It's just goverments being a**holes in my opinion, there's no point on banning games. Adults can chose what they want to play by themselves.
But in most cases region locks (the normal kind in which all the versions are the same except for language) are in place for business reasons, cause publishers want to avoid cross-region reselling due to different pricing.
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There are two different reasons for region locking
1) censorship. As you know, some countries have more rigid censorship than others. Australia and Germany are most notable for this, though Japan and South Korea also do so.
Region locking is very useful to prevent a company from running afoul of local laws, while still allowing said company to do business in such countries.
2) economics. customers in Russia simply aren't willing to pay as much for software as people in the United States. So, a company has 3 options: (i) Lower the price globally (less income everywhere), (ii) keep the prices high and lose customers in those markets, or (iii) charge less in those markets, but at least make something. Without region locks, only options (i) and (ii) are viable, because (as has been the case in the past) someone in a cheap region could simply trade/sell the game to a more expensive region.
Region locking is very useful to allow a company to charge full price in regions where customers are willing to pay full price, while charging a lower price in regions where people customers would not pay full price (and would otherwise pirate the games)
No matter how you look at it, region locking has its purpose
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OK I understand these two reasons, but then I have to consider this:
In 1992, people in Australia were installing MOD chips in their Play-Stations, either to play NTSC imported games or pirated copies. Sony got pissed and brought a case against a group that was selling said chips stating that this allowed for piracy. Fair enough right?
But then someone stated they bought the games in China - LEGALLY - and as Australians have a right "to personal and private property" under our constitution, it was deemed that we could install those mod chips - Sony merely had to refuse to service any machine that opened as it violated their warranty.
This allowed for the Australian government to bring in a law which became widely known as "The parallel Import" law. (this was passed in 2000). This law basically stated that you could bring in not just games from overseas if they passed the Censorship laws but everything except Cars and Books.
In essence, this means that there is no economic reason in Australia to have a different price - We can technically by a game anywhere in the world and use it in Australia if it passes the Censorship.
So back to my original point - with digital borders so porous, what is the point?
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Further to this, I have just been looking up a few other places with said restrictions, and guess what? Germany has the same issue - they are technically subject to the EU - "doctrine of international exhaustion" as is every country which is part of the EU - yet it seems they too are only Censored.
What other countries are cut out? This is nothing more than price gouging, consistently discriminating against not only AU, Germany, Other EU countries - but the US as well - they are also not getting the cheaper prices offered in other countries such as Russia, China or other SEA countries.
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The parallel import law only permits the use of physical goods. In Steam keys case, they are providing you a "service", not a "product". it is a loophole that the game publisher found and abused.
ie. "you could bring in games from overseas if they passed the Censorship laws (but the overseas game company can choose to refuse service if they chose to do so)"
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Yes. You could import and own the physical copy, which contains the box, disc, manuals etc. But Steam CAN choose to refuse service if you are trying to activate a region-locked Steam key, which the region-lock settings are set by the publishers. So if the disc contains the full game, you are free to install and play it. It worked for older games where the game disc ACTUALLY contains the full game.
There are another reason for region locks. Some titles contains licensed assets that are used in-game, in which the publisher are only licensed to distribute in certain areas.
One solid example are this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IA/VT_Colorful
This is a music game that contains Japanese songs that are only licensed to Japan. However, anyone is free to travel to Japan, buy a physical copy, and bring home. You cannot buy this game digitally from PSN store outside of Japan.
Another reason for region lock is timed release. Different area can have different release date. Some games are only released to local market before they obtain the license for a global release.
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Exactly. Well, assuming the game does not require mandatory digital activation, in which case the physical product in reality is just a hard-copy of the infinite lease you make normally with a digital purchase. But if it can be ran from the disk/cartridge alone, it should fall under that law. Digital game purchases are not products though, and this goes for all digital accounts and their associated licenses. You just buy the ability to use said thing for an indefinite time, until the publisher decides to revoke it.
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That sounds like a legal nightmare to untangle, honestly. You'd have to get permit to sell different international versions, assure that they still comply with local laws… the small publishers would not have the money for every government, the larger ones would never pay this much for a marginally small increase in sales.
