What is the regulation that makes videogames have the same price everywhere in the eurozone ?
May 14, 2025
When one searches for games on SteamDB, we only find one price listed for the Eurozone.
7 comments
I don’t think such regulation exists. It’s Valve’s choice to make games cost the same everywhere in the eurozone.
There is no regulation, companies localize their prices as they see fit. They treat the Eurozone as a single area because countries in the Eurozone are pretty much equally wealthy, well equally enough that it’s not worth the hassle to localize the prices further. Portuguese people are willing to pay the same 60€ as German people, so why make it cheaper for them?
I don’t think there is a regulation, but if your product that can be delivered in the exact same manner and the exact same costs in Spain, Slovakia and Malta, putting a different price sticker on it for different countries is asking for customer complains: “why do I have to pay more than the Spaniards (or any other nationality)”.
It’s a combination of factors. There is no one regulation that spells out “Hey, valve? You can’t charge different prices!”. Because if that law is in the books, there’d be a billion laws.
Instead it’s this combination:
* There is freedom of trade within EU borders. That _is_ a law.
* That means that if I can buy a pack of coffee for €2,- in The Netherlands and I ship it to, say, Spain and sell it there for €2,05, that’s not illegal.
* That also means the company that sold me the pack of coffee cannot legally compel me not to do that. It’d be illegal if the ‘terms of use’ of buying that pack of coffee says: “You must not resell this stuff in a different EU country”.
* There is also freedom of movement. I can move from The Netherlands to Slovakia whenever I want and as often as I want.
* There is also limitations on privacy-endangering questions. Valve cannot demand all sorts of info from me that isn’t pertinent (as far as the EU is concerned) to the transaction we are engaging in.
Now replace ‘pack of coffee’ with ‘valve game’. The cost of ‘shipping it to Spain’ has become 0, because bits are incredibly cheap to ship. It gets a bit nebulous in that the thing you buy is either a subscription or a digital asset, but it’s in the end still “a pack of coffee”.
Hence, if Valve attempts to prevent this, trouble ensues. In particular, let’s say valve makes it so that games in, say, Slovakia, are cheaper than anywhere else in the EU. Soon, everybody would go through the valve form to indicate they now live in Slovakia and wish to use the slovakian game store. Valve could attempt to demand proof that the user lives in Slovakia, but this is again EU-tricky. Because there’s also freedom of movement. “I live in the EU”, that’s as far as it needs to go as far as the EU is concerned, and asking any further questions is needlessly asking for private information which isn’t legal as far as the EU is concerned.
Let’s say valve goes maximally evil and charges wildly different rates in different EU countries for some reason: Most games are cheaper in Slovakia, but some games are actually more expensive, and valve puts an arbitrary restriction on things, either [A] if you fill in the form indicating you moved from Slovakia to Germany, then all your slovakian games no longer work, or [B] you can only move twice a year, or something onerous like [C] moving takes 2 weeks and you can’t access your valve library at all during that time…
then valve runs into three problems:
* It looks fucking horrible and they get slaughtered in the media for it. There ARE steam alternatives. And there are also alternatives to gaming in general. Such as TV.
* They’ll get sued for these onerous requirements. The EU has freedom of movement, thus, instigating ‘you can only move twice a year’ or ‘moving invalidates your subscriptions’ is problematic.
* I can sue valve for the inability to ‘resell’. If I buy a game ‘locally’ in slovakia where it is cheaper and then wish to ‘give it’ to another user that lives in The Netherlands, I should be able to do this. If valve stops me, that’s.. a problem.
Combine all this and we get to the simple conclusion:
valve would be a fucking idiot not to do it in the way they are now (one price across the EU). There is no one law that absolutely requires this, but doing anything else is costs way more than it would ever net them.
>*As an EU national, a trader cannot charge you more when you buy a product or service* ***just because of your nationality or country of residence***. […] *However, traders may still set different net sale prices in different points of sale, such as shops and websites, or may target specific offers only to a specific territory within a Member State. Under EU rules, all these* ***offers must be accessible for consumers from other EU countries***.
If Steam offered games in Greece for 50% of the price in Germany, that would be unfair pricing so Steam has to sell games in the whole EU for the same price. Asking German prices in the whole EU is simply more lucrative than asking Greek prices.
No such regulation. Steam prices are usually the most expensive in Poland not only in EU but in the whole world despite being way poorer than Germany and other Western European countries. Search for Augmented Steam browser extension, it lets you show prices in different countries right on the Steam page. Look up for Poland and you will change your mind.
Worked for EA briefly in the far past of physical games. They determined the prices as a company because the games often had all synchronizations in it. So having different prices would only mean gamers would buy their copy from the cheapest country.
