What about the price? You do know that's the main point against Steam at the moment...?

until they
1. explain why they did what they did
2. revert back to old system
3 or change prices to £ + 1-3€
4 give us a fucking excuse.
they deserve all the hate they get.
Gabe stole our christhmas!

And you answered: "Set it at 29.99. Dollars, euros, yens, sea-shells? Doesn't matter if it will be 29.99."?
Because that's what we have on Steam right now.

Ridiculous. I never really like Gabe in the first place, thinking of him as a fat, rich, sonofabitch whose main goal in like is to exploit European gamers, and I was right. The dollar has gone down in value, making the US a better place to buy stuff. The Euro has stayed more or less the same value since a few months ago, so it's still a lot of cash here. Valve should know better and go back to Economics 101, because they'll tell you that EVERY CURRENCY HAS A DIFFERENT FUCKING VALUE. What's next? USD$1 = 1 Japanese Yen?

Mass Effect is pretty weird in this respect. 30$ in the US, 45€ (~60 USD) in Europe. Price including 100% VAT, or what?

rofl a 100% price increase, yes that's what we get when Ea and Valve join hands what a bunch of $#"%&!

I'm in your Steam, taking your Euros...

Yep.

http://steamunpowered.eu/comparison.html
Especially funny with Mass Effect and Red Alert 3.
Only with the Dawn of War Everything it goes the other way round.. but thats just a 50% increase for them, which is the usual thing for European prices.
Oh and btw: Thread resurrrect ftw.

I agree, Europe is getting raped here. But doesn't the same thing happen in retail stores? When I go back home in Spain, I see that the new releases are a fuckton, like 50 euros, especially for consoles, although on pc prices go down much much faster, and I usually get a year or two old games for like 10 euros when they are still going for $40 here in the states.

being on this website makes me want to buy more games, i have to stop the urge.

Depends on where you are, I guess. Some publishers are starting to figure out that in certain regions, it makes more sense to price things lower than in the US of A. CDProjekt are fairly awesome in this respect - I'd buy more of their games if they weren't all localized and they didn't have that criminally ugly HUGE yellow "heythisisacdprojektpublishedgameyesweknowweareawesome" stickers on them. The Witcher, for instance, retailed for the equivalent of 40$. When the enhanced edition got released, that cost the same. Compare that to the WoW: WotLK Collector's Edition going for a measly 110$ (the normal one's 50$).
There are some other examples, like Ubisoft's Far Cry 2 starting at 35$, or the Soviet Overlord 1C Publishing's King's Bounty: The Legend going for 25$.
Still, there definitely are a couple games in the 50€ (i.e. fuckton) region as well. An exhaustive list, for those who care:
Call of Duty 4 and 5, Red Alert 3, FIFA 2009, Flight Simulator X Gold, GTA4, James Bond: Quantum of Solace, Left 4 Dead, LotR: Conquest, Mirror's Edge, NFS: Undercover, NHL 2009, Spore, Warhammer: Online.
Sorting by prices also made me realize that none of the titles published by CDProjekt go higher than 40$. Poland is not far from here, so I'd wager they better know their audience than other publishers.

Yes, retail stores often have similar prices, but they have to import the game, have enough physical space to store them etc.. a price difference (though no 100% etc.) is more understandable there then with Steam or similar services.
Also Steam has usually even higher prices then retail stores, though they most likely pay less (no physical stuff whatssoever, like boxes, printed manual etc.), they are way bigger then your usual store, unless you talk about big ones like WalMart, so they can talk on the same level with publishers, and they have a wider audience, so they will make more money out of a lower price then a small store.
Also funny their definition of worldwide etc. Perhaps the same geographical shortcoming like with €..when you have to pay with it even though your country didn't adopt it (yet). Luckily, at least this is a non issue for me.

The only things I've ever bought off steam were exclusive indy titles (Audiosurf for example, worth the asking price easily) or cheap casual games with one exception, beyond good and evil which was 5 euros I think so it was a cheap non indy game :P.
I do have team fortress 2 but I bought that retail quite cheap.
All I'll ever use it for is most likely those sorta games because I don't feel comfortable paying for a 'full' game that I'll potentially lose if the service goes kaplooey.
One alternative to steam is impulse, which is run by Stardock a developer/publisher with strong anti DRM views. All the prices on there are in dollars I think. Though obviously it doesn't have quite as many top releases.