GamersGate just checks if the game is activating in your region. They don't have country-specific keys, all Steam keys sold their follow the same regional key restrictions as in any other store. SteamDB is your friend in those cases.
Best stores I found to use for Steam keys in giveaways are Humble (gift links), GamesPlanet UK (cheap prices thanks to the sterling conversion), WinGameStore and GamersGate (optional gift link alternative, but needs registered account from the recipient), Fanatical (especially when they have a universal voucher), Voidu and GamesBillet (generally good prices), with sometimes checking IndieGala and GreenManGaming as well.
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Thankfully the winner just told me that, so I'm gonna activate it there now, still this advice might help somebody else so thank you so much!
What a mess on Steam's part.
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Actually, sometimes GamersGate do have region-restricted keys. And you can't say if the warning on the page is true or not.
UPD. Usually you can say if game is really region restricted by the url in the shop. For example I had a problems with gamersgate when I made a giveaway for "Remember Me" I bought there (they helped me to resolve it though, so I didn't have to spend money). So, now if I look in my purchases, it shows I bought it from the URL https://ru.gamersgate.com/DD-RMERU/remember-me and now it is sold from URL https://ru.gamersgate.com/DD-RME/remember-me - you may notice the difference is "RU" part, and the key I bought was restricted to RU/CIS. So, when buying from there I advice to look at URL, if it has regional code for your country, it most probably will have restricted key.
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As always, some people ruin it for everybody, dang I hate when that happens.
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Have to agree, it's annoying for gifting games but most of my wishlist is half the US price now which is very great. I just switch to Humble Bundle and Fanatical (which unfortunately is also starting to have region lock) to get keys for giveaways, not much of a hassle. One the other hand though there are games that are only available on Steam or region locked, which is less nice but I can live with.
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I don't have cheaper pricing at all. I pay more. Restrictions don't help me one iota.
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I have two possible solutions, but kind of risky and troublesome:
Both solution may or may not have flaws. I just thought up these at 3:30 AM so maybe not take my advice too seriously.
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No there's only certain amounts you can buy of Steam, $5. $10 / £4, £8 / €5, €10, there's also a wait period of 3 days I think it is before any gift card brought on Steam can be used.
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Thankfully we were able to set it up through a different website at a really similar price, so I got lucky, thanks for the suggestions though!
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There are huge price differences when it comes to games sold across the globe.
Brazil and Russia have the cheapest games, so therefore it can't be activated elsewhere.
Due to high piracy in those regions, they've dropped the pricing to appeal to legal gamers.
It makes sense, but I agree it's annoying trying to gift a game to someone outside your region/country.
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I understand the business' point of view, but honestly, I feel like humanity isn't going to move forward very far when we keep treating countries as so separate. Like...compared to the 90s when I grew up, it's a much more global world these days with the internet, region locking just doesn't make sense to me in that regard. I mean, that's a muuuuch bigger conversation, but I think most people these days have friends in different countries and tbh, for me, locking things up and being asses just drives me towards piracy, so instead of getting less of my money, they get none.
And again, piracy/young people and my theory on how Netflix proves that younger people want to do things legally, but become embittered and frustrated by high costs and strict controls, is a whole much more complex conversation :P
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I also don't like it, but being from a region with lower cost Steam games (even just slightly) I can understand the logic. Refer to my comment below. It does become tricky when someone tries to be generous, as the restrictions are only put in place to limit individual sales. I think, then, they should make a difference in allowing gifting (maybe different pricing) compared to personal usage.
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I moved to the US, then back to UK, then to Canada, then back to UK, then back to Canada. Region locking DVDs and games has been one of the biggest banes of my life. So much wasted money...
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If you're going to go deeper, then it's going to be even more complicated.
There's a pretty basic Big Mac Meal test that shows basic inflation and standard of living costs around the world.
Here in SA, we pay the equivalent of about $3 for the Big Mac Meal, so food is pretty cheap. Electronics, however, cost and arm and a leg. I can pay for almost 6 months rent for the price of a GTX 1080 Titan graphcis card. In other countries, it's the equivalent of just 1 or 2 months. Then there's also the salary gap in the different countries for doing the same job.
From that point of view, direct price conversion around the world isn't possible.
In addition to the fraud and piracy I mentioned previously, it makes companies reconsider price points as well.
No point a company getting zero dollars in one country when they can reduce costs and make even a little profit.