7 comments
I don’t think such regulation exists. It’s Valve’s choice to make games cost the same everywhere in the eurozone.
There is no regulation, companies localize their prices as they see fit. They treat the Eurozone as a single area because countries in the Eurozone are pretty much equally wealthy, well equally enough that it’s not worth the hassle to localize the prices further. Portuguese people are willing to pay the same 60€ as German people, so why make it cheaper for them?
I don’t think there is a regulation, but if your product that can be delivered in the exact same manner and the exact same costs in Spain, Slovakia and Malta, putting a different price sticker on it for different countries is asking for customer complains: “why do I have to pay more than the Spaniards (or any other nationality)”.
It’s a combination of factors. There is no one regulation that spells out “Hey, valve? You can’t charge different prices!”. Because if that law is in the books, there’d be a billion laws.
Instead it’s this combination:
* There is freedom of trade within EU borders. That _is_ a law.
* That means that if I can buy a pack of coffee for €2,- in The Netherlands and I ship it to, say, Spain and sell it there for €2,05, that’s not illegal.
* That also means the company that sold me the pack of coffee cannot legally compel me not to do that. It’d be illegal if the ‘terms of use’ of buying that pack of coffee says: “You must not resell this stuff in a different EU country”.
* There is also freedom of movement. I can move from The Netherlands to Slovakia whenever I want and as often as I want.
* There is also limitations on privacy-endangering questions. Valve cannot demand all sorts of info from me that isn’t pertinent (as far as the EU is concerned) to the transaction we are engaging in.
Now replace ‘pack of coffee’ with ‘valve game’. The cost of ‘shipping it to Spain’ has become 0, because bits are incredibly cheap to ship. It gets a bit nebulous in that the thing you buy is either a subscription or a digital asset, but it’s in the end still “a pack of coffee”.
Hence, if Valve attempts to prevent this, trouble ensues. In particular, let’s say valve makes it so that games in, say, Slovakia, are cheaper than anywhere else in the EU. Soon, everybody would go through the valve form to indicate they now live in Slovakia and wish to use the slovakian game store. Valve could attempt to demand proof that the user lives in Slovakia, but this is again EU-tricky. Because there’s also freedom of movement. “I live in the EU”, that’s as far as it needs to go as far as the EU is concerned, and asking any further questions is needlessly asking for private information which isn’t legal as far as the EU is concerned.
Let’s say valve goes maximally evil and charges wildly different rates in different EU countries for some reason: Most games are cheaper in Slovakia, but some games are actually more expensive, and valve puts an arbitrary restriction on things, either [A] if you fill in the form indicating you moved from Slovakia to Germany, then all your slovakian games no longer work, or [B] you can only move twice a year, or something onerous like [C] moving takes 2 weeks and you can’t access your valve library at all during that time…
then valve runs into three problems:
* It looks fucking horrible and they get slaughtered in the media for it. There ARE steam alternatives. And there are also alternatives to gaming in general. Such as TV.
* They’ll get sued for these onerous requirements. The EU has freedom of movement, thus, instigating ‘you can only move twice a year’ or ‘moving invalidates your subscriptions’ is problematic.
* I can sue valve for the inability to ‘resell’. If I buy a game ‘locally’ in slovakia where it is cheaper and then wish to ‘give it’ to another user that lives in The Netherlands, I should be able to do this. If valve stops me, that’s.. a problem.
Combine all this and we get to the simple conclusion:
valve would be a fucking idiot not to do it in the way they are now (one price across the EU). There is no one law that absolutely requires this, but doing anything else is costs way more than it would ever net them.
Remember: EU is awesome.
[Unfair pricing – Your Europe](https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/unfair-treatment/unfair-pricing/index_en.htm#inline-nav-5)
>*As an EU national, a trader cannot charge you more when you buy a product or service* ***just because of your nationality or country of residence***. […] *However, traders may still set different net sale prices in different points of sale, such as shops and websites, or may target specific offers only to a specific territory within a Member State. Under EU rules, all these* ***offers must be accessible for consumers from other EU countries***.
If Steam offered games in Greece for 50% of the price in Germany, that would be unfair pricing so Steam has to sell games in the whole EU for the same price. Asking German prices in the whole EU is simply more lucrative than asking Greek prices.
No such regulation. Steam prices are usually the most expensive in Poland not only in EU but in the whole world despite being way poorer than Germany and other Western European countries. Search for Augmented Steam browser extension, it lets you show prices in different countries right on the Steam page. Look up for Poland and you will change your mind.
Worked for EA briefly in the far past of physical games. They determined the prices as a company because the games often had all synchronizations in it. So having different prices would only mean gamers would buy their copy from the cheapest country.