Bad news Australia: XCOM 2 is $127 to pre-order on Steam [Update: it's now $85]
Update: 2K Australia got in touch this morning to point out that the price has been decreased to US$59.99 in Australia, which is just below $85 locally. The publisher said the price had been published in error.
Original story [September 11]:
XCOM 2 got a new Steam page today, which is good news for anyone who, for whatever reason, wants to pre-order it. It'll set you back $59.95 if you live in North America, but other regions aren't so lucky. In Australia the price is US$89.95, which at the current exchange rate makes it a whopping $127.45.
That's not for the special edition, or the premium edition, or the super-premium-deluxe edition (none of which actually exist at the moment): that's just for regular old XCOM 2 – though you'll get a Resistance Warrior Pack for pre-ordering.
Australians often gripe about the price of software, but $128 is taking the piss a bit. While it might have made sense to jack up the Australian price when our dollar was at parity with the US, that's not the case anymore: the AU gets you 70 US cents at present.
It's not the first time this has happened on Steam, and it's definitely not the first time it's happened to a 2K game: Games.on.net reports that Civilization: Beyond Earth was similarly expensive.
We've reached out to 2K's Australian office for comment.
The biggest gaming news, reviews and hardware deals
Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.
Shaun Prescott is the Australian editor of PC Gamer. With over ten years experience covering the games industry, his work has appeared on GamesRadar+, TechRadar, The Guardian, PLAY Magazine, the Sydney Morning Herald, and more. Specific interests include indie games, obscure Metroidvanias, speedrunning, experimental games and FPSs. He thinks Lulu by Metallica and Lou Reed is an all-time classic that will receive its due critical reappraisal one day.