Report: Steam Allows Publishers To Crack Down On Cross-Region Gifting

[Steven Bogos]

Report: Steam Allows Publishers To Crack Down On Cross-Region Gifting

Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance comes with a new "AllowCrossRegionTradingAndGifting" tag.

Valve and Steam can try to hide (or at least, not specifically mention) things to us, but the gurus at Steam DB [http://steamdb.info/sub/36077/] see all (specifically, all of the Steam database). This time, they've dug up a curious new tag attached to Konami's just-released Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance: "AllowCrossRegionTradingAndGifting". In Revengeance's case, the flag is set to "no", which means that players cannot gift or trade copies of the game to players in different regions.

For those not in the know, Steam (until now) has allowed players in different regions to trade or gift copies of games to anyone around the world. While this can be used as a sort of "loophole" to get around expensive region pricing, it has also been used in the past to get around regionally censored games, such as Left 4 Dead 2 in Australia.

But it now looks like that is all coming to an end, as I can certainly see this tag being very popular with publishers, who wish to more strictly control regional pricing. It's unknown how this will effect the sale of retail CD keys purchased from regions other than your home region.

Early reports are indicating that this flag is so far only applying to the Eastern Europe and South American regions of the game, where the prices are traditionally lower than the rest of the world.

We've contacted Valve for an official statement on the matter, and will keep you posted.

Source: NeoGAF [http://steamdb.info/sub/36077/]

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[loa]

So will they fix their fucking prices then? Will $ no longer be = ??
Will adult germans and australians be able to legally "import" a not retardedly censored version of a game on their own?
If yes, crack down all you want.

If not, I'll just no longer buy "violent" games on steam period.

 

[Clive Howlitzer]

That also sucks if you try to buy a gift for a friend who lives in one of those regions and aren't aware of it.

 

[Antitonic]

See, now this is disappointing. I like to buy gifts for Steam friends for Christmas for fun, and this looks like it'll cause problems for that. Well, it's good to know that generosity is less important than profit.

I know this is targeted at scammers and others cheating the system, but there are legitimate reasons for cross-region trading.

 

[Grabehn]

Early reports are indicating that this flag is so far only applying to the Eastern Europe and South American regions of the game, where the prices are traditionally lower than the rest of the world.

South American countries have "traditionally" lower prices? IF only we didn't get fucked over almost every other day with double the price just because of someone applying a ridiculous 1:1 conversion this would make sense, but the fact that most people create North American accounts by default just to get around stupid restrictions or pricing shows that it isn't true at all.

 

[vdrandom]

We haven't been allowed to trade (EDIT: and gift) many new region locked AAA games on steam outside CIS (aka ex-USSR) for a couple of years now. How different is this?

 

[Ed130 The Vanguard]

We haven't been allowed to trade many new region locked AAA games on steam outside CIS (aka ex-USSR) for a couple of years now. How different is this?

First time its expanded beyond those areas, and those tended to be locked in as the Russian Localization as well.

While it sucks for those who don't abuse the system I can see where Valve is going with this. Now if they could fix the Dollar=Euro issue and drop prices in Aus (and by extension New Zealand) that would make this go down much smoother.

 

[Chaos Marine]

I was surprised to see Metal Gear Rising appear after I turned off a Steam game and saw it there. Intrigued, I clicked on it and it brought me to the home page, apparently it's region locked so I can't even pre-order it which is a balls considering it's dirt cheap at the moment.

 

[List]

Isn't this more because of digital sales tax than greedy publishers though?

 

[vdrandom]

those tended to be locked in as the Russian Localization as well.

Yeah, well, most of those had English version available at least. Made it much more bearable for me. Funny thing is that I'd be more than glad to pay their full price to region and language unlock them.

 

[mistwolf]

Isn't this more because of digital sales tax than greedy publishers though?

Nope. Publishers already set the prices on Steam, which is why there isn't parity. The ability to cross-gift has been a huge bug in their craw. Look at how they pushed Green Man Gaming into keeping price parity (Which they now get around by sucking the loss and paying the difference themselves) when GMG became the go-to for buying Steam games from Australia.

 

[Albino Boo]

So will they fix their fucking prices then? Will $ no longer be = ??

The Euro price includes sales tax or VAT in the price which by EU law is at minimum of 15%. The difference between the two currencies has been around 18%-28% for the last 5 years. The difference is not going to Valve but to the respective national governments.

 

[Glademaster_v1legacy]

I know Steam does sales and all but who ever keeps the games at $=? needs to stop if this goes through.

 

[Evil Smurf]

This was how I got Saints Row 4 though! I hope Ubisoft play nice and let me get the uncensored verson.

 

[Albino Boo]

I know Steam does sales and all but who ever keeps the games at $=? needs to stop if this goes through.

Look at my post above yours

The Euro price includes sales tax or VAT in the price which by EU law is at minimum of 15%. The difference between the two currencies has been around 18%-28% for the last 5 years. The difference is not going to Valve but to the respective national governments.

If you want to have a free at the point of use health service you are going to have to pay more for your games

 

[Fulbert]

No English versions for me anymore, I guess. Crud.

I wonder what happens if I buy a steamworks game from, say, gamersgate. Will Steam crack down on that, too?

 

[Caiphus]

Snip

This is all correct and I agree with it.

In all honesty, I've never engaged in cross-region trading. Stopping this while also allowing publishers to discriminate price by region stinks a little, though.

So murrf.

Murrf I say.

 

[lancar]

I've been helping a few of my german friends get uncensored versions of their games using this. They'll be very disappointed to learn that it will no longer work.

While it's also a bit of a drag that I might not be able to buy cheaper steam keys anymore either, that in itself doesn't bother me too much. Steam sales are ridiculously plentiful, and I'm patient enough to wait until what I'm interested in becomes teh cheap.