Hah! looks like I'm not the only one who calculates like this ;) (however beer is a bit cheaper here)
What's more I usually also value the quality like this - if the game lasts longer than six-pack the money is well spend!

That's it. Let's move to bitcoins!

Forgive me if I'm being dense here - I'm still very naive when it comes to the "ways of the world" - but what exactly is a "currency conversion charge" ? What am I actually paying for when I (am forced to) pay such a charge ? I know it must be incredibly traumatic for the people who have to convert $ into £ for me but I'm quite prepared to do the conversion myself if they ask me nicely.

If you wish to travel from UK to another country, your pounds and pennies won't be accepted there. So you have to find a money changer to convert your currency to the one you will be using. That money changer charges a fee. Depending on money changer, it may be a percentage or a flat rate. And no, no matter how nicely you ask, you cannot use pounds to pay for something in the US, even though the US dollar was (at some point) honored worldwide.

Oh no, it's the Devil's advocate ! Every corrupt idea is fine by you isn't it, JMich ? Why don't you just become a politician or a barrister and have done with it ? It doesn't surprise me that you are trying to justify this. What WORK, exactly, is involved in converting currency in an online transaction ?

Well I suppose I can just start using my converter app on my phone for now. But, I honestly believe GOG are alienating a lot of potential customers by simply not having regional equivalent prices on their site, it really is off putting when you're not sure how much a product really is.

Ah well, thanks for all your replies on this.

Thank you for the compliment. You do know who "The Devil's Advocate" actually is, right?

None. I never said that it's ok for online transactions to use foreign fees. So far though, only banks I've seen that keep using it are the UK ones, so I'd say ask your bankers why they keep using it. Hell, even greek banks don't use foreign transaction fees, and I think they haven't used them from 2000 or so...

GOG proud themselves in charging as much as possible the same price for everyone regardless of their geographical region. The only time they haven't done so is when they legally could not (and then they tired to sweeten it by adding extra content to affected customers).

Thus, at the very most, they could consider adding a local currency price based on the exchange rate for that day - but even that wouldn't be 100% accurate given how rapidly exchange rates change. What they should not do is what Desura do -- display only a local price set on an unspecified exchange rate and then charge in USD. When that happens, there's no way of knowing how much you are really paying.

Well I'll look into that. UK banks are indeed very naughty. My father was a building society manager. Building societies are defunct now but they were like banks in that you could open an account and put money into it, only they specialised in lending money to people who wanted to buy property. They never charged you for ANYTHING, even "currency conversion" as far as I'm aware (I'll have to ask my Dad to confirm that though). Instead you actually received a s,all amount of interest on your savings : they didn't have to do this but they did it all the same. Better times, more honest times, friendlier times.

Apart from the work to add the actual back-end for fetching and displaying local currencies, not much. However, most services that provide such information charge sites for access to the API/XML feeds used in displaying such information.

But it's more than just using Google. You have to know to find out what you're bank charges are. So instead of having prices up front for your viewing pleasure, you have to go to google and find out the UK price, then double check the current bank charge then add that to the googled price, then note this down somewhere so you don't forget to soon. Then you have to do this for every price every day that you might want to buy something.

Oh and those bank charges can be more onerous then if GOG just set a (slightly high) transfer rate itself. An extra £1.25 on a £4 game is quite a lot.

To be honest I think this would mostly be a convenience for their customers. Yes it would be more work for them to set up and maintain but the reward is simple and upfront pricing of their games. And to be frank, I trust GOG not to use it as a cover to set up a national pricing scheme.

"Conversation rate" ? Shit, don't give them even more ideas !

As the USD -> GBP conversion ratio is less than 1, I just read the prices as if they were GBP.

Then the difference is always in your favour!

Also his son and potential future son-in-law all in one.