Humble Bundle Switches To Steam-Like Region-Based Pricing For The Humble Store

Video game store Humble Bundle announced that the Humble Store has switched to more traditional Steam-like prices, with different prices depending on your region. European customers will have to pay more for some games if the publisher chooses to set higher prices in Europe.

Humble Bundle is mostly known for its Humble Indie Bundles and smaller weekly bundles. So far, Humble Bundle has mostly been about indie games. Even though the company released a couple of bundles with major publishers like EA, small developers and publishers are still on center stage. Similarly, the company has started experimenting with ebook and audio book bundles.

Backed by Y Combinator and SV Angel, the startup recently opened the Humble Store, a more traditional store that allows you to purchase individual games just like you would on Steam or gog.com.

The Humble Store has had compelling arguments to seduce gamers. Most games are cross-platform, DRM-free and come with a Steam key to activate the game on Steam. Moreover, charities, such as the American Red Cross, Child’s Play Charity, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, World Land Trust and Charity Water, receive 10 percent of the proceedings — Humble Bundle keeps 15 percent.

But one of the key differentiating element was also pricing. Everything was in USD, so you knew that you wouldn’t have to pay 20 or 30 percent more because of price differences between regions like on competing platforms. If your bank account wasn’t in USD, PayPal is pretty good at providing a good conversion rate.

Now, there are two scenarios. If Humble Bundle handles the conversion, it will sell the game at the same price in USD, EUR or GBP, without adding any VAT. But if the publisher wants to set different prices, the company will let the publisher do so. Like on Steam, there is apparently no way to choose your currency, so European customers will sometimes be forced to pay more for the same game. Many publishers could now choose to set the same prices in USD, EUR and GBP on the Humble Store and Steam.

For now, the Humble Store only added Euro and British Pound. If you don’t live in a country that accepts these currencies, you will still pay in U.S. dollars. The big bundles and the weekly bundles will still work the same way — everything will be in USD.

via TechCrunch » Startups http://ift.tt/1cZCuqZ