The fact that games are priced differently for the online markets of different countries should come as no surprise to many of you, if you've been paying attention to the news in the last few years. The fact that a Steam key is cheaper in eastern European countries is why so many of them end up being sold through sites like G2A and other third-party retailers to people looking for a bargain. Now though, the European Commission want to create a Digital Single Market for all of Europe and that means setting the prices equal too.
The managing body in charge of proposing legislation and implementing decisions in the EU is the Juncker Commission, and just last week it declared that it was dedicated to bringing down the national barriers that section up the digital stores online through European countries.
“Let us do away with all those fences and walls that block us online,” said Andrus Ansip, Vice-President for the Digital Single Market. “People must be able to freely go across borders online just as they do offline.”
One specific area they're looking at tackling is the practice of geo-blocking - whereby users are re-routed to local websites with different prices to those seen elsewhere in the EU. It's familiar but the Commission insists that "such discrimination cannot exist in a Single Market".
Of course, such a decision can not be taken lightly. The average wage, a country's economy, agreements with developers and Valve and other big online-sellers; this all must be dealt with if the Commission is serious. Who knows, they might succeed.
Let's just hope the Digital Single Market turns out to benefit all European gamers.