From what I understood, some games were cheaper, some were more expensive, because the publisher/developers set their own prices in different currencies, and the VAT was a bug during the beta.

I'd be pretty pissed off too, but my response will always be not to buy the games and wait until they come down to a much more reasonable price. I live in Canada and last generation, we used to get charged 10 dollars more for our games (59.99). This generation however, I thought good changes were coming seeing as all next gen games were at that price (59.99), that was until these Holidays came, and we saw a select few games going to prices like 64.99 and 69.99. I can't really blame Canadian retailers because when you generally look around its these very few select games, so I'd go with the asshole publishers on this one.

Not including the UK, all the prices are 38.75% higher in the for all the EU. That is with included VAT, wich usually is lower then 38.75%, or not used at all. in Sweden we have 25% VAT for example.
We are getting screwed over.

That's gotta be terrible, and here I was complaining about the 13% taxes (PST & GST) that we have to pay on everything!

The thing is, this is almost going unnoticed in the USA part of the internet, that is why i created this thread and sent that mail to d-toid.

This happened this week, and there is a Steam Forum Thread with over a 1000 posts and a with close to Steam protest group with close to 4000 members, a group was created the 18 December.
And still, this has gone unnoticed by all major gaming websites, except Destructioid. Valve and Steam is getting praised for including EA's titles, and no one notices that they have raised the prices for a large section of their users, for no apparent reason.

Join the Protest Group: http://steamcommunity.com/groups/1e1us
Even if you are not affected by this, stand up for your european brothers.

Yahtzee's gonna be pissed if this also happens in Australia.

"Not including the UK, all the prices are 38.75% higher in the for all the EU. That is with included VAT, wich usually is lower then 38.75%, or not used at all. in Sweden we have 25% VAT for example.
We are getting screwed over."

L4D is currently priced at 45 (44.99)€, roughly 500SEK.

I could go to a store and buy it at around 400SEK right now.

Sadly I didn't realize just how much more expensive it was until after I pre-purchased it.

and us in Canada. i didn't realize until after i bought the items, but it ended up costing me about a extra$50 for the 2-3 games i had bought, then if i had got them else where. Steam, like most online things these day (mad face) its only worth while if your a Yankee.

Mass Effect on Steam: 45€
Mass Effect on Gamers Gate: 15€
Mass Effect on Direct2Drive: 33.5€
Mass Effect in stores: 19€ and up

Steam is dying in Europe, it is devolving to what the console game market was in the 90ies.

Direct2Drive and GamersGate is what Steam set out to be but never tried to do. Cheaper prices for Digital Content. Now Steam service is a stupid excuse for overpriced and region locked games.

I use steam for the community features and ease of use and what not.. but as a european/middle east, I never buy games from it..  it is more expensive then the games at the store; which is just a walk of a mile or so. so yeah.. valve is using ip discrimination, but what can you do...