I... think this was known for quite some time ago.
But as usual, leave it to your common internet user to blow it out of proportion.
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No, up to this point only a handful of games on Steam required an IP address matching the region of purchase. You could use your account in any country of the world. Now every game purchased in a certain low-priced region can only be played in that region.
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Mm. That certainly clears any misconceptions I heard.
This doesn't worry me greatly presently, seeing as I'm a eurofeg anyway.
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This is pretty fucked up. My Steam account is Malaysian-based and I'm currently studying in Egypt. If Valve really do implement this, no Steam games for me for 10 months every year.
F*UCK. THIS. SHIT.
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It is for the sake of your studies. Volvo loves you.
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I think it should only affect new games, your old library games that were bought or activated before the region-lock stuff came out should be fine. If not, try to get ROW version from other region maybe? It'll be more expensive than SEA prices but at least you can still play them.
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Yeah, I guess so but I just hate the fact that I can't play games that I bought legally. Would be better to just stick with torrenting then. At least then I can still play the game.
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And you can make a new account for the new games
a crappy solution, but it's something
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Yes, buy new copy of the same game every time you travel to a new country! Valve would love you)
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Uhh probably not happening anytime soon. I've already invest too much money on this account, it would be a pain to do another one.
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I always thought this was already the case for region-locked games, Valve just didn't specifically stated that before.
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The fact that regionally locked games cannot be played in the countries they don't belong to? Yes. But people above are speaking about Steam putting regional lock on EVERY game on Steam, fully ruining accounts of people who have moved i.e. from CIS to EU.
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Huh? But this already was old news. ALL games are region-locked since last year.
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Well, as I've stated below, I myself moved from CIS to EU and playing games bought 2 years ago really fine. I was just avoiding games marked as playable only for CIS and was not buying them, because I knew i would be moving in some time.
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they only had an activation lock. now playing is also not possible anymore. that is a big difference.
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I'm sorry, sirs and ladies, but what is the source of the info about ALL the games on Steam getting regional locked in future? That troubles me, but neither the image, nor the comments below state that clearly. Is this just speculations or is there any real reasons to think that every game on Steam will become regionally locked? Maybe I'm missing something vital? Please, enlighten me!
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Which way? I've moved from CIS to EU myself and still able to play games bought in CIS. That's the question I'm worried about.
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Valve enabled an activation lock on every gift bought in low-priced regions in December. In order to activate a game bought in Russia, for instance, you would need to have a Russian IP address.
Today they added another lock - from now on if you bought a gift in Russia, not only would you need a Russian IP to activate it, you'd also need a Russian IP to play it.
It's not yet known if this extra lock is applied only to gifts purchased in low-priced region, or also to games bought directly to account.
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Thank you, now i get it. It's about gifts only.
I guess I will be able to check the matter with buying soon. But, as I understand, the games bought earlier are not affected, so there is no actual problem for me. Thanks again, now it makes sense.
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Does this apply to new games or games in my library as well?
I have hundreds of games bought from Russia.
And what about preorders? For instance I have The Witcher 3, tagged as "The Witcher 3 RU OLD".
EDIT: I see, apparently only new releases. Phew. Still wondering about The Witcher though but I guess time will tell.
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So this also applies for ROW (bought in RU) old gifts or only for (all) new purchases?
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eh i never was gonna use vpn for myself anyway so this does not hurt me at all :D
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1 eur is 1.07 usd now...so no real use for american traders, either :P
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As far as I read, EU is printing money like crazy, so it will continue to drop. Who knows, by the end of the year, it might be cheaper to buy games in euros :o
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It was $1 = 1€ all that time. I bet if USD will be more expensive than EUR they will make $1 = 1.25€.
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sorry steam but i won't listen to what u do to trading i will still sell ru copies suck it!! :D
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someone will its just a matter of time u know what should steam do? ban everyone who used vpn to purchase game instead of this BS play lock
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I doubt many are willing to use VPNs to play games..
and with banning it wouldn't be better than now...
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I doubt people will be using vpn to play them,. unless its somewhat short single player game, most will just go back to pirating games.
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well, if you want to do that, you should be fair to your customers and tell them in big, bold letters, that they will need VPN to play from now on.
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They are just hurting themselves. The more they restrict, the more paying customers they will lose. They are just pushing people away and enticing them to pirate the games. They do the same with all the stupid DRM.
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This needs to be changed to allow for people moving between countries.
Steam already checks for activation locality, and bans cross-region activation. I can't think of any basis for removing games from users' libraries rather than flicking the region switch as required. History of IP addresses, etc should be enough to confirm legitimacy in most cases.
The move to digital games has made it a lot easier to violate people's consumer rights, and part them from the stuff they have paid for. I don't care about the legal bullshit here. Feel free to miss the point, and quote me a load of wank about how we don't "own" the games, blah, blah, blah. I'm not interested. I'm talking about right and wrong, and giving people continued access to the stuff they paid for. The games.
Hopefully Valve will apply some common sense here, although their track record for doing so isn't always the best.
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Well, you don't own game. But when you buy console game, you buy license. And you can do whatever you want with that license - play it, borrow to friend, sell on ebay.
