HoMM5 is just HoMM3 with 3D graphics (even many building prices are the very same) + some ideas from HoMM4 (caravans, etc.)

I was tempted by that offer when I saw it this morning I've never really played any HOMM games but was tempted by DM when it came out.
I might just go for DM after what I've read about HOMM. Can't really lose at £2.99

Oh you, funny foreigners and your comma-decimals.
Thanks for figuring that out, I was really scratching my head there.

Yeah well, sometimes I slip into my local standard, although I try to follow the American one when posting in English. Here's a quick comparison of the number one hundred thousand with two decimals:
Danish (and possibly other countries): 100.000,00
American: 100,000.00
But it should be pretty easy to figure out. If there are only two digits after the last bit of punctuation, they're decimals.

It' might be £2.99 but I'm still trying the demo first. =p I got Zeno Clash this weekend along with Empire last weekend so I'm going to need to love that game to shell out more.

yeah. steam sucks.
oh wait.. why are you telling us this? Wouldn't the steam forum be a better place?
er, anyway... i really wish Dark messiah was available in my region, i'd have bought it ages ages ago... same goes for bioshock. sigh.

You're telling me.
I have, on countless occasions, tried to register products I had bought years ago, that later became available on Steam, so that I could get rid of the CD's piling up in my closet... and it never works.
And yes, all the CD-keys are official, all purchased from a store. All legal.
And they don't work on Steam.
It's maddening.
Also, their whole "updating" thing.
When they update stuff, they totally screw up everything.
When Bully: Scholarship Edition came out for download, I jumped at it. I played it for a few days, then -- they updated it.
And BAM!
Microsoft C++ update, eliminated video sequences, screwed up the sound, and the game kept crashing.
It took them 3 weeks to fix it.
3 weeks.
Every time something like this happens, and you try to get tech support -- all they do is relay you back to their main page of "popular tech solutions" that never work.
I love Steam, but I hate Steam. It's great, because it's easy access, like GOG, to games and information and such, but there's just too much s#%! in the middle with them. Oh, yeah, and some of their games are wayyyyy overpriced.
I mean, who in the hell, in their right mind, would purchase Kane And Lynch: Dead Men for $50.00? The game is literally like 3 mins. long.
Anyways, there you go.

The fact that you have to pay $20 and I'd have to pay €20 is already terrible business logic. But already got the game from their ubisoft deal which contained beyond good & evil.
Well, I did buy the Zeno Clash for €8 this weekend, couldn't resist.

The pricing policy is what killed Steam for me. I'll buy the odd Indie game, like Plants vs. Zombies, Alien Shooter and similar stuff.
Buying new games over Steam is a fucking ripoff. Anno 1404 costs €49.99 on Steam. I can get it for €39.99, effectively, in my local store. If i buy from the cheapest internet store the price drops to about €34.99. And then I get the physical copy.
In fact, if I throw in another 10€ (making the total price €59.99) I can get the collectors edition of the game, physical copy.
Same goes for Empire: Total War, Velvet Assassin, you name it. The people over at Steam are clearly either greedy, idiots, or both, and I don't like giving my money to greedy idiots.

If I counted the number of times someone wrote about how much they hate Steam on this board, the posts would probably be more than the rest of the board combined.
Though I love Steam, I can see why people outside of North America would hate it, as the prices seem more than a little unfair. Is there any way to trick Steam into thinking you're an American?

Allegedly there is a way to do without the need for proxies or having someone in NA gift the game. However, I've not tried it and have no intrest in doing so as I already have a friend in the US who helps with gifting.
Anyhow, apparently all you need to do is use the website and not the client; force it to display the US store; then when you make your purchase, you simply enter your details as normal but using a US based zipcode as opposed to your actual one.
Apparently the location check they use for credit cards is done on the zipcode only and not the actual billing address. But as I say, I've not tried and knowing Valve if they thought you had done it, they'd probably just disable your account.
There probably is some truth in the zipcode trick however, as it works well enough for me when I purchased Burnout DLC -- the darn game thinks I have a UK based account so won't sell to me if I use my normal Japanese address. When I use my Japanese billing address with a UK postcode though, it allows me to purchase the DLC.
So if you feel up to trying it out for Steam, do so at your own risk.

Anno on steam is really annoying anyway since it has addtional copy protection limitting the number of activations. But I doubt that's Valve fault.
For latest releases I imagine they are limitted or limit themselves not to undercut retail. The erratic international pricing does make me wonder if their process determining and posting prices is all there as well as the weird pack pricing that started this discussion.
I personally only use Steam for really good deals on older stuff, occasional indie releases, and Valve products. And I never do newer games, because of potential update issues.

Steam itself you can easily trick through a proxy, for example to view game pages that are locked in EU (this was the case with the entire Ubisoft catalogue on Steam for a long time).
However the payment process cannot be tricked in this way as it involves banking systems that aren't so easily fooled.
I've heard of schemes that involve setting up a valid postal address in the US, you can for example register yourself to various postboxes and some people use these to obtain a valid US credit card. However I'm sure Steam would instant disable your account if they found out you were doing this to purchase in dollars instead of euros.

So why doesn't someone set up a system where they gift a game to a person of another country, and the buyer gets reimbursed? I'm sure it wouldn't bother us American GOGers to help you guys with this, and then you wouldn't have to worry about Steam foreign prices being so high!