After hearing good things about the latest version of The Sims, I decided to buy The Sims3. So I first headed to Steam, where to my surprise it turned out that Steam doesn't have *any* The Sims games. Well, no matter, I was going to compare prices first anyway, and Steam doesn't do well in that respect in Europe, due to their 1:1 dollar to euro conversion.
Next stop, the EA Store, checking if buying from the source is maybe cheapest. Far from! While I could find out that The Sims 3 in the USA costs $50 (36 Euro), the EA Store automatically sent me to the Belgian page. Not only didn't I want to buy the French or Dutch version of the game, I also certainly didn't want to pay the outrageous 60 Euro they asked there.
So I headed to Direct2Drive, where The Sims 3 was on offer for $50, but for USA and Canada online. But a helpful link sent me directly to Direct2Drive UK, where I finally bought The Sims 3 for £34.50 (39 Euro). Direct2Drive also has a very fast downloader, so it took only 2 hours for the complete 5.6 GB of the game. I don't know if that is the case for all versions, but mine came with $10 worth of 1,000 SimPoints to spend on microtransactions in the Sims store. Well, given the low quality and amount of content of some of the Sims 1 & 2 expansions, microtransactions might be the better deal here.
Lesson: If you live in Europe, be very, very careful what you pay for a game download. If you aren't, you might end up paying more than 50% more than if you had compared prices. Rule of thumb: If the price is being displayed in Euro, you are being scammed. Try to buy in dollars or pounds!
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