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Is it legal for me to purchase digital UK games so I can save lots of money? Because digital UK games are usually 10 to 20 euro cheaper than the same games I can find here in Germany at retail stores, Steam and Amazon.de. And how come they expect non UK europeans to pay 50 euro for a game that costs around 35 euro in the UK? It doesn't seem fair. It's not like UK citizens are extremely poor compared to most Europeans.
Legal? Yeah. In fact a lot of Euro people get help from US people because we tend to get cheaper games.

The only issue would be buying games that are blacklisted in your country because of the usual stupidity (z0mg it contains a reference to a war, it's gotta be UBEREBIL.) You may not even get the game at all if that happens... at least in Steam.
Sure. Depends on the DD service though.

You can freely purchase from GamersGate UK, for example, they don't provide any restrictions.
Considering I've been buying new games almost exclusively from British retailers for about 3 years, and saving quite a bit of money thanks to it, I'd say if it's actually illegal they don't do much about it.

I don't know why UK customers pay less, but Western Europe has always had higher price than the US or Japan for most gaming stuff, supposedly due to higher VAT.

If you want to buy games from UK retailers, /this is the one I use. Note that they do make you pay transport fees (about 3£ for me) so it's not quite as cheap as it seems. Still worth it though.
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mystral: Considering I've been buying new games almost exclusively from British retailers for about 3 years, and saving quite a bit of money thanks to it, I'd say if it's actually illegal they don't do much about it.

I don't know why UK customers pay less, but Western Europe has always had higher price than the US or Japan for most gaming stuff, supposedly due to higher VAT.

If you want to buy games from UK retailers, /this is the one I use. Note that they do make you pay transport fees (about 3£ for me) so it's not quite as cheap as it seems. Still worth it though.
Dunno if they ship to europe but have a look at shopto.net and gamestation.co.uk aswell
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mystral: Considering I've been buying new games almost exclusively from British retailers for about 3 years, and saving quite a bit of money thanks to it, I'd say if it's actually illegal they don't do much about it.

I don't know why UK customers pay less, but Western Europe has always had higher price than the US or Japan for most gaming stuff, supposedly due to higher VAT.

If you want to buy games from UK retailers, /this is the one I use. Note that they do make you pay transport fees (about 3£ for me) so it's not quite as cheap as it seems. Still worth it though.
I'd imagine it's because the UK is probably the largest market for video games overall in Europe.

By the way, quick tip: I recommend GamesTracker if you're looking for a comparison. GAME is OK for PC games, but they're not great.
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mystral: Considering I've been buying new games almost exclusively from British retailers for about 3 years, and saving quite a bit of money thanks to it, I'd say if it's actually illegal they don't do much about it.

I don't know why UK customers pay less, but Western Europe has always had higher price than the US or Japan for most gaming stuff, supposedly due to higher VAT.

If you want to buy games from UK retailers, /this is the one I use. Note that they do make you pay transport fees (about 3£ for me) so it's not quite as cheap as it seems. Still worth it though.
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DelusionsBeta: I'd imagine it's because the UK is probably the largest market for video games overall in Europe.

By the way, quick tip: I recommend GamesTracker if you're looking for a comparison. GAME is OK for PC games, but they're not great.
I doubt that the UK is biggest. No offense but Germany has about 20 million more people, and I'm pretty sure I read once that they were the biggest PC market in Europe. I don't know about consoles though.

Thanks for the suggestions, I'll try them, though I'm not particularly keen on spreading my credit card details to a lot of sites. I picked GAME because they also have stores in France so I knew about them. They also do some good sales a relatively short time after games come out (like 2-3 months).
Also note that you can get some good deals from UK online retailers. Play, Shopto, Game and others ship to the EU. In some cases for free.
I actually used a UK website called The Hut (first time i ever bought retail games overseas), to buy a lot to buy a lot of games before Christmas and i generally saved up to 50 to even 75% for some items, and that even with their 2.49 pounds shipping on each item
Post edited April 01, 2011 by Master911