This new system is total cr.ap. Why on earth can't we see the discount percentage anymore? Now, we have to manually calculate the percentage a game is discounted. Excellent work, Valve.

Originally posted by Freyr_O:

This new system is total cr.ap. Why on earth can't we see the discount percentage anymore? Now, we have to manually calculate the percentage a game is discounted. Excellent work, Valve.

I legit don't understand their decision, who in their right mind would approve such a stupid idea.

Usually i look at a lot of games on sales every day but since my wishlist and the store are plaged with this non sens of discountless prices, i just stopped. All my friends said the same. This should be rolled back ASAP !

This is Epic games level of stupidity.

For a UI/UX standpoint this is really ugly, confusing and not appealing.

Originally posted by RiO:

Originally posted by Devezas☭:

Should be mandatory to every country.

It in fact is mandatory to all EU member countries.
This follows from the updated EU Price Indication Directive from '98 which was amended by a new Directive for a 'new deal for consumer protection rules' in 2019.
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/EN/legal-content/summary/price-indications-on-consumer-products.html

All EU member states were required to implement that update, which sets the new legal requirement for traders to show the lowest price over the previous 30 days, into their national laws by Nov 2021. And were required to have those updated laws enter into force from May 2022.

Valve is in the wrong by only offering this update to 7 specific EU countries and are breaking laws.

How do I know this?
Because the Netherlands is not on their list, for one.
Yet... look at this:
https://zoek.officielebekendmakingen.nl/stb-2022-485.html

That's the official state bulletin announcing the legislative change in Dutch laws.
Thus at the least, they are breaking Dutch law. And probably similar cases hold for many of the other EU member countries not on Valve's approved list of 7.

They should make it a priority to look into this; before EU member states start sanctioning them.

Originally posted by Salmon:

Why hide the percentage?

Because doing it this way, Valve adheres to the strict letter of the law - while in practice the actual reduction is still obfuscated to a level where it places just enough burden on people that a straight and easy comparison becomes too hard to bother.
This is what you call a legal loophole.

Originally posted by KamelittaOida:

that's what I thought. Has incompetent EU written all over.
same as removing price geo-blocking in 2018 i.e. forcing one price for entirety of EU instead of by GDP etc.

EU didn't force anything. It's still perfectly legal to offer different prices in different regions. It's just not legal to prevent people from other regions within the EEA from buying in the cheaper regions.

That not being allowed is generally speaking is a good thing, because it means the wealthier countries bring business to the less wealthy to stimulate their local economy, both through sales as well as job opportunities because of the need of increased production capacity.

Where this goes awry is with digital distribution by publishing companies that have no actual presence and contribute nothing to the local economies of either country.

They are stuck having to accept the loss of income because the wealthy by via the poor region with the lower set price; having to find some other way to disincentivize such sales; or have to do what they did: everyone just pays top dollar and too-bad-so-sad for the poor country.

Want to complain about injustice? Complain to the publishers. And complain to Steam for removing the ability for publishers to target individual countries within the EEA with individual prices.

Actually useful answer for once. Love how people jump to complain about EU when it's in fact trying to protect your customer rights. Valve on the other hand implemented the requirement in such a way that it's even more difficult to use so complain to Valve.

Originally posted by RiO:

Want to complain about injustice? Complain to the publishers. And complain to Steam for removing the ability for publishers to target individual countries within the EEA with individual prices.

but this is literally what the EU wanted and the directive said to do when Steam had such abilities put in place. euro 1 euro 2?

Originally posted by RiO:

EU didn't force anything. It's still perfectly legal to offer different prices in different regions. It's just not legal to prevent people from other regions within the EEA from buying in the cheaper regions.

how exactly is this supposed to happen without digital geo-blocking. they forced Steam by forcing them to abolish geoblocking.

Originally posted by RiO:

That not being allowed is generally speaking is a good thing, because it means the wealthier countries bring business to the less wealthy to stimulate their local economy,

this can and will happen regardless. if (EU) countries make themselves attractive by providing necessary infrastructure (or workforce) for companies, they will come. You don't need directives for this.

Originally posted by RiO:

Where this goes awry is with digital distribution by publishing companies that have no actual presence and contribute nothing to the local economies of either country.

already red herring? & wait what?
What are you going to tell me next? Steam doesn't pay taxes? or no, that it doesn't give off my taxes that it collects? They give the collected EU VAT to the respective countries where the buyer is located.

tbf technically euro 1 and euro 2 or even euro 3 wasn't much used anyway, on Steam at least. IIRC it was used outside Steam with keys though. Now it's pretty much just divided by continents if it isn't a global key.

>What are you going to tell me next? Steam doesn't pay taxes? or no, that it doesn't give off my taxes that it collects? They give the collected EU VAT to the respective countries where the buyer is located.

even if it weren't, and it is, then that actually would be on the EU to figure their ♥♥♥♥ out rather than whatever company.

