Pheace: You realize this disappeared ages ago right? With the devaluation of the dollar vs the Euro in the meantime and the fact that EU prices include VAT while US prices are pre-sales tax you're hardly getting ripped off, in fact, you may even be paying less to the developers comparatively than a US person. Vat rate = 21% for me while the currency difference is less than 15%
idbeholdME: Isn't Washington the only US state where Steam collected sales tax? Or was it changed?
I am by no means an expert in this area and the last info I read about this is at least 3, maybe more years old. If something changed in that time, then I'm definitely not up to date on the current situation.
It used to be only where they had a physical presence which is several different states but it's increasing now because of changes in US law end of last year. It's a matter of time till all states are adding sales tax probably
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/21/us/politics/supreme-court-sales-taxes-internet-merchants.html That's slightly besides the point though since that merely affects the price the consumer is paying. For us to be scammed we should be treated unfairly (by the publisher), so they'd be asking us to pay more than someone in the US.
In the US the publisher's income from a $50 priced game is $50 (before store cuts etc).
In the EU a 50 Euro game you need to deduce sales tax -21% for the Netherlands, then compensate for currency difference +15%. From the percentages you can already see that the income for a publisher from us is actually 6% lower than a US sale.
This is why it's misleading to just look at sticker price. There used to be a fair argument for $1 not equalling 1Euro but that was back when the currency difference was 35-50%