Steam is now Regionally restricted

[PsiChaos]

I never got the point of region locking. I mean how does ANYONE benefit? It feels like being a dick for the sake of being a dick.

I despise region-locking, but there is a complicated reason for it. At it's most basic though, there's a bunch of legal red tape in regards to product licenses and it's a lot of time and money to actually be allowed to distribute a product to multiple regions. There was also the NTSC/PAL compatibility issue back in the day, but that's mostly irrelevant today. That said, nothing really prevents anyone from selling a physical copy of a game from one region to another thanks to First Sale Doctrine, and most consoles have abandoned region-locking to cut down on console modding/hacking and pirating. Digital distribution vendors like Steam don't really have the luxury of First Sale Doctrine, since they technically don't sell a product, and most likely have some legal restrictions placed on them by license holders regarding which region can access which games. Fortunately, proxies or VPN makes accessing foreign marketplaces a cinch

 

[Fappy]

EDIT: Oh no, he just edited his profile to do some sensationalism crap. My opinion of him has lowered 10 points.

What kind of point scale are we using here? Is 10 a lot?

P.S. It's a TechTeam prank. Users can't pretend to be banned like this

 

[Dandres]

People are so easily bought. Tell them you are selling big games for half the price and they are willingly puting on DRM leash (which Steam has always been). And only after the collar becomes too tight to breath in they start to understand.

Agreed, I have been able to avoiding using Steam so far because of this. My computer is on a DRM free diet of games.

 

[RedDeadFred]

Don't you just love it when companies treat their customers like criminals? If this is as bad as it looks I hope Jim calls them out on Monday.

Demon ah!!!!!

I'm sure he'll have a field day with this. Maybe not this Monday though, unless he hasn't made the episode yet. I look forward to it.

Anyway..... what is the point of doing this? I don't plan on moving countries or anything, but how could they think this could be anything but bad?

 

[Lil_Rimmy]

Well, it only applies to gifts, however games that are banned in places like Australia (AKA HOTLINE MIAMI 2 WINK WINK) can't be bought here so I guess that's region locking? Huh, I guess that means I can't be gifted it, but then again, yay for the devs being nice to Australians.

 

[deleted+75193]

DELETED

 

[TheAsterite]

See, digital distribution has changed the rules a lot on how games can be sold profitably. The cost of selling another unit is virtually zero.

This is the funniest thing I've read in a while. So you're saying paying for an air conditoned warehouse with server/networking equipment or renting a cloud service, paying for the huge bandwidth required to upload games, paying for i.t. personnel, and paying the programmers who developed the distribution software is virtually zero?

 

[Shadow-Phoenix]

And they still don't have a decent refund policy than EA let alone customer service, they still price games around the world as £25-$25-25Euros, it's just bloody stupid, the region gifting restrictions annoy the hell out of me ebcause I've got friends all around the world, since this is to undercut key sellers why don't valve combat piracy?, oh wait gaben said ages ago that you can't combat it yet you'll try combatting key sellers yet fuck over the consumers anyway, if I cannot gift my friends a game in another region then I'm sorry but that is anti consumer to me, it prevents me from actually sending gifts to others that I made friends with, it completely throws out the fact we can make friends with others around the world yet we cannot make use of a service/feature that's been around for years now.

Seriously stop that shit, I don't care what's misunderstood, I've always seen Valve going down a slippery slope for years now, I still have games on their client but it doesn't stop me from seeing the bad they do, the bad will always be brought up over what good there is because we don't want the bad to exist.

 

[Elijin]

It bums me out this topic is filled with UK and Americans saying how its a non-issue, and people shouldnt have been trying to get super cheap games from obscure regions in the first place.

What about us Australians, who just wanted to pay a reasonable price for digital goods, and purchased US copies? It must be nice to live in a place where you hear something like this and can only think that people were abusing it for lols, and not that some places have ridiculous digital pricing.

 

[NuclearKangaroo]

This is but a stepping stone, to something far worse. Next thing, they'll have complete region locking on the games, and we are screwed, time to make sure the games I buy, comes from GoG.com, whenever possible.

And I hope Gabe will do something to change this, seems like there are very very evil people inside Valve, who aren't doing stuff, in the consumers' interest.

 

[faefrost]

I have to go with the "misleading thread" camp--it has only to do with gifted games, and for a pretty legit reason of preventing people from taking advantage of local pricing quirks.

STEAM IS NOT REGIONALLY RESTRICTED, YOUR THREAD TITLE IS INCORRECT.

The article you linked clearly says this applies to gifts, if it applied to games purchased through steam (NOT GIFTED THROUGH STEAM), it would mean that steam is region locked.

Ah as I expected the thread is full of hyperbole and clearly people haven't actually read the post.

This is to do with gifted games rather than just games in general, such as moving your PC to another country your games will still work fine.

I DID read it, and saw this:

The restrictions may also apply to more than just gifts: A user who purchased Skyrim while he was living in Ukraine found that it wouldn't run when he moved back to the US; ironically, he couldn't re-buy it until he contacted Steam support and had the original key deleted from his account.

Also, Valve straight up won't let me buy Puzzle Quest 2, and a quick Google search shows that other Canadians are having the same "problem".

Valve is simply the distributer. Ultimately when he see issues involving individual games such as you describe it is a matter of deals and contracts of the publisher. Zenimax may insist on regional restrictions. Valve may not be contracted to sell Puzzle Quest in Canada, etc..

 

[DrOswald]

See, digital distribution has changed the rules a lot on how games can be sold profitably. The cost of selling another unit is virtually zero.

