Part of the games on Steam will rise in price due to the "tax on Google"

Valve increases the price of the game in its digital distribution of Steam games. The reason for this was the introduction of the so-called "tax on Google."

A few days ago, the Ukrainian studio GSC World shared with the community information about the increase in prices for games on Steam due to the introduction of VAT payment when selling electronic content.
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The changes will take effect on January 16, 2017, and the studios' notification by Valve via e-mailing was made on January 1, 2017. According to representatives of GSC World, compulsory payment of VAT will increase the cost of content, on average, by 21%.


Screenshot screenshot from Valve

In this case, not everyone is going to shift the payment of VAT on the shoulders of players. Thus, Wargaming, through its official account in the social network VKontakte, stated that it would take upon itself the “tax on Google” and would not raise prices. Another industry giant, Sony, also responded to the situation. The Japanese do not plan to raise prices for Russia.

The situation on the market has evolved multidirectional. Some companies almost immediately notified their users of the upcoming price increase (as Google did, for example), others prefer not to reduce sales by shifting the tax burden onto users' shoulders and take the costs themselves.

The Google Tax Act came into effect on January 1, 2017. It involves the payment of VAT by foreign companies when providing digital services or selling content. The motivation for adopting the law was that domestic organizations pay VAT, which puts them in an unequal position relative to foreign companies. Subscriptions to online services, sales of computer programs, games, e-books, databases, images, music, and digital distribution of games, the center of which for the PC market is the Steam platform, fell under the law.