As others have already stated, this actually applies EU wide, so I'm surprised that this isn't applied across all EU countries in Steam.

whitout information about % discount im less willing to spend money

I know the regulations may demand this, but not seeing the original price and the discount percents in most places is terrible and in fact pretty anti-consumer move. It's great that you are now showing the extended info with the price history on the game page itself, that is welcome, but not knowing the percentage of the discount is terrible. Do you really expect everyone to open dozen game pages from their wishlist which are tagged this new way and do the math in their head to actually find out what the discount is? Personally, when I saw this, I just thought "screw it, screw the sale".

You should learn from GOG in this regard, they did it right - they are showing the lowest price in 30 days on the game page, but they keep showing the percents and original price everywere else. I think this is the way it benefits the consumers most.

Get the discount percentage displayed along the price tag like it used to. anything else is just confusing and misleading. Summer sale only just begun, and I have NO idea how good the vast majority of the discounts actually are.

Not showing the discount % is absolutely awful, please add it everywhere it needs to be: NEXT TO THE SALE PRICE.

I mean, come on. It's incredibly inconvenient to always browse the store and then open SteamDB for each title I am interested in to see if it's at desirable discount or if it can go lower next time, the % discount is so important!

Use the browser loop hole, the discount level is displayed on the tab: "Save xx% on Game".

Originally posted by Morgul:

whitout information about % discount im less willing to spend money

Thus, the crux of the problem. This is going to sound up my own bum, but psychologically, players are going to spend more money (especially on things they normally wouldn't) if they see A PERCENTAGE OFF. They can't just *know* it's a sale. They can't just see a discount icon. They need to be TOLD.

A 30-day counter is only going to make things WORSE, as it indicates to the user that, if they wait, it MIGHT be LOWER at not only a LATER DATE but a MUCH SOONER LATER DATE. A 30-day counter is actually worse than the user making their own personal decision not to buy.

Originally posted by Duck Whitman:

Originally posted by Morgul:

whitout information about % discount im less willing to spend money

Thus, the crux of the problem. This is going to sound up my own bum, but psychologically, players are going to spend more money (especially on things they normally wouldn't) if they see A PERCENTAGE OFF. They can't just *know* it's a sale. They can't just see a discount icon. They need to be TOLD.

A 30-day counter is only going to make things WORSE, as it indicates to the user that, if they wait, it MIGHT be LOWER at not only a LATER DATE but a MUCH SOONER LATER DATE. A 30-day counter is actually worse than the user making their own personal decision not to buy.

precisely. This is such a bad look especially since people will think this is a Steam "feature" not until it will seep through Europe it was the EU who cooked again. because as far as I know, this directive is not only digital from the quick gander I took the few days back.

I don't want to harp on the EU too much because as a whole I believe it to be the better system. To me personally, I don't do it much, but I like traveling without having to deal with cash exchanges, but anything that the EU touches digitally is just plain bad. GDPR, removing Steam's EU market fragmentation hence Steam's feature for publishers to consider purchasing power parity, now this 30-day thing.
The irony of Valve knowing more about the EU countries' GDPs than the EU. hilarious

Maybe there's a good reason for it and it seems like RIO likes to read EU directives or does it for a living and has some more insight, but anything but an aggregate like there already are on the web, is pointless. If you don't technically have the ability to make out some sort of pattern, infos about previous prices on games are useless. This is not produce lol.

Your e-mail with Steam's wishlist feature gives you a better insight on price patterns and history. Wow another in-house Steam feature already available. should we be worried for the EU's next digital move?

from an above link:

Directive (EU) 2019/2161
.) Amending Directive (EU) 2019/2161 introduces a new article in Directive 98/6/EC regarding information to consumers about price reductions. Any announcement of a price reduction must clearly indicate the price previously applied by the trader (prior price). The prior price means the lowest price applied by the trader during a period of time not shorter than 30 days prior to the application of the price reduction.
.) The amendment provides for regulatory options for Member States as regards goods that are liable to deteriorate or expire rapidly (in particular food), goods that have been on sale for less than 30 days and goods that are subject to continuous price reductions.
.) The existing requirement for Member States to introduce effective, proportionate and dissuasive penalties for breaches of national rules on price indications has been complemented with a list of criteria for the imposition of penalties.

this just absolutely reads horribly.
"as regards goods"? ok

>and goods that are subject to continuous price reductions.
seems like the EU doesn't believe in market dynamics. price reductions into purgatory? ok
I think they were looking for 'constant'.

Even for produce I don't see the benefit. Well, I guess rather than memorizing the prices, you will have it on display and can choose between your three supermarket chains where to buy it (next time).

>The prior price means the lowest price applied by the trader during a period of time not shorter than 30 days prior to the application of the price reduction.
Just more additional math and algorithms for all the supermarket chains to contract out. I'm sure the prices will go down because of it. 🙈