It attempts to show you the price in local currency, however you pay in $USD. So it will cost whatever $9.95 is converted to your currency.

We can only price items at the current exchange if we have worldwide distribution rights. In this case, Kalypso is on board for the Sins expansions' (eventual) Europe retail release, so we can't undercut their price.

Kalypso will be selling the Sins' expansions as an Impulse affiliate digitally and also at retail next year when the full expansion is released.

Looks like european customers need to buy from Impulse before a deal is made with european distributors ....

Yet another company that thinks its ok to rip off its European customers how can they possibly justify a difference of 40% above the exchange rate especially for a digital download. My opinion of stardock has just plumeted and I won't be buying either the original or the expansion I had been waiting for 1.1

I can see no way that localised language version's would add 40% to the total budget so they could make them all available from impulse in USD I can even see justification for charging the extra to localise it, imo software should cost almost the same worldwide (allowing for distribution costs local taxes) especially on a download. We constantly pay more in Europe (the UK is noticably more expensive than the mainland) and there is an almost never ending list of excuses from shipping costs to marketing laws but when you dig into it the excuses only ever seem to make up about half of the difference in price

Bet the boxed product costs 40% more when it comes out as well!

There are various reasons for those price difference:

- localization costs in euro

- various languages that needs a localization, with a relative small user  base in each language that will bough this expansion

- price adapted to the euros market. For example, in France the retail box for an AAA game is generally 50 euros

- price set independantly of the exchange rate between euros and USD.

BTW, the current exchange rate between USD and euros is 1.4 when few month ago it was near 1.6. If it continue like this, the overpricing would appear smaller in few months  

Yeah, I know, it sucks. I'm in the US, andI think it sucks because charging only in $USD was a staple of Stardock's online shopping and it always made people happy because they could say "Finally, I'm not getting screwed!".

I don't think full boxes will have this problem though. At least I sincerely hope they don't let their EU publishers sell it through Impulse. I think this is a pretty unique case because Entrenchment is online-only, so if they want the non-English speaking population to get it at the same time, well, they have to swallow this crap. I don't imagine they're entirely happy with this themselves.

Honestly though I still don't quite understand why they can't just say screw it to Kalypso and insist that if people want to buy the US version directly from them they can, and if they want to buy a localized from Kalypso (even an English localized ) then Kalypso can charge whatever they want. Because, really, Kalypso has nothing to do with the US version. But I guess it's not that easy!

To put it in perspective, this is the same company that said "Well, we can't undercut the retailers selling our box" so instead they added a music cd + stuff to the box you get from them. And after that, they actually dropped the price for that because the box ended up weighing less than they were told and they could afford to ship them cheaper. So I don't think they were sitting there "Hmm, how can we get an extra 2 euros...."

I have to agree with unikey, these kind of stunts would place Stardock in the "good" company along with Microsoft, Adobe etc.

Have you looked at reply #27 in this thread http://forums.impulsedriven.com/326317/page/2/#1899207 (weekly impusle update - 3rd october) ?

It is very instructive ...

Perharps, but the result is the same: regional pricing to prevent someone from being undercut

I find this greatly ironical, since I came to the site today on impulse (no pun intended) because I have come to respect Stardock a great deal for not ripping me off - and being exceptionally good value for money. (I bought Sins as a download before it was released at retail in the UK (I believe at the time there was not even a projected publisher for the UK).)

I had been reading Brad's article on piracy and I thought to myself, "hey, I wonder if they've got anything new over at Stardock, seeing as they're one of the few companies left who aren't going to to shiv me up for the priviledge of paying them money!"

And I find then that I have to pay extra for something for the priviledge of Some Geezers (Kalypso apparently) so the French (et al) can have a translation. (A pittance extra granted, - but enough that on my extremely limited budget, I could have afforded a fiver to burn on a whim but £8 is discouraging me. So I'll have to wait.)

