Steamusers in the EU won’t be duped by false sales anymore, as legislation forces publishers to be more transparent with game prices. Thanks to these new rules, Steam pages will have to show the lowest price a game has been sold for, as well as its current and discounted price tags.
This legislation is intended to stop storefronts from fluctuating game prices so frequently that it’s harder to spot if a sale is legitimate. Now, with the cheapest recent price visible, it should be easier to spot if a publisher is misrepresenting a sale, hopefully stopping the practice of increasing a price right before the sale season, so the usual cost appears to be the discount.
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As you can see in the screenshot, these rules will change the layout of a Steam page. Now, much more space is dedicated to breaking down a game’s price, increasing transparency and hopefully allowing buyers to make more informed decisions when using Steam.
Frustratingly, not all EU member states are using the system just yet. The Omnibus Directive, officially named the Enforcement and Modernisation Directive,came into effect last year, but not all EU countries have adopted it just yet. All members are planning to roll it out, however, so anyone in the EU should see the changes to the storefront soon.
Given how useful the tool will be, it’s not clear ifValvehas plans to roll it out worldwide, although it would be under no obligation to do so. In the meantime, those of us not in the EU can useSteamDB’s unofficial extensionto access this information while browsing through sale items, so we don’t buy something that was actually falsely represented as discounted.
It remains to be seen when other storefronts start giving users this information, although this may be less of an issue elsewhere. Steam is infamous for its lax attitude regarding the games that are sold on its platforms, giving publishers a great deal of freedom in what they sell, and how they sell it - including abrupt changes to game prices just to get their games listed in the summer sale.
That being said, Steam did make arare intervention with its community marketplace a few weeks ago. Now, if an item is listed at a price significantly higher than the usual market value, funds will be held for around a week. Hopefully, this will discourage scammers from using the platform, making it harder for them to make a quick buck.
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