Steam: display regional game prices on Steam Store in Opera

Martin Brinkmann
Oct 22, 2012
Opera
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3

Valve is operating several localized versions of its Steam Store just like Amazon is running multiple Amazon websites for certain regions and countries of the world. You can only buy games in the local Steam store, which sometimes is rather disappointing considering that you may find better offers in other Steam stores. I'm not only talking about making a bargain by buying a game for a cheaper price, but also about special offers that are limited to a specific Steam store or games that are available in languages that you prefer to play the games in.

Still, you can't really buy games in other Steam stores even though you can browse them online on the Steampowered website.I have revealed several options to bypass the limitation in how to buy Steam games from other regional stores, and gifting was the option of choice

Steam, as of right now, does not limit the gifting of games. This means that you can receive gifts from a gamer that has access to another store. If you do not know anyone in a particular region, you can instead create an account there using a VPN and gift the games to your main account this way. I have not checked if this is against the Steam TOS so make sure you do that to be on the safe side.

The Opera extension Steam Regional Prices has been designed to provide you with the means to quickly check up on the pricing of a particular game available on Steam in all Steam stores.

steam store prices

The extension will automatically convert the local currencies into the currency used on your local Steam store to make the comparison even easier. The example on the screenshot above for instance highlights that people from Russia pay almost 50% less than gamers from Australia for the same game. And even if you do not have a friend in Russia, you could still have one in the UK or US to gift you the game.

steam stores

The second example highlights again a huge variance in pricing. Russia is first again, followed by the UK, US, EU countries and finally Australia. If you are living in the US, you could have a buddy from the UK gift you the game to save about $10 for it.

The Opera extensions works right out of the box on all article pages on Steam. It does not work on listing pages though, which means that you need to click through to display the game price listing.

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Comments

  1. Grantwhy said on October 23, 2012 at 1:56 pm
    Reply

    There is probably a very good reason why Steam are charging Australians way more than people in other countries ……

    ……. but I’ve got a horrible feeling the reason is “because we can” :-(

  2. ilev said on October 22, 2012 at 8:21 pm
    Reply

    Steam Gaming Platform Vulnerable to Remote Exploits; 50 Million at Risk

    More than 50 million users of the Steam gaming and media distribution platform are at risk for remote compromise because of weaknesses in the platform’s URL protocol handler..

    The steam:// URL protocol is used to connect to game servers, load and uninstall games, backup files, run games and interact with news, profiles and download pages offered by Valve, the company that operates the platform. Attackers, Auriemma and Ferrante said, can abuse specific Steam commands via steam:// URLs to inject attacks and run other malicious code on victim machines….

    http://threatpost.com/en_us/blogs/steam-gaming-platform-vulnerable-remote-exploits-50-million-risk-101912?utm_source=Newsletter_102212&utm_medium=Email+Marketing&utm_campaign=Newsletter&CID=&CID=

  3. Hollister said on October 22, 2012 at 7:23 pm
    Reply

    Great extension. I’ll try it.
    Thanks for the info!

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