So…looking at the marketplace this morning and having seen the release notes yesterday I was comparing prices between markets, specifically the us vs the uk.
So in the us, to take an example one of Roman designs airports is 11.99 usd which converts into about 8.80.
In the uk marketplace that airport is a penny of a 10 quid.
How is that possible? I haven’t used the us store but do users get taxed on top of that when checking out making it dearer than 11.99 usd?
I’m tired of being ripped off in the uk. The prices should be comparable. We already are forced into a premium by being locked into the Xbox marketplace and the cut they take.
US users may have state specific sales taxes applied which are only visible on checkout, UK users have VAT applied which, because of the law, shows on the marked price in the store and also in the reciept.
For Steam what you do is buy credits for the MS Store and those credits are used to buy the product. It doesn’t mention the product you bought though (which may be a legal problem) and it also has to state, again legally, the VAT you paid. That’s UK and an EU thing. The whole process is somewhat clunky and when I bought the Husky the transaction on Steam worked but then failed in FS, so I had to raise a ticket to get it fixed.
It always been that way. AAA games usually cost 60$/60€.
US stores do not show the full price, EU stores always show full price with ~20% (varies between countries by few %) tax included. In EU that is defined by law to always show the full price.
