Keoul said:
Why do they even have region locks? even youtube has them. It seems counter-productive if they're trying to get more sales by restricting their consumers.
In theory, the idea behind region-locks is to prevent the practice of "arbitrage".
Which is just the practice of buying low and selling high, but it accomplishes this by exploiting price fixing practices in separate markets for the same good.
Not every country in the world has the same economic value, which is reflected directly in the value of their money (with a whole bunch of other facts we don't even need to go into; I'm using the simplest example here).
And because of this, the effective price of goods in each country are not the same by proportions. It's why Americans could go to some countries, enjoy a quality steak dinner and booze, all for a fraction of the price it would cost in the USA. Different markets, different prices.
For example: A video game that costs 60 USD in the United States would, if converted directly, could cost several full paychecks in somewhere like Greece.
(Yet, the domestic goods in Greece are priced cheaply enough that they can enjoy things like good food, clothing and modern services. Which is the benefit of having domestic production and service, and not relying entirely on imports who undercut your business and then upsell their garbage when they get a monopoly...but that's another topic entirely.)
See where the problem is?
Suppose if you were a Big Publishers, and you want to sell your game in both markets (we assume that you can turn a profit in both markets), you will have to set two wildly different prices; one vastly cheaper for the poorer market.
Enter the problem of Arbitrage, where an intervening third party will exploit the differences of two different markets for profit.
So, ignoring the problem of language barriers, what stops someone from going to Greece, buying all of those games up at pittance and reselling them at full price in the United States? (or worse, undercutting the original Publisher in their primary market. Incidentally, Used Games behave rather similarly here, in terms of reducing profit through "re-saturation".)
Regions and region locks. If you can't play the game on your domestic system, it's useless.
Keeping the functionality separate to keep the markets separate so that the poorer markets can also participate.
That's my understanding of how Regions apply to goods anyway. I have no earthly clue why they also apply them to Youtube. My best guess right now is that it's a necessity for effective advertisement (advertising works best if it's in your own language and culture, after all).
