Valve has decided to switch Norwegian customers over from the U.S. dollar to the euro; in itself a minor move which just requires us norwegians to multiply with another number when converting the price to Norwegian kroners. Here’s the catch, though: They kept the same numeric price. So anything that cost $49.95 a couple of days ago, costs €49.95 today. Converted to Norwegian kroners, that’s a price increase of over 45%! It’s now cheaper to buy the game in the store, get the box, the manual and everything than purchasing it over Steam.
This sounds like bad news, but it actually opens up the market a lot for the OTHER great services such as gamersgate, gog and other digital content providers, as they suddenly has a lot more competitive pricing. I had no problem paying a dollar or two extra for keeping my games in Steam, but now we’re talking 50% or more just to get it in Steam. Not going to happen.