[artshub]Australians pay more for digital downloads - Page 7

sounds familiar

(but yea for the price i pay for my net im sure the mericans could get it for like $60 and get a much better ul too)

also us aussies need not forget another reason we pay such high prices is because of gst (stupid howard for bringing this in )

Good luck Aussies.

Ironically Labour first proposed the tax.
As I read in someones avatar here on OCN, "Politicians are like diapers, they need frequent changing for the same reason"

Ive had a taste of the NBN and can not wait for it to roll out in my area this year.

100 / 100 yes please!!!

Yes and no; some states in the US also have sales tax and even then, GST is currently only 10%, the price discrepancy is typically in the range of 20%+. Not to mention that in Europe some countries pay up to 20-25% VAT (some are around the 15% range as well) and even with that ludicrous tax rate, they still get stuff cheaper than us. So I don't really think GST can be blamed even remotely for this issue.

Also, there is a valid argument that GST should be raised to 15-20% and other useless taxes like land tax etc. should be scrapped entirely (plus extra money to help fund better welfare initiatives). Although that is off topic so we wont delve any further into that debate.

In essence the reason we pay more for physical products is because of greedy wholesalers and middle men who charge ridiculous markups and then on top of that, we have a MUCH higher minimum wage and penalty rates etc. than the USA which alongside greedy retailers like EB, means we get screwed over for physical copies.

Now, with digital copies, its a whole other argument. There are no middle men other than Valve, GoG, D2D or any other digital content provider, of which, they take the same margins in Australia as they do in the US/EU/UK/Asia or anywhere else for that matter as its based off a percentage of total revenue NOT a percentage of each sale. ie. Valve don't make more from a game being sold in Australia than they do if it is sold in the US even though the Australian price is higher. Their licensing agreements are based off total global revenue from all games sold via their distribution platform. What the exact figure is I don't know and I imagine it may even be based on a case-by-case scenario rather than a blanket rate. So for example, Valve probably have an agreement with Activision where they take a lower cut of the revenue from sales than they would with say an indie developer simply because they sell far more Activision titles than they would of indie titles (across the entire catalogue not necessarily individual games). This is based off my implied understanding of their agreements however, I obviously don't know if what I said is entirely true however that is how it works with middleware (UE3, CryEngine etc.) so I imagine Valve would be using a similar setup for Steam.

So basically, to get to the point. Other than the minimal cut that Valve would be taking on Steam sales (certainly much less than what wholesalers would charge retailers for physical copies), there is no plausible reason why a game is $60 in the US and $90 in Australia on Steam, or any other digital distribution service for that matter. Valve allow all publishers to set their own prices so it basically just comes down to greedy publishers. I understand that some publishers have commercial agreements that don't allow them to legally sell games online under a certain price as it would kill off retail if the physical product was $100 at EB Games and only $40 on Steam, however in general, I believe that even with these agreements, Publishers still certainly have the ability to lower prices to more reasonable levels, for example, $60.

/rant

Did a quick search to find how the hearing went, apparently its still going, this from the "West Australian" 4 days ago.

Lol. It's the weekend, I don't get paid to think on my days off either.

Not getting four GTX 680s Lol, that's overkill and waste of money. Doesn't scale well enough to justify it (ran some tests and benchmarks with GTX 690 SLI when my brother and I bought ours at the same time and we weren't impressed). 3x 4GB GTX 680s would be good future proofing for my resolution but can only run SLI in my X79 Sabertooth so will make do with that.

Thinking I will just have to ship them seperatly and under different names/addresses because no one is willing to simply state the value of the package at less than what it is, which is retarded if you ask me. Will still be cheaper than mwave or pccasegear so that's good just annoying.

You can import as many goods as you want up to the cost of $999 aud a month, once you hit $1000 aud you pay tax. Whether it's one package or ten, once you hit or go over $1000 aud for the month then you pay tax on every package after and including that in your name.

I used to own/run an import/distribution company so know all about it.

 In Switzerland you pay 130$ for a brand new non-collectors edition game because EA and Activision like money.

I hope this gets passed. I know some AUS people and they come to me to buy games. They give me the $$$ on Paypal, and I gift them the games on Steam.

Cheaper for them this way, But they shouldn't be forced to do this. I never understood why this is the way it is anyway.

You don't say.