14 DAY TRIAL // Steam is one of the most popular online digital distribution networks, with over 500 games and 16 million active user accounts. It brought its owner, Valve, quite a big profit and ushered in a new age in terms of content distribution, which was rapidly adopted by gamers everywhere because it delivered their eagerly anticipated titles very easy and the games weren't packaged with any DRM (Digital Rights Management) software, such as the infamous SecuROM.
This online store is very profitable, although Valve won't disclose the concrete numbers behind it, and will keep on going strong, even if normal “brick and mortar” game stores aren't very afraid of it and other types of content distribution services. We reported a few days ago about the new beta client for Steam, which promises quite a lot of changes, but now, a new type of modification has been made to the online store, which fans didn't meet with kind eyes.
So far, all the prices at the Steam store were only in United States dollars, meaning that all the customers needed to have that amount of money if they wanted to buy a game, but, as of last week, Steam has also employed two special pricing strategies for its users in the United Kingdom and in Europe, in their own currencies, the pound sterling and the Euro, respectively. However, the pricing was not transformed using the up-to-date currency exchange rates, as it should have, but by simply changing the symbol displayed with the sum of money.
In layman's terms, a game that was 9.99 dollars is now 9.99 pounds or 9.99 Euros, although, according to the currency exchange rates, it should have been 6.70 pounds or 7.18 Euros. This move, which discriminates against residents of the European countries, has generated quite a severe backlash, with the official Steam forums being inundated with angry users who want the prices to be adjusted according to the currency rate and not by such a method of just replacing the symbols.
Although no official statement was made by Valve about what measures the company will employ, the amount of user backlash will certainly make the company change its pricing strategies. Until then, gamers from Europe will still need to pay an unjustified amount of money for the titles they buy on Steam.