Call Of Duty 4 Oz Steam Price Doubles Overnight
The eagle eyes of tipster Lev Arris picked up on the fact that Activision’s Call of Duty 4 offering on Steam close to doubled in price last night, from $US 49.95 to $US 88.50.
For comparison, here’s the US version of Steam’s CoD 4 page with the original deal.
According to a local Activision representative, the $US 49.95 price for our region was an error on Steam’s part, not Activision’s, and should never have been listed as such, as it was essentially undercutting Oz retailers. The increase is therefore a correction rather than a planned mark-up. Regardless, it still smarts.
Props to those who noticed the deal during the 11 or so days it lasted.
Steam – Call of Duty® 4: Modern Warfareâ„¢ [Steam Powered]
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Comments
there’s just no way to make me feel any better about this kind of corrupt and indecent violation, other than say, gathering up a mob and lynching or dropping the marketing manager of activision Asia-pacific/Australia of a high ledge and watching him fall, and continuing to do so until the regime changes.
at the least it’s incompetence, at the most, it’s patent, ostentatious greed that a company would do this without apology or consequence to customers who are going to be paying more to download games than to buy them from the shelves at RRP.
if it’s more important to activision to have shelf sales, just don’t sell your games on steam. just do what THQ did, hold your hands over your ears, eyes and mouths and pretend the internet doesn’t exist for customers in australia. i konw Activision can be deaf dumb and blind to reality already, the catalogue of products they publish speaks for itself as does it actions.
the old expression, heads will roll feels appropriate, but it’s not enough, a stand needs to be made in the way companies price their products, and it should not be dictated by companies who do absolutely nothing and expect things to stay the same.
I will never be an activsion customer again in australia, i will buy activision products overseas instead if necessary and there’s just so very little you can do to stop it from happening before your competition and the consumers tears your company apart.
i can understand Activision feels that $102 AU is appropriate to the market, but who are they kidding here. you can go into a retail store and get this game for $80 or less from overseas, much much less in all cases. i felt it was too expensive at $50, now its just customer rape at $88.50
I’ now gonna buy all my Activision games at EB second hand so they never see a cent of my hard earned cash
Doogan: Buying 2nd hand games from EB is for chumps. They buy the games for next to nothing and sell it back to the consumer $5 below full price. Play-asia is your friend.
what a joke, its probably some sort of agreement activision have with retailers to reduce digital distribution in australia (so retailers dont complain i guess)….as if anyone would pay same prices and then dl massive files. Thank you so much for pointing out play-asia, I never heard of that until now…
When physical medium costs less than a digital download, something is really screwed up there.
yer absolute rubbish!
Luckily i got it for $49.95 at the right time.
RIPOFF!
New Zealanders are getting ripped off just the same. I just logged in to see the same price as in Australia; $88.50.
Luckily, I got in quick.
/signed
I bought COD4 from play-asia. I even had it shipped express, And guess how much i paid? 55 AUD!!!
There’s no way i’m paying STEAM for USD 80+ + additional 6GB download required. Hell no!
Lucky for those shops that sell the original games in ASIA. They’ll be getting lots of customers :)
Activision, you make me sick.
This is not the way to treat your consumers.
If you’re making a profit at US$50, then you’re making a profit at AU$60 (roughly), it’s called currency conversion. There is no need to sell at this ridiculous price.
Unless you’re selling at a loss in US and recoup the money outside-US markets. While I highly doubt this, it does sound more logical than this non-sense.
This needs to blow up all beyond hell for them to regret ever doing this.
Just sent this to Activision Australia’s “Report piracy” email:
Hi! Just a BIG THANK YOU for increasing your COD4 price on Steam to $88 USD for Australian consumers! You have NO justification for an increased cost, considering that the cost of distributing of your product via Steam is borne by the consumer.
You have successfully driven hundreds of outraged consumers to seek alternate sources for your product. Play-Asia, Zest will both benefit. And no doubt the pirates on bit torrent and other questionable p2p networks will observe an increase in demand.
Have a look at some comments of the customers you have lost here: http://www.kotaku.com.au/games/2007/11/call_of_duty_4_oz_steam_price_doubles_overnight.html
Good work!
——————————-
Now, in all seriousness, here’s a Pete the Pirate Top Tip: Stop thinking your customers in Australia are idiots. They are justifiably outraged by your price gouging.
- An angry ex-customer.
All im gonna say is this is BS on Activisions part ETQW was out for a month and it got a price hike to was that a mistake? Unlikeley nice big fat lie there!
Yeah I bought ET:QW on Steam and it turns out nobody is playing and the game itself plays like nothing more than a MOD. I can’t believe how badly put together it is. It’s not even worth the US $49.95 I paid for it more like $19.95 because hardly anyone plays online it’s worthless. ‘Take the Data Brain’.. what are you guys THREE? What’s worse is I can’t even sell it and I can’t take it back for a refund.
I was considering COD4 on Steam but not anymore. I had heard of Zest and PA before and not bothered but now I’ll give them serious thought.
Good christ. I’m Canadian, and when our dollar was roughly where the Australian dollar is now, games were about $60-$70 brand new. This is insane. Games should not cost $100 for digital distribution, unless the exchange rate is horrid.
Was going to buy it off steam this week, but play-asia here I come!!!
Reply from steam about the matter:
Thank you for contacting Steam Support. We apologize for any inconvenience.
The correct price for Call of Duty 4 purchased through Steam in Australia or New Zealand is $88.50 USD.
We will not be able to offer you the US price. Please note that the pricing for this game is set by Activision not Steampowered Games.
If you have any further questions, please let us know – we will be happy to assist you.
Thanks steam, but I’ll be buying the game with cd’s etc at a local store for $80 rather than the $120 activision wants to charge us for a DOWNLOAD version
Why would anyone pay close to $100 australian to download off steam when you can buy it for $79 in stores, or even alot less of Play-Asia.
I do not blame steam at all this is not their fault, blame the greed of Activision. Sounding more and more like EA every day.
Lets bash em!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Steam could do something about this too. They could say “Screw you Activision, we’re not charging people in different countries different amount for the same thing. If you don’t like it, you don’t have to distribute through us!”. Thats what Apple did when the RIAA wanted to charge different amounts for different songs.
Ah, so that’s what happened. I went in to Steam a few days ago planning to buy CoD4, then saw it was twice as much as all the other games and didn’t buy it. I haven’t been buying many games of late because I can’t justify $100AUD for them, but being able to get stuff for $50USD off Steam has seen me getting a bunch lately.
So instead of this making me pay $100 for CoD4 in a bricks-and-mortar store, this made me buy some other game instead. Nice work.
EB games is for chumps. 120 for a game that they should be selling for 60 or 70. Plus the piece of crap that is ‘pre owned’ what a joke.
Anyways, I just checked out http://www.zest.co.th COD4 is 600 baht which = $21 AUD. Thats a massive difference.
if buying in a store, can the code be used to add it to steam? or not?
Just wondering, cause it works with some games, like valves own Half-Life 1 & 2 series etc, but it doesn’t work for others like BIoshock etc.
Pincus, you hit high, ill hit low. Then we’ll kick ‘em while they’re on the ground.
JB HI-FI are currently selling Call of Duty 4 for $44 to try and clear some stock, get in quick!