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yeah, I'm surprised that no one thought to build in that option. My guess is it's just easier this way and no one wants to go through the effort.
I think the same should be true e.g. for Nuuvem to allow foreigners to buy gifts for brazilians, but I can see how that would be abused
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I'm in Australia. I bought the bundle with Stikbold and activated it fine.
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My favorite region-lock is still SI's Football Manager series which is just not available in Germany (keys can be activated but you there is simply no storepage on steam, so you can only get it from your favorite key selling site). In this case it has nothing to do with censorship or the other typical bullshit. There is some deal between EA Sports and the German DFL/DFB which states that only EA can publish Football games in Germany that have the original names of all Bundesliga players/teams. And EA keeps renewing that license even though they have discontinued their own management series.
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I just bought April's monthly humble bundle secondhand...The person failed to mention he was from Australia. You can imagine my surprise when I wasn't able to activate Stikbold. If that wouldn't be enough I got a censored version of South Park™: The Stick of Truth. I was paying (or i thought i was paying) for the a vulgar, obscene masterpiece but I am stuck with this. I just hope they didn't mess it up too much. ^^
Well I wish you good luck, my Aussie friends against the terrors of region locking and censorship!
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You guys must be more familiar with these sorts of things...Is there a point for me to contact either humble or steam to get a full version of South Park™: The Stick of Truth? Proving that I couldn't live more far from Australia than I do right now? Cheers!
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Is steam totally cool with this? I don't normally like to mess around game files and such.
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If you are over 18, it's not breaking ToS, if you mean that. The only downside is that if the game gets an update (unlikely, since Obsidian's contract most likely expired long ago), it puts the files back. But technically it is considered to be a game mod. Not to mention Steam doesn't care about much more larger and obvious stuff, like the Borderlands 2 depatcher speedrunners used, which messed directly with the executable on a heavily MP (co-op) oriented game.
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Heh, pedig általában meg szoktam ezt nézni. Szívesen. A játék fórumán megtalálod, de egy sima keresés is kidobja. Amúgy egy egyszerű fájlcsere az egyik adatpakkon, szóval nem is valami bonyolult dolog. (Ha nagyon akarja az ember, egy észak-amerikai letorrentezett verzió fájlaival felülírva is ugyanoda jut.)
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Mondom csak megnézem ki is az aki ilyen teljes korrekt választ ad és lám egy magyar. A játék fórumán pikk-pakk megtaláltam egy percnyi görgetés után. És minden úgy volt ahogy mondtad, szerencsére egy egyszerű copy+paste még az én informatikai képességeimet se haladja meg. Nekem találták ki ezt!
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In Australia our video game content has been restricted dramatically for years. It wasn't until last year the our government finally introduced a classification for games higher than MA15+.
This has finally enabled our censors to rate games R18+. However, there are apparently only 10 censors working on it and they are working from a backlog of over 10,000 games since the early 90's. According to Good Game (a video game review show in AU) they are averaging 2 - 5 games per month. We finally got "Postal" - the original version - in the first week they started.
Newer games are placed at the back of the queue unless "expedited" for an unknown reason. (Some of us are assuming that means how much developers are contributing to the censorship board $$$).
As a result, I've come across my first problem giving a game away.
I made a giveaway for Stikbold from the April Humble monthly - the game apparently came in 2 versions - AU and RoW. I originally tried the key with my account but "this key cannot be activated in your country" - Even though we have an AU version, and Humble knows where I live the humble key would not work for me.
I though meh that's OK - It's not really my type of game anyway, so I'll give it away on steamgifts.
I made the giveaway and a person from Germany won it.
The person tried to activate the key and was given the same message I was given. Apparently it comes in 3 version - AU, RoW, Germany.
The person contacted me and has been very patient and understanding about the issue, while I have been trying to get it resolved with Humble.
Since this occurred I have been reading some of the posts regarding region locking and have noticed that it seems to be become more prevalent recently, so my question for general debate is this:
In the current age of internet communication and open digital borders, with the amount of illegal (sic) downloads, VPNS, international business and general piracy/multi launch/gaming platforms, How useful is region locking? Is it now just an outdated relic of government control or is it still useful?
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