another blog post seems to further support your claim. Especially the post made by "Yoshiro" (unfortunally the link seems to be broken) can be read that the publisher has control (if cut is read as share of the set price) - but depending on the usage of cut (if cut is a fixed amount of money defined as share of a recommend set price), it could be also the other way.

And of course - as long it´s not part of the distribution deal or one distributor wants to gain market share at all costs (means accepts losings pro sold copy) - the sales to highly reduced priced are something that we have the publisher to thank for - and not the online distributor (because the publisher sets the price or defines a "minimum price")

 

[PieceOfMind]

For the record, ebgames Australia seems to be happy to take pre-orders for civ5 for 99.95AU and also has a "collector's edition". I asked the salesman if he meant a steam or deluxe edition and he insisted it was listed as a collector's edition. There wasn't yet a price for it though.

I don't know whether the price for preorders with ebgames can change or whether the info about a collector's edition is accurate. There certainly weren't any more details about it.

Take the information how you will. At the very lest, it should come as no surprise eb's price is not competitive at all.

 

[Tylerryan79]

Ebgames.com. (U.S.) doesn't show a Civ V Collectors Edition on the website. You can preorder the regular version for $49.99 and it will ship on 9/21/10.

 

[azzaman333]

I don't get your point.
Austalian prices may have evolved in which way ever, but the fact that Steam seems to be more expensive than competitors is not based on the history of price determination and setting, nor is it based on some obscure taxes.

(The paragraph below does not refer to you)
Claiming the higher Steam prices to be in the responsibility of the publisher (in this case: 2K) is another thing which I don't get.
Until there is any proof given for this claim, I take it as being a wild guess from people who want to "defend" Steam at all costs.

The price on Steam is level with the price used at most retail outlets. One obscure site which is cheaper does not prove that Valve jacks up the prices.

 

[nerd]

@nerd, only in America maybe other weird places, is tax not included in the original pricing, i.e you go to a shop and buy something for $1 and they charge you extra, its like the madatory service charge in dutch restaurants o.0, all of which you won't know about until you get to the till. In England we have nice Tax. Included prices, so we only have the one price. I wouldn't appreciate it if Steam changed our easy way of knowing what you are paying for something so that other countries with weird tax laws know they aren't being ripped off.

OK, I'll accept that and work from it....
Set the single fixed price pre tax, and then show how the tax-in price is determined from that, fair and transparent.
Honest pricing just is not that difficult to show.

 

[Shakes]

I don't get your point.
Austalian prices may have evolved in which way ever, but the fact that Steam seems to be more expensive than competitors is not based on the history of price determination and setting, nor is it based on some obscure taxes.

Steam's competitors in Australia are EB Games, GAME and JB Hifi (ie the local games stores in Australia). They will be selling the game at approximately the same price as what steam is, ~90 dollars Australian. The stores you cite as evidence are not Australian stores.

FWIW as an Australian of course I'm pissed off by this, but our laws prevent actual Australian stores from bulk importing overseas copies at a cheaper price. Until the physical stores can do that, the publishers are going to milk us on steam like they do in the stores.

(The paragraph below does not refer to you)
Claiming the higher Steam prices to be in the responsibility of the publisher (in this case: 2K) is another thing which I don't get.
Until there is any proof given for this claim, I take it as being a wild guess from people who want to "defend" Steam at all costs.

A quote from a Valve employee (taken from the wikipedia steam page):

"Sometimes publishers are split into mostly independent North America/European/Asian divisions and one division doesn't have the rights to distribute in all areas. In order to distribute in all areas we have to negotiate deals with all the different divisions and they all have different ideas of how pricing should work and how important digital distribution is for their games. We are always trying to help them understand the importance of markets around the world as well as help them understand the importance of fair and equal pricing for all regions, but it's an ongoing struggle."

Now obviously Valve could be lying, but I find the statement credible.

 

[PieceOfMind]

Don't forget DickSmith. I was surprised when I found their prices can be pretty competitive, sometimes beating the other three you mentioned.

 

[azzaman333]

Don't forget DickSmith. I was surprised when I found their prices can be pretty competitive, sometimes beating the other three you mentioned.

I've never seen DickSmith be the cheapest for any game, and on top of that they have a pretty poor selection.

 

[PieceOfMind]

I've never seen DickSmith be the cheapest for any game, and on top of that they have a pretty poor selection.

It might have been due to a time-of-year sale they had going but I'm pretty sure there were several examples of games that were lower in price than the eb, which conveniently at the time was only a couple of shops down the road. For example, DS had Bioshock 2 for 20AU which was less than what eb was asking.
I'm not sure how these prices compare but they had starcraft 2 for 30AU, OFDR for 20, L4D2 for 50 and DeadSpace for 20. They're the only ones I noted as they seemed at first glance to be pretty competitive prices.

As for the selection, of course their selection will be poor. They still will always stock the most popular games though, and then a few surprises.

P.S. As an aside (and just to provide complete info for anyone who's actually interested), DickSmith beat Steam for price on Bioshock2, DeadSpace but not for l4d2 or OFDR. SC2 doesn't appear to be available on steam. OFDR seems to be suffering from poor sales judging by how quickly it has reached worryingly low prices. I know it was not received well but I honestly didn't expect it to do this bad.

 

[onedreamer]

The VAT is a tax that resellers have to pay to the State for selling goods, which in turn they ask to pay to the buyer.
I strongly doubt Steam will pay any tax to European states for each digitally distributed copy in Europe, so asking european customers to pay that tax is ludicrous, not to mention that it might be illegal / a scam. I'm not a lawyer, so it remans ludicrous as far as I am concerned and I will certainly not refrain from using whatever workaround is necessary not to be fooled around like this by Steam.

 

[arstal]

My personal solution: I've pre-ordered Elemental: War of Magic instead of Civ 5.

What was the price for you guys in Aussie dollars? Curious. BTW the next beta should open up later today (around 12-15 hours from now)
I think I found an Australian Proxy, and it's looking like they're charging you guys $50 Aussie for it , which is I think a slightly better deal then what we Americans get.
(unsure what the exact exchange rate is)

BTW the statement about different areas is credible. Stardock itself- Paradox was their distribuor for GCII in Europe. I've always wondered why Stardock hasn't tried to buy Paradox myself, just to get the Gamersgate library, which would help Impulse out tremendously.

 

[PieceOfMind]

arstal, the easiest way to check the exchange rate is to just type into google:

50aud in usd

Lately, 1AUD = ~ 0.80USD seems a good enough approximation most of the time.

What is the Australian proxy you speak of?

 

[onedreamer]

BTW the statement about different areas is credible. Stardock itself- Paradox was their distribuor for GCII in Europe. I've always wondered why Stardock hasn't tried to buy Paradox myself, just to get the Gamersgate library, which would help Impulse out tremendously.

No, Gamersgate is European, Valve isn't.