I'm not sure, then, personally, if I would want equal pricing across the globe, as pricing for me would then go up. :)
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Well, I didn't necessarily mean global prices, but I see your point and also how you could have got that from what I said. I mean, at the end of the day, there are always going to be people who will just buy whatever, I mean if you had the money lots of people wouldn't bother stressing about deals, but if poorer people want to buy from elsewhere, I wish they didn't feel the need to stop them.
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I see what you mean. It's not a cool solution by any means, even with the reduced pricing in regions.
Right now, I'm trying to think of a way I can gift a Steam gift to a larger group, but it's limiting me to only my country. I have Steam wallet funds, so that makes it even more limiting for me.
Also, I'm curious from your comment above, do digital movie purchases now change the region restriction traveling between countries, or are the still blocked per region?
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It was the same for me. I'm in a tight spot, so I had planned to use my steam wallet (card farming money) to buy it, but thankfully I had 20 dollars in paypal from testing websites, so I got lucky. If I'd had to buy full price with my own money, 14 dollars is a big hit for me on my tight budget! I know that sounds crazy, but it's true.
I'm not sure about digital movies, I've only ever bought physical copies and they are always region locked. One work-around for that is to have a region free DVD player, but well...Dvds are kind of on the way out now because of streaming's popularity!
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$14 isn't insignificant, especially when the budget is tight. Believe me, I fully understand.
That testing websites for side cash sounds like a good plan, especially if you can use it to for your gaming.
Are you able to share the address?
As for the DVD issue, technically, you're legally allowed to download a torrent copy if you own the original. In most countries that law applies, especially in the event of damaging the original copy. Not sure if it's the same in your case.
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Even Netflix has region locking:
I live outside the US, and Netflix costs about 15% higher than in the US, and I only get about 50% of the content US users get.
Also, the alternative (where everyone could send gifts to all countries, and all games cost the same) was much worse for people in poor countries, as they could afford much less games.
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Yes, Netflix also has region locking and it sucks.
Also, it very much depends on what country you live in on whether the 'alternative' is a benefit or not.
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Agree, I would be happy to pay the difference and that would solve the problem. I often see big companies pick the worst possible solution for stuff like this (side-eyes Amazon) and that just turns off consumers.
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I would like to pay more to send a gift to a friend whose regional store prices are higher than mine in order to meet the same price.
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Yeah, apparently I can send stuff from Hungary to the US, but it doesn't work the other way around. Because as we all know, games cost more money here in Hungary as they do in the US, thanks to the 1 EUR = 1 USD nonsense.
(Humble Bundle is the only site where people studied maths and can actually tell the difference between EUR and USD).
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Just use the Steam Region option when you are creating the GA, from the menu. I had a similar case where I created a GA for EU region and the winner was from SWISS and I receive the same error message. I talked with support guys and with the winner and he agreed to delete the GA and the guy from support told me that they will eliminate SWISS from EU region......this didn't happen but know when I'm creating a GA I'm selecting some country's from my region :| (I'm eliminating the richest country's in order to avoid this thing )
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I'm in EU so, having some of the highest prices, I'm usually able to gift games to almost anybody.
Still this prohibition makes no sense: I fully understand they aimed to stop people from exploiting the (sometimes) huge price difference, but prohibiting the gifting between some regions is kinda crazy...I mean, you can prevent the reselling simply by making pay "custom taxes" on the key you want to send to a "higher price country", as it's done with real items in rl.
That would still kind of suck but at least anyone would be able to choose and gift whatever they want to whoever thay want.
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give me some advice on future giveaways to get around this kind of stuff (for example, should I only buy from Humble store?)
We, in Canada, are lucky enough to get slightly lower prices than some. In turn, it makes us pretty much unable to gift to friends and family outside of the country.
Your best options are:
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So I'm trying to award the game to a person who won it and 'Due to regional price differences, the gift you are trying to send cannot be sent to the recipient's region.'
I guess that explains why I don't see more people gifting stuff during the Steam Sales. So now I will buy the game full price and gift it to the person by another method, but still...this is insane, no?
I thought it was odd to begin with that Steam doesn't have a way to send a key or gift a game via email and now you apparently can't gift games between regions if there is a price difference, seems nuts to me.
Anyone else frustrated with all these kind of rules ruining Steam?
It appears even Gamersgate is region locked, with the message 'This game(s) will be available for activation in: Canada'
Feel free to rant below, or just give me some advice on future giveaways to get around this kind of stuff (for example, should I only buy from Humble store?)
EDIT: I'll be closing this discussion later tonight if anyone still wants to discuss, as I'm too tired to reply and having a bit of a problem responding and keeping up, sorry guys!
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