Hey girls and guys :)

I got some (stupid) questions about regionlock, gifting and trading and so on. But first of all, I'm german so excuse my bad english :D please answer as simple as possible. Oder antwortet einfach auf deutsch :P and sorry if there are some other discussions about the topic.

  1. Did I understand right, that regionlock concerns gifting and trading so that people from USA, Russia, even England can't gift me games they bought (maybe a bit cheaper then they would be in germany).

  2. There are several games I really want to play but can't because of fckin stupid german politics. I'm 20 years old, old enpugh to see horror movies and hardcore porn, but not old enough to see some pixel bleeding like shit, loosing their heads and arms, making jokes about other ethnicities. For example Southpark: Stick of Truth, Dead Rising, Dying Light, Sniper Elite: Nazi Zombies, and so on. Now my question: How am I able to play these games like the developers created them? Is this even possible? Some say buying and activation with VPN or gifiting, but since regionlock is there I don't know if this is possible. I know, against Steams general terms and conditions .. meh!

  3. Well .. I got some other questions, but haven't had sleep since 24hrs and I just forgot them while writing the ones above :D if they come back to my mind, I will edit them or just post them.

I hope you can help me. Thanks a lot in advance :)

9 years ago*

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1) Someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but EU and NA regions are still ROW, so they can freely gift to anywhere.
2) Don't use VPN unless you want a ban.

9 years ago
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Never heared of anybody got a ban using VPN.

9 years ago
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i double dare you.

9 years ago
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I personally know several friends that bought RU Borderlands 2 and activated it - became ROW (RU Tagged still) with VPN.

Not a single ban registered for them.

9 years ago
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With BL2 it is a bit different case. Before the game came out, people could preorder it and, when the game launched, it turned out that in some countries the preordered game was CIS version (although there were no notice while pre-ordering it and people had to pay the full "western version" price). There was a major out cry and now people can choose, which version of BL2 they want, when they activate key in Steam. I bought mine from GMG and even though it was "western key" I still could choose which version of the game I would want to my Steam account (so it works vice versa too). If I would want to buy BL2 in Steam, then I get this notice "Notice: Purchases made in Estonia are only playable in Russia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia".

The other publisher whose (some) games are pile of mess (if you live in a Steam's nomansland like me), when it comes to region restrictions, is Bethesda - can activate "western keys", but then can't buy DLC's in Steam, because in Steam there is CIS version (with the price tag of non CIS version) of the game. I bought Dishonored key from Finland (not CIS version), it activated as usual, bought DLC's from some UK online store and couldn't activate those - contacted Steam support (no use of those useless individuals) and finally used UK VPN to add those DLC's to my game.

It is a pretty big mess in some countries.

9 years ago
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Only store-related bans I heard about are about buying using VPN.

Still, too risky for now, got backlog to play and there are other ways to play games cheaper, ARRRR!

9 years ago
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Okay, then you can go ahead and risk it. I wish you luck.

9 years ago
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First I will try to get Dead Rising 3 without using VPN. Maybe I find someone generous gift it so me :D

9 years ago
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gift it to you? O.o i triple dare you.

9 years ago
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  1. Recently introduced global lock affects every low-priced region. Full list can be found here.

  2. Some games have separate versions (packages) in different regions. If the publishers choose to restrict activation of certain packages in Germany, you won't be able to bypass that unless you use VPN or proxy. But sometimes those restrictions are not too strict because the publishers only remove the game from the German store, so the game can be bought in the US, for example, and gifted to a user in Germany, who can activate it on his account.

9 years ago
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Okay, thanks. Now I understand this region lock crap :D

9 years ago
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1.Not all regions are locked.
2.You can trade for ROW versions of those games.
I advise against using VPN to buy and activate.

9 years ago
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If I understand the recent changes correctly, ...

1) Games bought in higher-priced regions (e.g. N.A., EU, Japan) may be activated by those in lower-priced regions, but not vice versa.
2) Gifts now have a "waiting period" before they can be traded, but transferring gifts (e.g. via Steam) is still unrestricted.
3) Avoid VPN. Just get an uncensored version from another region, instead.

9 years ago
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