Steam report card: 2009

Last year I penned a piece complaining, by and large, about price discrepancies and game availabilities on Steam.

Since then a lot has happened: EA joined Steam internationally; Ubisoft and THQ expanded their catalogues beyond the US and UK; payment via Euro was introduced for Europe; weekend sales were introduced, offering hugely discounted prices on chosen games for a specific weekend only. If you want a measure of how good an idea the weekend sales are, I now own 83 games on Steam. Prior to last Christmas, I owned only six, courtesy of The Orange Box.

However, despite these improvements, it seems the gap between international prices and available titles has widened. Europeans forced onto the Euro system, for example, are highly annoyed that Steam treats €1 as US$1 (local pricing discrepancies aside).

A sneaky change most may not notice since last year is the amount of cents at the end of the purchase price of the game. If you look at last year's article, all prices ended in 95 cents. They now end in 99 — a small difference for you and me, but vast volumes of profit for popular games.

This year, 30 titles are more expensive in Australia than the US, five times as many as last year. Sega and Electronic Arts are the worst offenders here, although Activision deserves a special badge of shame for still having Call of Duty 4 overpriced a year later, selling Quantum of Solace for 2.5 times and Soldier of Fortune: Payback for 1.8 times the price of the US version.

Curiously, there are also 10 games cheaper in Australia this year than the US, with THQ offering nine of them. Considering it is responsible for three overpriced games, I'm not sure exactly what economics it's following.

The worst growth by far has been in games not available in Australia, which has more than doubled since last year. 2K Games and Rockstar have made the least effort here, although Rockstar still possibly has an exemption thanks to its classification issues in the country. Still, you'd figure if Steam can handle localised pricing, it can handle localised files as well.

Sega is a serial offender in this category, but the big non-participation prize has to go to Ubisoft, with a whopping 25 titles not available in Australia through Steam.

If you're fed up with getting the short end of the stick, there's a few things you can do. For a start, Steam's competitor services are really picking up, ahem, steam. Check out GameTap (now available in Australia on a subscription or pay-to-own basis, and currently offering 36 games for free), Good Old Games and Impulse as alternatives.

If you want to impact on Steam itself, join the Rest of World group, and then contact your local publishers and ask them why Australians are treated as second-rate citizens.

Overpriced games in Australia (Last year: 6 | This year: 30)

 Unresolved pricing/locale discrepancy since last year

Games that are cheaper in Australia (Last year: 0 | This year: 10)

Games not available in Australia (Last year: 44 | This year: 90)

 Unresolved pricing/locale discrepancy since last year

Games available in Australia, but not available in the US (Last year: 3 | This year: 3)

 Unresolved pricing/locale discrepancy since last year