When it comes to Steamgames, you don't even own license. You only gave money to GabeN so he lends you his license and you never know if one day he won't decide to take it back (for example, by getting hacked and getting all server data deleted).
You're totally right.
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^This all the way.
So tired of the legal mumbo jumbo that is always used as cop-out to excuse Valve of any accountability for just blatantly violating what should be basic consumer rights. It's also annoying that some people act so callously because it doesn't affect them. It's also shocking they don't seem to grasp the obvious reality that just because this doesn't affect them this time, at this rate, where will it stop?
Have people honestly become such sheep that they don't see that this is a very slippery slope Valve is treading right now?
Or are people just too young to remember the time when Valve actually allegedly stood for something else entirely than this disturbingly mindless and careless corporation?
Regardless of whatever locks they implement (or have implemented) that i might not like, but also feel are not really something any of us can legally or morally complain about (let's be fair here for both sides), retroactively removing something that was legally obtained is not just fringe DRM-crap, it's above and beyond. This is a whole new level of low, even for Valve. :/
Even with full blown DRM games you obtained, i honestly never heard of retroactive removals of something you bought and paid for except on the digital land of the mighty Lord Gaben (if i'm wrong, then someone please enlighten me).
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Question: what game is it? There's already bunch of Ru-locked games that always required RU-IP to be played.
Anyway, Valve rescued PC gaming, Valve kills PC gaming. Fair deal :)
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how about DLC's? can somone confirm they arent working? like payday2 dlc for example.
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I only care that users in CIS would still be able to import ROW, otherwise I wont buy any recent Ubisoft AAA titles because of their language lock policy in CIS.
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they just hurting themselves, while its true I got most of my games for pocket change thanks to trading, I wouldnt have gotten them for full price. I dont mind not getting every single game I'm slightly interested in from now on.
At the end of the day, they will just sell less games and I will keep more money for myself.
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i think the truth is, it's not really hurting them. people don't stop buying, they just get less value for their money. my guess is, there are only very few people who actually spend significantly less than before. i can proudly say that i spent very little money since the region lock thing in december. mostly card money (so no real investment), and only a few tf2 keys on the trading market (maybe 1/5 of what i usually invested). but i think i am part of a very small minority. and even i have to admit that i didn't spend 0€, as i intended to. ^^
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The thing is - people like you or me - we already have massive libraries with bigass backlogs, as we get shitloads of games via trading, gifting etc before worldwide region locks were implemented. We were able to get games cheaply, so we stocked ourselves, and it's not too painful for us to spend very little or nothing on Steam and we'd still have games to play for years to come. But I guess majority of users would only buy the game if they'd be willing to play it very soon. They would spend less, have fun with what they bouight, and only buy again when they have very little or nothing to play at all. For these people boycotting Steam purchases would mean having nothing to play - and now while we can just play through our backlog libraries, they either are forced to pay 2x more for games that what they used to, or don't play at all ;p
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Oh, such BS. How is it we are still hampered by this stupidity in the age of the Internet?
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Can we get clarification on if I purchase games for myself that I can still play them anywhere? Also, does this apply for every game or just for certain ones?
EDIT: Yeah, it seems like it applies for every game. Still would like clarification on whether this limitation will exist if I purchase a game for myself.
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all new purchases bought in restricted countries (the ones with cheap prices) has now both activation and play lock (previously since winter sale all had activation lock only and very few had play lock as well).
It doesn't matter if you purchase game as a gift or for yourself buying into library directly - in both cases game will have the same item ID, so same restrictions will apply.
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Even games bought before today, upon activation, will show the play-restriction warning.
Buying games for myself does not show any play-restriction warnings. But I can't test it for sure.
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my russian restricted gifts that were purchased before today doesn't show play-restriction warnings.
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Is this real? This could be photo-shopped clickbait.
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This is apparently also applied to all previously bought gifts that had red letters. I have just tried to activate one of the ru locked gifts lying in inventory.. Gift itself have only "can only be redeemed" red letters in inventory, but upon activation it gives additional msg which contain "can only be redeemed" and "can only play" warnings.
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Question is game became "RUN ONLY IN.." after activation or this is just warnings?
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It's actually run only and not just words.
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Thanks, mate for info. You are actually 3rd person who's confirm that. So yea, ladies & gentlemen, gifts with warnings will be RUN ONLY IN after activation. Waiting for more surprises from Steam in the nearest future..
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Well, time to pay $80usd for my games again, this spells bullshit for Australia.
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and I just wondered why the hell did so many auctions for steam games on ebay with the "vpn" tag in the title disappear today... now I know.
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There is anybody who actually activated games with VPN and not be able to run it after? Need to know, really
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Lower the price for everybody and end region locked games. Thats my proposal. I think i only bought one game from russia because the price was less half the regular price and the game was not even that good. What will they do? Lock the whole account? I'll fakin murder someone lol.
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already activated earlier games from RU-Store not locked for play
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So I just wait for our Consumer Protection Center to sue Valve...
edit: misinterpreted the post, though all regions were locked x_x
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Well, a friend just show me this
http://i.imgur.com/0ta0BJe.png
Looks like now every game will be regional locked not even to activate but to play also
Update from reddit: http://i.imgur.com/fSPEqfT.jpg
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