Why is Steam so expensive

[PimpinPenguin]

Lately i've been noticing how Steam seems to be getting alot more expensive than retail.For example FEAR2 has just become available for pre-purchase at ?35.99, ?10 more expensive than retail versions at ?24.99 and if that's not bad enough the retail limited versions that include FEAR are ?29.99 still cheaper than Steam.Hell even the bloody PS3 version is cheaper than Steams.
I can't understand why buying of Steam is more expensive seeing as the retail version have to be registered on Steam thus giving all the benefits of Steam. And it's not just 3rd party games i've noticed become more expensive on Steam, Valves own Left4Dead was more expensive on Steam even with the 10% discount than Steam.

Wasn't Digital Distribution meant to be cheaper, cutting out the middle man not having to manual produce copies and ship em round the world. I know that Steam become the dominate player but this is becoming ridicules. I'm really surprised Valve haven't fixed the pricing on Steam for people outside the US, it almost feels like they are dragging their feet on purpose trying to rip us off for as long as possible.

 

[Eejit]

Valve may not have full control over pricing. Publishers probably have a say.

 

[PimpinPenguin]

Valve may not have full control over pricing. Publishers probably have a say.

But Valve should have full control over their own games right? It was the reason i made the mistake of buying Ledt4Dead over steam as i thought seeing as i was a Valve game it would be cheaper on Steam.

 

[Eejit]

It was cheaper than retail over Steam when I bought the pre-order. Amazon and Play were cheapest, but they always try to out-do each other during the run up to Christmas.

 

[Sheepo]

I've always found them far cheaper, but I haven't bought anything in a while/only buy select things.

 

[Minister]

I normally only buy games that are deals. 75% off weekend deals are blooming brilliant

They've always seemed pretty similar, price wise, to retail.

 

[CyberPitz]

I normally only buy games that are deals. 75% off weekend deals are blooming brilliant

They've always seemed pretty similar, price wise, to retail.

Ditto, unless something comes out like L4D, HL2, etc.

 

[PimpinPenguin]

i suppose if you're the the US your fine price wise. It's just us outside that get ripped off

 

[Leto]

last time I checked, you didn't have to pay tax for Steam games.


we have 12% tax on everything here T-T

 

[DEATHMASTER]

move from whereever you are

 

[PimpinPenguin]

last time I checked, you didn't have to pay tax for Steam games.


we have 12% tax on everything here T-T

We've always had to pay VAT currently at 15% yet Steam is still using the 17.5% rate. I just wished Steam would be more fair to us. If Steam doesn't sort it out they are going to lose alot of sales outside the US and don't forget the majority of PC gamers are in Europe.

 

[DEATHMASTER]

Well so far they're quite booming. But more profit is always their outlook

 

[PimpinPenguin]

Well so far they're quite booming. But more profit is always their outlook

I understand that Valve would want more profit who doesn't. But constantly ripping off customers outside the US is not fair, why is it always us? What with the credit crunch selling your games ?10 more with no advantages is a joke.Valve will start to lose money if they keep this up, more and more people in Europe are ditching Steam and go back to retail.

 

[Reflex]

I got Far Cry 2 from game for the Xbox for 20 gbp and on Steam it's 34.99 gbp.
Technically it should cost more on the Consoles than on the computer.

 

[Laivasse]

Wholeheartedly agree. If it's out of Valve's control - which I doubt, since the euro price of Left4Dead is as stupidly expensive as many 3rd party games - then they need to get control.

It is not so much the fact that Steam prices surpass those of retail that annoys me. Rather, it's the idea of region-based price hiking. At first I thought this was due to ignorant publishers jumping on the digital distribution bandwagon while still fearing it, desperate to preserve imaginary profits by forcing the market, but that's proving a hard notion to cling to when Valve continue to maintain a $1=1 euro price scheme on their own games.

Currently the only remaining incentive for me to buy via Steam is convenience, but convenience is not worth the insulting thought that I should have to pay 30-40%+ extra just because I happen to be a non-American on the internet, rather than an American. If America was a 3rd world country full of starving kids with flies in their noses, and all of Europe was some thriving fatcat paradise, then I might understand the difference, but that's not quite the reality.

