Read more.And create a single market for digital services across the 28-nation bloc.
Read more.And create a single market for digital services across the 28-nation bloc.
omfg you're kidding right? That is sarcasm I trust? If you think we get any sort of deal on that you're in cloud cuckoo land. They wouldn't even know what steam is (in the technological sense)Nevertheless, we can still have confidence in Johnson, Fox and Davis getting the UK even better 'red, white and blue' deals from the likes of Valve and Apple.
Rip-off Britain will long continue and be even worse post Brexit. I hate that we're being pushed into this BS "independence" where the tories will be able to sell us wholesale to the US with no comeback. We'll end up exploited and with our standards eroded all in the name of an overly demanding trade "agreement". The EU gets quite a lot right IMO.
Corky34 (26-04-2017),MaddAussie (27-04-2017)
Interesting. I am not necessarily a fan of geo-blocking in all situations, but this does seem a bit of a strange choice to make on the EU's part. The article comes over very biased too imo.
If the economies of all countries involved were equal (which yes, is one of the aims of the EU & it's single currency) then sure, geo blocking is pretty pointless and i'm all for it's removal..but as it stands that isn't the case and there are many valid and just reasons for it..chiefly the huge variance in economies/personal wealth around the world.
In reality this is just going to be bad news for everyone - no prices will drop, and if I were retailing digitally and had to charge the same price in the whole of the EU..i'd just take the highest one and charge that to everyone.
I can't see this as being good for all consumers, if any. As spud1 says, it will probably mean that the lower prices will rise while few if any will come down, so the discrimination will be against those countries (and people) where disposable incomes are low.
The same thing happened when the EU meddled in insurance premiums for young drivers - young males are a higher insurance risk than girls and the premiums reflected that.
The EU ruled it was discriminatory - so female premiums went up - even though statistically they are likely to be involved in lower cost accidents and are therefore discrimated against.
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It's ok, soon we won't have to worry about it. EU will be able to distribute copyrighted material equally over all of its states while UK viewers will only watch...well, nothing, if you are outside of UK. Prices will be great with monopolies appearing soon after eu loses ability to veto UK service provider merges and takeovers. Will be wonderful.
Last edited by aniilv; 26-04-2017 at 06:13 PM.
I disagree, it's a shady practice and it's always wrong in the case of digital goods in particular. If you can sell it at the low price in a poorer country and still make a profit, then you can sell it at that price in any country and still make a profit. Your servers don't care where the purchaser lives and the cost of selling one extra copy of a theoretically infinite stock is microscopic. Digital goods should be a flat price + local taxes.
There may be an argument for it with physical goods where it costs more to move things from A to B but that's a different story.
I guess it depends if you define it as shady or not - I see it as just good business..the idea that you sell a product at a price people will pay. You see the same thing with lots of physical goods too which are in high supply and have equal sales costs - and even when cost of sale varies, the price differentials are rarely purely down to that cost alone..there is always an element of what the local market will stand. Each to their own though I can completely see your point of view!
It is what it is though, I was never one of those using VPNs and other shady purchasing practices to con the system, and we are generally paying the higher price in the UK anyway so it likely wont affect me directly
Maybe it's me.... I don't mind differing prices based on country as long as it's not more than the price in the companies home country and includes the exact same thing (netflix is perfect example, we have less than US for example) because lets be honest the cost of hosting is no different if it's all served from one location.
What I do have an issue with and this doesn't seem like it will fix that is the exclusives, restrictions on what we can receive and time delays we get versus other parts of the world... there's no reason the UK/US can't be released at the same time for example as we use the same language (if you ignore their incorrect spelling). These 'artificial' delays were the main reason game of thrones was downloaded illegally so much when it first came out...
The current instantly connected world created by the internet can't work with the old artificial restrictions of the tv/vhs era yet the tv companies can't see that...
I'm glad Steam is being investigated, some massive discounts to be had even within different EU country's and even higher discounts from certain Asian countries, totally unfair, especially for digitally distributed stuff like games/software.
We can be confident in stating that the majority of the English are ignorant if not retarded.Nevertheless, we can still have confidence in Johnson, Fox and Davis getting the UK even better 'red, white and blue' deals from the likes of Valve and Apple.
peterb (01-05-2017)
I don't agree with that last part - apart from the text ik9000 quoted the article seemed pretty much Dragnet-style "just the facts".
OTOH, a suggestion I'd make is that unified pricing makes it easier for the EU to - if the mood takes them - launch a further investigation if EU territories are being fleeced when compared with US and APAC. I'm not saying for a minute that this would the 'end game' - merely a possibility.
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