Good?
I think retail copies are cheaper than digital ones, so it might no stop grey market sites, but digital official resellers maybe.
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This is not to stop grey reselling (called "parallel trade"), but to enable it. So Poland reseller can't be given locked keys, but must work in whole EU.
Edit: This might cause side effect of price increase in countries like Poland, because greedy publishers.
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price increase in countries like Poland
Sounds like a good change :')
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Prices in Poland on Steam won't increase. They are already the same as in Germany, and Germany has top EU prices.
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If I didn't misunderstand madjoki we were talking about official resellers, not about Steam :)
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From my experience prices at large resellers are often comparable to steam ones, sometimes higher. I can't recall any single game that would be cheaper in retail than in any steam sale.
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Well, I do but it was Polish store. Also think about Nuuvem deals.
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I'm so happy that so many people here on SG accepts our new sovereign as our king and saviour! Praise!
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Czekaj, czekaj. Nabór do nowego programu "Mieszkanie dla młodych" rusza na dniach...
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It's not the publishers that are greedy here. The default price set by publishers in Poland is MUCH lower, half of what Steam is charging.
For example, a boxed copy of a brand new AAA game in Poland is around 33€ (and includes a mandatory Steam key). Meanwhile, on Steam, it's between 50€ and 60€. And this is AFTER adding sale profit for the retailer.
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Keys locked to certain EU countries are pure bullshit, hope they will be forced to get rid of them.
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Yup.
Especially runtime locks like Wolfenstein TNO for Germany.
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Yea dealing with this kind of problems in Germany is especially fun. Thankfully at least with Steam you can permanently set your store to something that is not Germany and it doesnt bother you.
Not completely related but I need to rant about it and let it out because it annoys me to death so RANT WARNING
Note to Humble Bundle and GOG: just because someone has a German IP doesnt mean they are German or even permanently live in Germany, now give me my keys and fuck off ... and to Origin: stop changing the goddamn UI language to German everytime, I dont speak it
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But there ATM is no way to meet German laws if the games contain nazi symbols. Hope german laws will accept games as art in near future. Then this problem will be gone.
Runtime locks really sucks and is not necessary. In the past, I could activate every Wolfenstein game and RUN it.
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Yes. Region locking is a pure anti-consumer practice. 2K Games is especially guilty in this mess.
+1
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It's a good thing but it should be noted that most EU commissions work at a snail's pace. :O
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So, Bethesda/Zenimax will now have to look at a map and realise that Soviet Union has ended (temporarily) and we are actually in the NATO/EU block now?
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Has it not ended already? For us in Estonia it did, I think the last game that was locked and included us in RU/CIS was Fallout NV
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I think Poland and some other countries are handled by Cenega for Bethesda games.
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Cenega handles much more than just Beth games, at least if we're talking about retail:
http://premiumgames.pl/ (not completely sure if those are locked)
http://kolekcjaklasyki.pl/gry-z-kolekcji/ (Poland, Czech, Slovakia, Hungary only lock)
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That's probably pre-emptive because sooner or later you'll be back at mother russia's bosom. I'm sure Putin and Trump will find agreeable terms.
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Yes, they'll probably have to now. So far they did everything to keep it up by creating 2 versions of Dishonored for example.
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Step 1: EU forces mobile phone manufacturers to use USB instead of many various charging adapters...
Step 2: EU forces Valve to enable refunds
Step 3: EU limits the prices of roaming
Step 4: EU shuts down regional steam keys
Step 5: ...
Step 6: Profit! (for whom, though?)
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I'm just stating the facts. Don't really care, I'm not in EU so this change will not affect me.
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Step 6: Profit! (for whom, though?)
-> for the consumer, mostly.
Which is nice, since I am a consumer, and I do live in the EU.
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-> for the consumer, mostly.
Hmm... must be a flaw in there somewhere...
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Let's hope they do something about it, I'm sick of bundles with messed up restrictions.
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EU is TOXIC.
Every European country has its own laws even if the EU's laws are supposed to be stronger (whatever that means).
They make way too many regulations and they impose too much tax.
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What tax?
So you also would like to see every game country-locked or what?
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Damn, I thought he was going to leave the site?
https://www.steamgifts.com/discussion/g2ncx/blacklist-me-for-my-conservative-political-viewpoint-no-giveaway
https://www.steamgifts.com/go/comment/rmvwldQ
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Really not sure what your problem is. You should get a life instead of cross referencing threads for a personal attack. Go take some Xylazine, it will calm you down. Also not sure what you have against Americans and people who actually know history.
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I sure know a lot more about the EU like pillars, different treaties, stability packs it turns a blind eye to and how it favours certain countries over others. It's not about making its member countries better, it's about extending its power. That's why it brings in countries like Romania and Poland instead of fixing its own members first. Regarding nationalism, my belief is there's nothing wrong with being proud of a country you are from unless it goes against its own people or other countries.
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Tbh, your posts really dont make too much sense here. So, American or not? Because a: you dont seem to know much about EU and b: you act like you know everything about America.
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Really not sure why both my nationality (which I will not disclose) or America (from the other thread) is related to the EU. You are one step away from Brussels. Check it out yourself, they have one to one discussions/bribes with people who work in big corporations and politics.
