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Yep. I'd be on board, IFF this list had nothing with more than the 10% GST markup.

This is a fair offer but as an interesting fact, you could have gotten the Valve complete pack from a russian reseller for as low as 6-9 TF2 keys = 15 Dollar all day long.

http://store.steampowered.com/...
http://www.steamprices.com/us/...

Isn't this because of one of the import restrictions essentially placing the final retail price in the hands of some Australian company, and it actually being illegal to sell for less than what they set the price at?

That would explain the ripoff site's 'top list' looking to be mostly A rated games that have been price dropped/are on special. Steam is normally pretty agile on pricing.

Amusing, but it is absolutely ridiculous that if you want to buy 3 copies of Adobe Creative Suite in Australia, it's cheaper to fly to the US and buy them there, then fly straight back. And that's just one example, there's even the Steam Ripoffs site to show how much we get shafted for games.

I've found similar, but a little digging showed that it came back to distributors locking the price similar to boxed product to not disadvantage their resellers. Trust me, us Australians know about discriminatory pricing, especially on digital downloads.

I use http://www.steamprices.com/ and pay friends in alternate distribution zones to gift me games. I know a couple of people that use free VPNs to the US and UK to create gifting accounts purely for grey market purchasing.

Steam is treading the line between providing good pricing and not biting the arm that feeds them licenses...

Explain New Zealand then? Our dollar is weaker, and we earn less than the average Australian household. And we're not just talking about retail, where you could explain away the difference as the cost of transport of physical goods to a small island country, we're also talking about Steam/Digital prices. Steam lumps us into the same region with Australia, by virtue of geographical proximity alone.

Secondly, can you explain why, with only a 20% difference between the average Australian and the average American household, rip-offs like these exist? Is it really fair that publishers are setting prices for Australia/New Zealand up to 80% higher than for America/UK?

http://www.steamprices.com/au/app/10180/call-of-duty

Call of Duty
Release: 11th November 2009 - Genre: Action
AUD $ 89.99
USD $ 19.99 $ 19.99 (-77.79%)
GBP £ 19.99 $ 32.14 (-64.28%)
EUR € 24.99 $ 32.14 (-64.28%)

Yeah, no distributor rip-off there...

Local Distributors have the final say.
The local software box movers / local arms of the game publishers have higher overheads, sure but not that much that affects digital distribution.

Classic example is CoD:MW2 is $89.99AUD or $19.99USD in their respective zones.
SteamPrices for CoDMW2

There's also no chance of settings up an office in another state to get around taxes, like some other country we all know ;)

And while there are $/GB charges, as an example Steam has at least 5 CDNs in Australia with four of them on Non-Telstra peering exchanges.
Not to mention the Akamai CDNs in every state, CacheFly, LLNW, and EdgeCast.
Although according to this (WhingeWhirlpool - July, 2010), maybe the disties aren't the only ones rorting the system:-
"With Akamai via vps.net its now 15c/GB, for Australian customers its 20c/GB (in USD). Signup with Akamai Australia direct and its around $1.80/GB."

You might think so, but that often isn't the case. In AU, nearly 2.5 years after release, COD: Modern Warfare 2 still costs $80! Even if you manage to buy during a rare 30%-off special, that's still more than it ever cost in the US, even allowing for our 10% GST or stronger dollar.

And it's not just popular games either, nor is Steam the only offender. Xbox Live is usually worse, and there are 3 year old games on retail shelves that cost the full RRP of $109. Don't even get me started on iTunes music. Importing (from the UK, usually) is cheaper, but it's ludicrous that a boxed product can be manufactured then shipped all the way to AU via the UK and still be half the price of a simple download.

While customers are flocking to import sites, local retailers are going out of business, and distributors just shrug and say, "It's the publisher's decision" (while collecting their "suggested" cut). The publishers, naturally, aren't commenting.

You might think so, but that often isn't the case. In AU, nearly 2.5 years after release, COD: Modern Warfare 2 still costs $80! Even if you manage to buy during a rare 30%-off special, that's still more than it ever cost in the US, even allowing for our 10% GST or stronger dollar.

And it's not just popular games either, nor is Steam the only offender. Xbox Live is usually worse, and there are 3 year old games on retail shelves that cost the full RRP of $109. Don't even get me started on iTunes music. Importing (from the UK, usually) is cheaper, but it's ludicrous that a boxed product can be manufactured then shipped all the way to AU via the UK and still be half the price of a simple download.

While customers are flocking to import sites, local retailers are going out of business, and distributors just shrug and say, "It's the publisher's decision" (while collecting their "suggested" cut). The publishers, naturally, aren't commenting.

Steam's prices are the same in every country...

Bahahahahahahahah.

No fucking way. See http://www.steamprices.com/au/topripoffs for some examples. (Click on "Change Region" to change it to yours.)

http://www.steamprices.com/eu/app/620/portal-2 EU-Price without tax (20% here*) is ~41EUR.

I bought the game on GoG($45 USD) because it was $30 cheaper than the Steam version($75 USD) on the Aussie store. DRM free was just the icing on the cake.

I'd consider buying it, when steam stops adding a 60% markup just because I live in Australia.

You think that's bad? Aussie dollar has been buying more than 1USD for a while now, but our top end smart-phones still cost $900+, our market has gone insane, it used to use the excuse that our dollar was bad to excuse the cost of items, now there's no excuse and they still charge this outrageous price.

Best example of this is http://www.steamprices.com/au/topripoffs , it shows the prices some publishers are demanding valve charge for their games in different regions. Remember, this is for a digital download that steam doesn't even have to worry about in Australia, the big telcos are running the steam content servers here as a service for customers.

And people go on paying the prices because that's how it has always been.