Quite frankly, I'd be very careful with how you handle this. If the game was $12.50 in your current region and you keep pressing this and Valve find you were purchasing overseas with a billing address that doesn't match your current region, they could very well disable your account permanently.

They don't take too kindly to people trying to circumnavigate regional pricing/restrictions when purchasing themselves directly (i.e., not gifting/trading).

And as I say, the fact you were even able to make the purchase via the client (I gather?) is rather strange as you tend to get a generic error in such cases that prevents the purchase. When overseas Steam support will generally instruct people to purchase from the website using the ?cc=XX method (and I assume after removing some regional block on their end) but purchasing through the client is generally not possible as the region cannot be changed (without the use of proxies/VPNs).

The difference lies in how the tax is applied. EU law requires prices to include VAT for consumer products and services (i.e. this doesn't include products and services that are clearly B2B in nature). Actually, most EU countries already had this in place before the EU required it, so it was just a formality to deal with the fuckers who tried to cheat by stating their prices without VAT.

In the US, sales tax varies from state to state, so it doesn't make much sense to provide the gross price, as the gross amount changes depending on where you are.

Apropos, abolat: Are you in Denmark or another country with a 25% VAT rate? If so, and if Valve allows you US prices, they still need to add VAT on top of it by law as the sale was made in the country where you are.

As I wrote here (and have written at Steam) then I feel very poorly protected as a Steam customer :
http://www.gog.com/en/forum/general/which_one_you_prefer_owning_games_physically_or_digitally/post32

Also they generally seems to feel like they are god , so in many ways one really have few or no rights...... At least some of the forum MODs at Steam also act in same way - they expect you to just "suck it up" or F**k off....

(all this ofcourse !IMHO!)

Sorry, I thought I did lol. I was in Turkey at the time of purchase... I am not there anymore, but in Greece and I still have the same issue (but with the base prices, now that the sale is over). I suspect it is as you mentioned a couple of posts above, and that the browser (but this would not explain the client's behavior) was set to the US store.
there was no circumvention of regional pricing... at least none to my benefit (have always been billed more than I would have in the US throughout my travels).

Just an edit: You might be right pheace and bansama as I bought this though the browser. The client does not let me enter my billing address properly, so I cannot use it for purchases.

With respect to the VAT then though true that VAT is 25% in Denmark then it may vary if a place charge you 25% or 19'% - it might be if the technical point of sale is within the EU and because of other legislation , but it is correct , a place like Amazon.co.uk will see to that a Danish customer pays the 25% VAT....

Check with your bank. It may be a fee charged by your credit card company. Since you're out of the country, you're likely being charged in the local currency on the credit card, then having that being converted to dollars. There may be a currency conversion fee or something similar.

Very true, but many British merchants will charge 20% VAT anyway even though I order from here in Germany, which has a rate of 19% for VAT. I just chalked it down to their own fiscal ignorance. I'll bet they've declared it as UK revenue as well!

Edit: Just realised I'm talking bollocks here. I have to charge 19% VAT to British customers because it's part of the tax union.

Then try buying books from the UK - as far as I know they do not have any local
VAT on books so they will raise you 19% (Germany) or 25% (Denmark) ;-)
But respect to BRitish merchants charging you 20% VAT on some stuff then it might be that they are actually over charging you and making you pay more than you have to.... (Sorry I do not know all the V.A.T. "fine print" of neither the EU or all its member nations...)..

I just realized that I forgot to put a question mark at the end of the topic title... -.- I had meant this post as a question and discussion topic to see if anyone else had a similar situation and not a complaint, but judging by the answers, I suspect it is being interpreted as such.


no wonder why stuff from the UK on e-bay is so expensive... bet they have to charge VAT there too... :)

Thank God I do not have to go through the nightmare of currency conversions; have always paid in USD and never in any local currency... it would be very hard to keep track of what I was being, had that been the case. No additional fees were imposed. As Pheace mentioned, it is probably the case that the price displayed to me was that of the US due to store localization or something but when it came to check-out, the system automatically applied the price based on the region I was in.

Then if you are a U.S. resident that are just on the go you could perhaps legally use a US based VPN provider when shopping.... Don't know though about the legality... You probably better check with the "god complex" ridden Steam/Valve company before doing anything or else you could possibly loose your account because of doing something that they think is illegal....

NEVER. NEVER! Use a VPN to purchase on Steam. That's tantamount to account suicide. As soon as Valve are aware of it, they will disable it and you'll find it pretty hard to get it back.

Thanks for the general warning , however as you might have noticed I did write :
You probably better check with the "god complex" ridden Steam/Valve company before doing anything or else you could possibly loose your account because of doing something that they think is illegal....

(that also ought to imply how I feel about my rights as a Steam/Valve customer)

Yeah I know, but there's no need to ask them about it as they will basically say what I have - and may go on further to explain that using VPNs/proxies is specifically against the SSA. These days, they provide the ?cc=XX method via browser for overseas purchasing.

And if you intend to use a VPN to bypass IP blocks on already purchased games, just don't bring it to their attention =)