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He's not probably. My best guess: Australia or New Zealand. Which raises only more questions
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High VAT around 25% for most member countries and ridiculous bureaucraZy. I'm against Socialism.
Never said I want anything locked but the EU is corrupt.
This explains very well why on many levels.
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VAT is charged by member nation states, and was charged before the EU (or its predecessors) existed. Anyway, nations fund their contributions to the EU via income taxes or similar - and generally EU income tax is on a par with (for example) US state + national income tax.
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VAT has nothing to do with EU. We had VAT here long before the country was even contemplating on joining the EU.
But I guess countries with GST (which is the same thing with a different name) like Canada, India, Australia are also secretly EU states, eh? :)
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Anti-EU parties are in their golden era
Something is wrong ? you can blame eu !
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Please explain. We in Germany have it a long time, many (all?) European country has that, and they differ in their height.
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"As of 2014, 160 of the world's approximately 193 countries employ a VAT"
VAT exists wordwide, unless EU now consists of 160 countries. But at least you know about history.
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No. The world is corrupt, not just Europe.
And " this" is a pro-BREXIT movie. Propaganda. Popular amongst my rightwing friends as well. If you want to form a decent picture of it all dont only watch movies that confirm what you are thinking but watch and read stuff from the opposition as well.
A mistake many people make, both sides. There's a good and a bad to everything
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Get used to this guy because the silent majority are voting this year.
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lol. he will never get a majority of the votes. No other party wants to rule the country with them. But you knew that already ofcourse
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It's not worth talking to him about socialism, capitalism or any other form of political things. For crying out loud, he thinks that Nazism is a form of socialism based on the name, not realizing that it's a am (extreme) form of Fascism, which is a totalitarian far right ideology.
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Your grandparents would be proud, oh wait-they didn't fight. You never had to defend anything.
Are you telling me USSR didn't experience fascism like that of the Nazis from the hands of Lenin or Stalin?
stupid Marxist
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I don't know why I even try, but here goes.
First of all, you've previously called people who have criticized USA for "Racists against USA", yet you have no problems criticizing other nations or people based on their nation. Don't you see a problem with this?
Also, you're assuming a lot about what my ancestors did. I've got a military surname. That's something people only got in certain countries for active military service.
Did you check your link?
Red fascism refers to the association of certain communist regimes with having similarities with fascism.
.
In this sense, the Soviet Union and other communist states cannot properly be considered "red fascism", because ideologically they diverge sharply from Mussolini's or Hitler's fascism, which were openly autocratic, though in practice, a similar subordination of the individual to the state took place.
You would probably insult me for posting a wikipedia link and using that as a source, but as you started, I'll just do the same thing..
Fascism
Fascism /ˈfæʃɪzəm/ is a form of radical authoritarian nationalism[1][2] that came to prominence in early 20th-century Europe. The first fascist movements emerged in Italy during World War I, before it spread to other European countries. Opposed to liberalism, Marxism, and anarchism, fascism is usually placed on the far-right within the traditional left–right spectrum.[3][4]
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hitler based nazism on marxism, get that through your thick skull or do you want me to show you some quotes of his, he was what the liberals are today!
your left right paradigm is flawed
left is totalitarianism/globalism/socialism, opposite of that is total anarchy/chaos
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The left/right paradigm is highly flawed, I'm not denying that. I would not put much stock in your quotes though, you do have a tendency of being stuck in a very narrow filter bubble. To get a better view of where something stands though, you tend to introduce another axis. The authoritarian/libertarian axis. This still only gives you a very rough approximation at best, but it's better than a simple 1 dimensional system. It looks like this. And with that you get something like this, showing the different ideologies. This still massively simplified, of course.
left is totalitarianism/globalism/socialism, opposite of that is total anarchy/chaos
That's not the normal definition of left/right, that's one that you're using. Of course, we can re-define things all we want, and then we can prove anything through redefining them.
hitler based nazism on marxism, get that through your thick
Hitler got some ideas from Marxism, and was also strongly opposed to others. According to him, his ideology was neither left nor right but centrist, "taking the best from both sides". His definition of "best" is of course not a good definition of "best". You just seem to view everything in absolutes.
edit changed to an easier to read graph.
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Also, I'm really curious. How do you deal with libertarian socialism, and the more extreme forms, such as anarcho-communism and collectivist anarachism? They sit at both extremes of your left/right definition at the exact same time.
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You're right. I'm actually glad you asked. I dislike arachy (the world would be like mad max, fallout or the purge and groups would form anyway), collectivism: fascism & communism (totalitarian regimes). I closely identify with individualism, republicanism and libertarianism. I want limited government. I don't want to argue anymore. I am tired.
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Well, you missed my point entirely. Something like collectivist-anarchist would occupy both extremes of your way of viewing the left/right spectrum.
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How did I miss your point entirely? Are you trolling? I agree with you it exists on both extremes.
Libertarian socialism is for people with mental illness. It's like drinking coca-cola with fanta in it.
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How did I miss your point entirely? Are you trolling? I agree with you it exists on both extremes.
