The Witcher 2 - Imminent Price Rise for Australia

In Oz, there is no sales tax payable for online purchases up to $1000!!
 
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Note the word officially there. Amazon for example has a German store so if they want to sell stuff here they have to follow the local rules. Now if I order in some obscure US shop and manage to convince them to ship to Germany they aren't obligated to follow the local laws since I buy in the US.

Correct, that is why it is a good idea to have Steam games gifted by a friend in the US to Australia. The other plus is you get the uncut version. Or just order from an online distributor. I have had good experiences from a few UK sellers and the boxed game arrives pretty quickly.

It must have been years since I went into an Australia game shop or bought a game over the counter. Sale prices here are still normally above what the rest of the world pays.

We have the same laws on books here that make them much more expensive than the rest of the world. I haven't bought a book in Australia for years either and funnily enough our two largest book sellers just went under. It will probably happen to the games sellers as well.
 
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Since I'm not aware of an Australian-based digital vendor, I can't see how local retail price maintenance laws would apply to GOG (Polish, I presume), Valve (US), GamersGate (Swedish) etc.

My thoughts on this were:

- Publisher offers to sell game in region under certain conditions (such as pricing).

- Because of the above, the publisher might only agree to sell the product if the developer abides by those pricing conditions. Generally the publisher probably has control over digital distribution rights. GoG and The Witcher 2 may have an unusual relationship, but still need to abide by this.

- As for why digital distribution was cheaper earlier on - perhaps the publisher deals had not been finalised at that point of time.

So I'm thinking it is more contract based, rather than a law.
 
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Must be Austrians, we don't have any commies here!! :)
 
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