You are right about the price in the image being 39.99 dollars, my mistake on the initial number. However, the core issue remains. I do not live in the UK or any EU member state, yet the price in my region is nearly 2000 TRY, which is roughly 60 dollars. No VAT or regional tax can explain a 20 dollar markup on a digital bundle. This is not just a tax issue. It is a complete failure in regional pricing that forces some players to pay 50 percent more for the exact same pixels. Defending this as just taxes is misleading when the price gap is this massive. We need fair and standardized pricing that does not exploit players based on their location
Assuming TRY is Turkish Lira. Just saying, I've lived overseas in many countries and have had many waivers to avoid these government imposed fees.
VAT on Digital Services: Foreign and domestic providers of digital services (including games, apps, streaming music/video) are required to apply a 20% VAT to consumers in Turkey.
Digital Services Tax: A 7.5% tax is applied to the gross revenue of digital services, including the sale of digital games, in-game purchases, and virtual items. This applies to platforms like Steam, PlayStation Store, and Xbox, often resulting in higher local prices.
Physical Console Taxes: Physical game consoles are subjected to high taxes. Reports indicate that taxes, including a 50% Special Consumption Tax and 18-20% VAT, can effectively double the price of consoles like the PlayStation 5 or Xbox.
KomutanBarcara, listing physical console taxes like ÖTV for a digital in-app purchase is completely irrelevant. We are buying digital crystals, not hardware like a PlayStation 5. These are entirely different tax categories and rules.
Even using the 20% VAT and 7.5% Digital Services Tax you mentioned, the total is 27.5%. However, the price gap we see in the store is over 50%. Tax doesn't explain a $20 increase on a $40 pack. Many other global companies like Steam or Spotify manage regional pricing perfectly fine. Using irrelevant physical hardware taxes to defend these prices doesn't change the math. The gap is simply too wide
Capital Games Team
