Your billing address doesn’t look like it matches up with your current country. Please contact support for assistance or use a payment method registered to your current address.

It seems to be caused by more bad programming on Valve’s part:

1. The software incorrectly believes it can detect what country you are in based on your IP address.
2. The software incorrectly believes the country you are in affects the validity of your credit card.

Unfortunately there is no easy work around. The first time this happened to me the solution was to change my IP address. I suppose you could also use PayPal instead to pay but PayPal sucks in its own right (their terms of services basically give them carte blanche to rip you off seven ways to Sunday.) A third solution, one which I haven’t tried, could be to sign up for a disposable CC number and set your billing address to something the software approves off. I don’t know if this works.

The second time it happened, some months later, I just put my credit card back in my wallet. I’m not going to fight to spend my money.

I really want an idea like Steam to work but after my experiences so far I think I have to move on. Steam is not a new product – they have had plenty of chances to fix these shortcomings. Maybe Direct 2 Drive is better?