Steam might be going from strength to strength, but this may stay true only for America. Consumers might be slow to catch on, but - and this is particularly true of online shoppers - you can't sustain a business that relies on people to be retards when it comes to minding the pennies.

 

[Warped]

I normally only buy games that are deals. 75% off weekend deals are blooming brilliant

They've always seemed pretty similar, price wise, to retail.

amen to that, i bought $120 worth of games when they had the Holiday sale

 

[Lobster]

The issue is with how the RRP is handled, retailers often undercut the regions reccomended price because of competition and bulk pricing, Steams prices come direct from the publishers regional department, meaning they arnt effected by such discounts.

An example being that if Amazon decides FarCry 2 isnt gonna shift as well as they had hoped, they will price it below RRP to get rid of their stock, Steam doesnt have this issue as the stock doesnt really exist. As for the region specific pricing, RRP values have always been lower in the US compared to Europe and elsewhere long before steam came about, alot of publishers wouldnt sell items over steam in europe because the exchange rate fell under the return they would usually get.

If you can get it cheaper elsewhere then do so, but dont expect steam to view individual discounted retail prices as competition.

 

[Eejit]

But Valve should have full control over their own games right?

Unless there's some shitty stuff in their agreement with EA for publishing about not undercutting or something.

 

[Laivasse]

The issue is with how the RRP is handled, retailers often undercut the regions reccomended price because of competition and bulk pricing, Steams prices come direct from the publishers regional department, meaning they arnt effected by such discounts.

An example being that if Amazon decides FarCry 2 isnt gonna shift as well as they had hoped, they will price it below RRP to get rid of their stock, Steam doesnt have this issue as the stock doesnt really exist. As for the region specific pricing, RRP values have always been lower in the US compared to Europe and elsewhere long before steam came about, alot of publishers wouldnt sell items over steam in europe because the exchange rate fell under the return they would usually get.

If you can get it cheaper elsewhere then do so, but dont expect steam to view individual discounted retail prices as competition.

You're describing how it works, but not why it should work this way. Steam was touted as a revolutionary new product delivery system, but if it is crippled by adherence to irrelevant retail conventions then what's the point of it? Steam has enough problems encouraging people to overcome their habit of wanting a 'physical product' without adding in other factors that actively make it uncompetitive.

From the standpoint of the consumer, there is no logical reason why a person logging onto the net to purchase a digital product from one country should have to pay more than a person logging on from somewhere else. Of course, it makes plenty of sense from the business standpoint; they want to make more money! And they are pretending to themselves that they are setting a price which fits the market in that user's home country. That is an ill-judged mentality because:
1) Steam is selling a fundamentally different product via a fundamentally different distribution method (potentially to a different demographic, too), so the businesses that Valve/publishers want to be Steam's competitors - clueless small time high street retailers with dusty boxes, who never update their prices - are not actually its real competitors, and
2) that 'home market' is a fiction anyway; I don't know what fantasy land they're living in, where Europeans are all bumbling around in a place where there's no option other than to pay the 45 euro RRP, but where I am it's hard to find any retailer that charges as much as Steam, with the vast majority of my options charging much less.

You say 'individual discounted retail' prices as if they were isolated exceptions, but they are the rule. If Valve don't care about that, if they're not particularly serious about keeping Steam relevant on a global level, then that's fine. I'm sure it'll continue to be a great American success. I just can't think what person in a European country would continue to pay these prices - prices based on slightly insulting principles, ie. 'you don't deserve to pay the cheaper price because you're not logging on from the right place' - in these challenging times.

Unless there's some shitty stuff in their agreement with EA for publishing about not undercutting or something.

That's certainly possible, but if EA are wanting to dictate Valve's own pricing strategy and Valve are acceding to this, then I have to ask what the hell they think they're doing.

Then again, I don't run a huge and successful business.

Then again, I know what kind of huge successful businesses I tend to buy from.

 

[Asus]

Most titles on steam are games Valve doesn't make or control the price of. With that out of the way...

There are probably 2 types of people who buy online. Those who do for convenience and those who do for lower prices. I'm sure tons do for both but one of those reason is their main reason.