I'll be brutally honest; I don't give a flying frack about alternate language translations - because I speak only English. I find it personally offensive that the business people somewhere (and not just talking computer games here, DVDs as well) choose to deliberatly stuff the UK - and Austraila (and any other-primarily English-only speaking country) - for no reason other than they think they can. There's no damned reason all the English-speaking places couldn't have been in the same region for DVDs, for example (not that the whole regioning thing wasn't a deliberate attempt to stuff the customer anyway!) I really hate having to wait six months plus for games (etc) to come out in the UK - if they do at all - because some fracker decided some time ago that geography was a better barrier than language to make money off.

I object to paying for things I don't need, quadruply so when totally unnecessary. It's the principle more than the money too. If for, example, a PDF book  company went round saying, "actually, we're going to charge you an extra 50% because you live in Europe so you have to download the French and German (etc) translation too" they'd be laughed out of the market, surely? What's the difference?

I can undestand a price rise to pay for translators for nonEnglish speakers (or vise-versa for games from nonEnglish designers). Fair do's, somebody's got to spend a lot of work to do that. I can understand a price rise for a retail box set (duh). But to charge people extra based on geography for an electronic download IN THE GAME'S ORIGINAL LANGUAGE is frankly ludicrous and there is no amount of justification that Kalypso - whom I for the moment am holding to the lion's share of the blame - can give me that doesn't amount to corporate greed. They (being Kalypso, since it would appear Stardock is being held over a barrel by their pricing ineptitude) could I suppose, say, "well, we have to charge extra for Europe, so we can't show preference to you Brits," to which I would reply, "fair enough, so what are we getting extra, then? Oh, nothing? So you're charging us for something most of us can't use? Nice. Thanks for that. And the reason I can't buy the version that doesn't have the extras I can't use is...what again?" They could say it was something to do with it being the EU regulations or something equally daft (which would merely shift the corporate greed to the EU) or that it would mess up their distribution software or something (which would translate to "we can't be arsed to make any effort on your behalf.").

My confidence in Stardock has taken a minor hit; not a fatal one, since my desire to play decent games is greater - for the moment - than even EA's ham-handed blundering (they're the new Microsoft. They suck, but I don't have any other options if I want to do the things I want to do). And I'm giving Stardock the benefit of the doubt, here, because I'm (probably naively) hoping this sort of thing isn't going to become commonplace.

(If it does, I think in the long run, it'll be more to Stardock's detriment, since if I have to pay extra for the same thing, I for one will be less likely to buy direct from Stardock (which of course gives them all their well-earned profit) and more likely to buy the thing from retail; if the price isn't going to be different to me, I may as well squeeze every last, gasping drop of value out of my purchase (which would be physical disks, boxes and manuals and stuff). (Yes, I'm that tight.)

Kalypso, on the other hand, just filed themselves right up their with EA and Microsoft (and Sony et al and whoever verminous cretin came up with regioning may they burn in eternal agony) on the "complete money-grubbing doodoo-heads" list.

Forgive the somewhat lengthy rant, folks, but this sort of thing has been getting me aggravated for some time now...take it as it is intended; rather verbose, exasperated irritation, rather than boiling anger. It's a sort of backhanded compliment, actually, since I actually think highly enough of Stardock to believe that my opinion actually does matter to them, unlike many other large companies who shall remain nameless. And I hold some hope that enough British people say "I say! That's just not cricket!" there is a remote possibility that Stardock may take that into account next time. I'm not going to shriek and cry blue murder and never buy from Stardock again, because ultimately, at the end of the day, I just want to play games too.

Especially since I'm one of those defensive-type, turtle players who are going to benefit from Entrenchment...

Oddly enough, not everyone in the world knows people in the US...!

I suppose I could - and maybe will - find a proxy as and when, but assuming that it is cheaper, it also means, does it not, that Stardock gets less of the money I spend. I'd frankly prefer them to get all of the money I spend on their games, seeing as they made the things... And doing so also points out what an entirely pointless exercise it was in the first place. (And the more people try and clamp down on this sort of thing, the more like EA you become. Path to the Dark Side, that is.) My morals, in the end, only hold out as far as the cheapest place I can buy something. While I wholeheartedly support Stardock, if I can get something cheaper somewhere, I'm going to do so, being an extremely tight bastard with limited funds... (I mean, really, unless the blokes making the thing you really love are in danger of going out of business of something and desparatly needs the money, it's daft not too.)