The VAT cost is added onto the retail price, and then withheld by steam. This does impact the dev because game prices are largely elastic - double the price and you sell half as many copies, halve the price and you sell double - so the increase due to VAT should result in lower sales.It's not a problem. You have to pay VAT in Europe (the closest thing in US jargon would be "sales tax" except it's a much bigger fraud and country-wide).
Who pays for it? Surely not the game developer.
So... if (note: "if") the USA come up with a special tax for foreign products, it will just mean that the US citizens will have to pay a little more.
Note that this is based on the location of the customer though, not the developer. If I sell a game from my own website to an EU citizen, I have to collect and withhold VAT for whatever country that customer is in. It doesn't matter if my store is based in Austin, Austria or Australia.
Also, it often is paid out of the developer's pocket somewhat. VAT percentages vary greatly per region, but often businesses want to charge a single price for all regions, say 30 euros. This means that the dev will make more/less money depending on which country the customer is in, as different percentages are withheld...
As usual, the EU doesn't give a shit about how impractical this scheme is...
That's good for steam, but has zero impact on (most) foreign devs.It's actually pretty good for Steam devs, anyway. Lower tax (supposedly) and all that.
e.g. as posted earlier, my steam earnings are not touched by the IRS.