Now thinking from Valve's point of view, don't you think it would be in their best interest to look at how much most of their customers are willing to pay rather than how much it takes for them to make the game available. Obviously it takes less money to get it out online. But what if enough of the steam sales were done by people who did it for the convenience rather than looking for a sale. Then the edge would go to pricing games at MSRP on Steam. And they would keep enough sales through steam to continue the pricing as is. And most of those lost sales may just be converted to retail sales. Lot of times retail sales discount different games each week.

Sometimes Best Buy will take $10 off a new game to jump start sales. Just pre-dowload the game the night before from steam. Then grab the game from the store and start playing when you bring that box home.

 

[PimpinPenguin]

Ah i guess Steam finally realised it can't vastly overcharge for a game and get away with it. FEAR 2 has just had it's price reduced to ?24.99 to match retail. They realised when no one from outside the US was buying they had to reduces the price.

 

[Laivasse]

Ah i guess Steam finally realised it can't vastly overcharge for a game and get away with it. FEAR 2 has just had it's price reduced to ?24.99 to match retail. They realised when no one from outside the US was buying they had to reduces the price.

LOL the price in euros is 50, not including tax...

Conversion rate is 1 pound = 1.07 euros atm... Seriously, I mean that's a price you laugh at, not pay.

 

[Musk]

amen to that, i bought $120 worth of games when they had the Holiday sale

How many games is that? $120 here is two, maybe three games depending on the special.

 

[Lobster]

Im not saying its right, I just dont see it changing just because people whine about it, valve have mentioned a few times that the region prices are set by the local publishers department, EA america put their titles on steam, then EA europe put them on steam at different prices, but EA uk havnt put them up at all yet for reasons I dont fully understand.

Its worth noting, the localized prices have not been up to long, once they have had time to evaluate the situation compared to retail, you may well see a price adjustment.

 

[jondy]

AFAIK, Valve have little to no control over the prices in their store, including their own games, for two reasons - publishers set their own prices for games, and Gamestop et. al simply won't stock titles that are available online for less.

 

[Paulaner]

OK, I'm not an expert about deals and marketing, but why can retail stores cut, chop, shrink prices and Valve can't do it? As for me, all my christmas money went on retail boxes (L4D was far cheaper than Steam). We are the customers, we choose not to be raped.

 

[Kula Meenur]

Steam. Exploiting peoples lazyness since ever.

 

[PimpinPenguin]

AFAIK, Valve have little to no control over the prices in their store, including their own games, for two reasons - publishers set their own prices for games, and Gamestop et. al simply won't stock titles that are available online for less.

Steam should be Valves priority not retail. Steam was supposed to be their big money maker the revolutionary way to get games and to try can get people to buy from it instead of retail. So having the retailers dictating to you how much you have to sell your games kinda ruins one of the main goals of Steam. But the issue isn't really retail being slightly cheaper it's retailers being significantly cheaper and alot of games on Steam are at next gen console prices here. The Euro price of Fear 2 is still 49.99€ that's ?46.39 or $66.49 double the price. How can Steam possibly justify selling the same game at twice the price. I bet you if this was the other way round and it was the US customers that were affected this would have already been fixed.

 

[Eejit]

I imagine that when it comes to getting publishers to initially sign on to putting their titles on Steam Valve won't push them too hard about pricing and stuff. It's still a developing platform. Once the contracts start coming up for renewal we might see some real improvements.

That said the localised pricing should be fixed, but like Valve said,

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.

 

[Lobster]

OK, I'm not an expert about deals and marketing, but why can retail stores cut, chop, shrink prices and Valve can't do it?

When a publisher sells a batch of games to a retailer the deal is done and dusted, the retailer than has free range to competitively price the individual boxes as they wish to get them sold, with steam its a bit different, there is no pre-existing payoff to the publisher for how many games are sold, the money goes from the customer, via steam to the publisher directly. Steam is essentialy a service the publisher uses to directly sell to customers, where as with retail, they are selling to the retailer in bulk.

 

[Paulaner]

Steam is essentialy a service the publisher uses to directly sell to customers, where as with retail, they are selling to the retailer in bulk.

Thank you for the explanation.