This is the funniest thing I've read in a while. So you're saying paying for an air conditoned warehouse with server/networking equipment or renting a cloud service, paying for the huge bandwidth required to upload games, paying for i.t. personnel, and paying the programmers who developed the distribution software is virtually zero?

Developing software (and paying people to do it) is a one time cost.

Once the servers banks are in place for distribution they are there and using them is extremely cheap. See, one 50gb download is not exactly taxing on a server bank.

Bandwidth is extremely cheap.

I sell software for a living. Software that weighs in at 20-50gb depending on the package the customer buys. There is no significant cost (we are talking pennies at most) for making another copy of 50gb of information and getting it to a customer. We send hundreds of gigabytes of information daily between our servers and our customers servers, and that is only our on site servers. There is no significant cost to copying and distributing information once the system is in place to do it.

Hence why I said the cost of "selling another unit" - all the cost is up front, one time cost or volume independent once the system is in place that can handle it. You know, like Steam, and it's massive server banks that exist all over the world already.

 

[DrOswald]

It bums me out this topic is filled with UK and Americans saying how its a non-issue, and people shouldnt have been trying to get super cheap games from obscure regions in the first place.

What about us Australians, who just wanted to pay a reasonable price for digital goods, and purchased US copies? It must be nice to live in a place where you hear something like this and can only think that people were abusing it for lols, and not that some places have ridiculous digital pricing.

See, it would be nice if you actually read the details here, because you Australians can still buy US keys and they will still work. Or at least these changes will not have changed the way this works for you.

This is why I say this is laser targeted at the opportunistic jerks. Because these particular changes only effect them.

 

[Olrod]

So... was Fappy banned for mentioning a certain ex-Escapist video game journalist?

Was his leaving really on such bad terms that mentioning him warrants banning?

 

[AyaReiko]

I think its a mix of two things;

1-- Attempt to neutralize key re-sellers
and
2-- Placate idiot governments who still think banning/censoring video games will solve their problems

Everything else is collateral damage.

(sidenote, boy do I need a new avatar...)

 

[Level 7 Dragon]

As someone living in Russia, it kinda sucks.

I'm planning on moving to the West down the line. It's silly that I won't be able to play games I bought four years ago because they were just a bit cheaper back then. Worst of all, I don't think it's possible to re-buy certain games. So if I got Dishonored here, I'm boned.

 

[Arluza]

Why was Fappy banned in this thread?

As to this topic at hand, it doesn't surprise me. With how much shit is put on Steam now I don't doubt the fact that Valve are blatantly anti-consumer. It's also a small number of consumers who will be affected, so the "Fuck you Got mine" mentality of customer service won't be noticed in a week or two.

 

[elvor0]

People are so easily bought. Tell them you are selling big games for half the price and they are willingly puting on DRM leash (which Steam has always been). And only after the collar becomes too tight to breath in they start to understand.

Yet steams DRM has never been intrusive before now, so it's not a fair comparison, mr hoity toity and his thinly veiled "I'm so much better than those sheeple" post. Most of the time, the "DRM" on Steam doesn't even function as such, it only HAS to be launched on Valve games and games that specifically use Steamworks to function.

 

[Fappy]

EDIT: Oh no, he just edited his profile to do some sensationalism crap. My opinion of him has lowered 10 points.

What kind of point scale are we using here? Is 10 a lot?

P.S. It's a TechTeam prank. Users can't pretend to be banned like this

I am no longer a romance option.

SHIT!

*Looks at GameFaqs*

It says here that you like vintage drinks and horse porn...

BRB!

 

[Kameburger]

STEAM IS NOT REGIONALLY RESTRICTED, YOUR THREAD TITLE IS INCORRECT.

The article you linked clearly says this applies to gifts, if it applied to games purchased through steam (NOT GIFTED THROUGH STEAM), it would mean that steam is region locked.

There is a major issue with steam's trading system and according to that PC gamer thing, that is what this applies to. Games cost different dollar values depending on where you are located in the world and some people abuse that fact by paying people in areas with lower prices to buy and gift games to people in areas with higher prices. Russia has lower game prices (or it did at one point) and I had a friend on Steam offer me a bunch of games at discount prices because he was in Russia and he wanted to make money, like if a game was the equivalent of 40 US dollars in Russia, but 60 US dollars in the US, he would sell games gift a game to someone for 50 US Dollars, that way both ends benefit.

I understand the automatic anger over any region locking but the alternative would be to charge uniform prices for all games across the globe, or jack up the prices so that games were scaled to make a 60 dollar game in the US equal 60 dollars in a place where games are usually cheaper.

Thats why I just don't do the whole gifting/trading thing, I occasionally buy a friend a game on their wishlist but if worst case scenario happens and they move and lose access to it, they aren't technically out any money. Now if Steam region locks games that are bought directly off the store and for the purchasers Steam account, then I would be mad.

I get that its a bummer but thats no reason to mislead people over the truth, especially when your own post shows that you are wrong.

There is no positive side to steam's region policy. Even any discrepancies within the post don't change that. Steam has many restriction placed on those living in different regions. I know this because I live outside the my home country, and I am constantly confronted with several regional annoyances on Steam. Hell the fact that they control their regional sales system based on IP rather than payment method is incredibly inconsiderate to the consumer. If you have an american credit card why aren't you allowed to buy games with it from overseas?

Valve deciding that you can only play games in certain countries no matter how you acquire them also is a concern like the article is talking about and not just some minor inconvenience. I think the gifter is also entitled to a refund if his friend can't play this game.

Also I don't see how he was really misleading anyone. This is a regional restriction and maybe there is a reason he's pissed off about it.
Also Valve moving more in this direction is more of a concern than anything. Currency and regional storefronts are an online standard, but so far very few of them prevent you from making purchases provided you have the correct documentation.