Country restriction .... againe

Most games are expensive in EU because of taxes which is ~20-27% in EU. USD prices do not include tax and is added at checkout if needed (usually no tax applies).

Regional prices make sense, but the way they are now is simply weird. Australians often have to pay ridiculous prices, sometimes 10x as much as Russians. Europeans still have to pay (often a lot) more than US Americans and there is often no difference between countries like Germany (EU1) or Romania (EU2) for example. Russians on the other hand pay almost nothing, even though they're not that poor (they have a much higher gdp per capita than Romania for example, which have way higher Steam prices).

It shouldn't be a surprise for Valve that many people prefer to buy their games from Russian traders and not from the store.

According to SteamPrices the game with the biggest regional difference is currently Civ 5, which costs almost exactly 10x as much in Australia compared to Russia (base price, not because it's on sale). That's pretty idiotic.

EDIT: No regional prices would be a step back as it would only 'help' people with a 'if I can't have it, you shouldn't have it either' attitude. And Australians, but who cares about Australians. ;) <joke, my brother immigrated to Australia, but he's no gamer fortunately.

No most idiotic get restricted game for 50 euros.

I am form eastern europe country and we pay more than the rest of the world (well maybe except for australia). We have one of worst economies and quality of living in european union, but prices we have are same as in germany, uk or other rich EU country. That's why piracy here is huge and absolutely everyone pirates something. Anyway i think prices should be equal for all regions.

Here in SA it's worst, we get the same US price for a game and it's locked for SA users, only because those assholes distributors thinks Brazil is From Mexico to the south pole, and some games are just 2USD cheaper in the BR store but they charge us the US dollar price and most countries here has weak coins, so it's crap, but the world is full of crap.

Region restriction is a direct consequence of regional pricing. If you want to sell a product at a fair price to poorer countries, it's completely fair to restrict that offer to said countries.

Againe againe lol
Athene wins !
Because of TEH GAIMZ TEH GAIMZ ! dat engrish spagnlish OP

im NOT against lower prices in some countries - im pretty reasonable in that regard, but what i DO protest, is price GOUGING. If a price is deemed fair and acceptable in the developers primary market (ie, america for example), then this should be the price ceiling. If im targeting a market, and im pricing it for this region, and this is where im expecting to make most of my sales and profit, jacking up the price 200% in some other regions is grossly unfair and exploitative and completely unreasonable.

so yes to low prices in poor countries, but the most a publisher should ever acceptably charge, is what its target market is paying.