Darkfall has been reduced to $29.95 Euro/USD, and no I did not make a typo there. Those of you buying the Euro edition will be happy to know that Aventurine has reduced the price of the Euro edition to match the US edition, pre-VAT.
But the news gets better for our fledgling one year old MMO: Darkfall will be coming to more retail outlets and online shops. Where does this mean? In all likelihood, we will probably see Darkfall on Steam, Direct2Drive, or ImpulseDriven (or any combination of the three) as well as Wal Mart, Target, Play.co.uk, Game (for you UK’ers), Gamestop, and various other locations and localized game retail shops.
With Darkfall on digital distribution services, the game is likely to see a whole host of newbies flying in from all around the world. Hopefully the current servers will accommodate, and by servers I of course refer to the “Newbie Population Control” guild.
With the free trial, newbie protection program, and new player guild, as well as the lowered price for the game itself, there has never been a better time than now to dive into Darkfall if you have not give the game the opportunity.
MMO Fallout 
“Those of you buying the Euro edition will be happy to know that Aventurine has sucked down the VAT cost, so your copy will cost exactly the same as someone buying from across the pond.”
It still costs more in euros.
I don’t see why people should be happy to get ripped off.
Hello LKZ,
The cost of Darkfall in euros, pre VAT, was reduced to match the US cost. I should have been more specific, and I apologize for the confusion.
What they are doing, essentially, is ensuring that Darkfall is at the same base price, with deviations based on tax. When Darkfall hits retail outlets in the US, it will cost between $29.95 to $33, due to deviations in in local tax rates.
Your issue of getting “ripped off” sits not with Aventurine, who is getting no more from Euro players than US players, but with the VAT tax, and there is not exactly anything Aventurine can do about it. Given that US players would not pay VAT, reducing Darkfall’s European price to 17% below the US price would simply result in a mass exodus from the US to European server, with new players simply purchasing the European copy due to the price difference. Now imagine the hit that the European server would take if thousands of people were connecting and playing from the US.
Cheers,
29.95 Euro = 37.051145 US-Dollar
29.95 US-Dollar = 24.2098456 Euro
24.2098456 * 1.19 = 28.8097163 euros — that’s how much one’d charge in euros to get the same amount of cash from EU as from US customers (assuming the 19% German VAT rate; the UK is lower at 17.5%, Spain is at 16%, and the smaller Scandinavian countries Sweden and Denmark do hit 25%)
The 29.99 includes the VAT, so at 19% German, the price of the game itself is approximately 24 Euros, which translates to approximately $30 USD.
The base game costs the same around the world, but the Euro price tag seems higher because it already factors in tax. If they listed the US price with tax included, it would be closer to $35 in many states, which is what people will be paying if/when a boxed version goes on sale in US stores, due to a combination of local and state taxes. Several states in the US already pay sales taxes on digital downloads, making the price gap even lower.
I clarified the original post saying that they were “exactly the same” to clarify that they are the same pre-tax. The differences in price, post-tax, are minimal, and due to the and have to do with a difference in tax rates, not the game itself being more expensive in one country.