My point was that your left/right definition fall apart when you've got ideologies that occupies both extremes at the same time. And your reply did not address this at all, so no, I'm not trolling, you either missed my point entirely, or you decided not to comment on this.
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I kinda see it like this from left to right:
totalitarianism(nwo)<->communism+fascism<->socialism<->democracy+liberalism<->libertarianism<->republicanism<->anarchy(not the socialist antifa, i'm talking wilderness)+chaos
From my research and experience:
The closest I would define myself to be is a republican, pro constitution, pro individualism and pro meritocracy.
I am against corruption, collectivism (herd mentality), big government and globalism.
Make of it as you wish. I'm done talking to you.
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It just strikes me that you've completely redefined certain ideologies to mean different things than what both scholars & general people think of when they hear those names. You say that you don't count socialist anarchists on that end of the spectrum, but an ideology like anarcho-communism is about as far removed from totalitarianism as anarcho-capitalism, yet they have very different views on how society will work without a government.
Also, nice to see that you for once did not fling insults and instead put together a coherent post explaining what you mean.
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This is what you get when you move out towards both extremes. The extreme left is just as guilty of this as the extreme right. It's just that in the current climate, we see more of it from the far right.
I do "like" his left/right definition though, as certain ideologies, such as anarcho-communism and collectivist-anarchism would sit at both extremes at the exact same time.
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Never said I want anything locked but the EU is corrupt.
Whahahaha! And you're in favour of Trump???
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aren't you supposed to be smoking weed and meditating? watch when Wilders wins
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Yeah, like wilders isn't corrupt. PVV is second only to the VVD when it comes to corrupt political organisations in Holland.
You can't win, so you blacklist me... which is pretty childish... Your blacklist must have grown quite a bit from this discussion then!
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not childish at all! I don't give gifts to jerks, simple as that
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Some EU laws and decisions are charming. From summer on we can travel the EU without high mobile phone costs anymore :-D
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Apart that it increases our prices as the inter operator costs are at 90s level... 7.7€ for gigabyte of data is sheer lunacy.
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Hmmm, these locks exist for two different reasons - and I'm not sure what either impact will be.
For regions that are largely based on price (e.g. Poland), then it seems to me that the EU will try to make Valve have a single pricing EU region, and the pricing will be uniform across the EU as a whole. So that likely means a price increase for the cheaper regions, perhaps with a small decrease for the more expensive EU nations.
[Edit] Turns out EU2 hasn't officially existed since 16th February 2016, so it looks like the above has already happened. Presumably this will only affect Poland and the former-USSR countries that are still counted as being in CIS that are now EU members.
For Germany, there you have a lock that is based around what content is acceptable/legal. The EU might be less likely to make Valve remove that - but if they did, then either all the of the EU will be afflicted with German content laws (which I really would not expect) or Germany will asked to change their laws (also seems unlikely!).
(As an aside, does anyone know if Strafgesetzbuch section 86a has ever been challenged at the EU level?)
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For Germany there is in general no need to change laws. But the publishers have to think over.
Most Games not available in Germany are not forbidden, but on the so called Index, which means, that they shall not advertised for in public and not sold to people younger than 18 years. There is no need to block the activation as long as they are not sold in Germany (in fact, they could be saled in Germany with an age verification). I'd like to import them and be able to activate. Hey, if I use a PS4 I can do that! Only on PC there are these massive restrictions.
Only some games (e.g. with nazi symbols) are forbidden by law.
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Sure, that first case should be fixable relatively easily without needing region restrictions. It's the second case that's the interesting one (and I imagine was the reason the region was created in the first place, but then the other "issues" got bunched into it as well). I'm not sure the EU would accept a Nazi-symbol ban being enforced across the entire EU.
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We need only a slight re-orientation in politics. Nazi symbols are allowed as long it is art, such as seen in movies and documentation. So, if games were accepted being art by German government, there would be no problem at all anymore. Hope this will happen soon.
I am sure too, EU won't accept. Why should they? Do they have a nazi history? No ( (ok, we could discuss this for some countries).
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Dead Rising 4 comes out officially. Part 3 was not published here, Part 1 and 2 are de facto forbidden because of violence. Cannot be sold here anymore, but activated. Ownership for private reasons also is legal. Same for Dead Island, Dying Light.
This is not as bad as long as you can import it and activate it. This is what publishers don't unterstand. I often buy from neighbour countries, and region lock is just upsetting me, as it is unnecessary.
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But then, this means that all EU countries will have the same prices, right? If they can't make a game region locked, then they will obviously increase the price or else traders will profit. What about the poor countries with low wages? How will they be able to buy games?
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Only Poland received lower prices. Others with even lower income had the Western European price tag attached since Steam was introduced. There was an EU2 region where a few Central/Eastern European publishers offered better prices, but Valve discontinued it.
Also, none of those were region-locked. This is about region-locking, not price tags. Even when we had lower prices, they were ROW.
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I know it had a EU2 region and it's so unfair they removed it, since my country and other countries too have lower wages than the other EU countries. :/ And Poland is region locked, right? They will get higher prices now?
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Poland is actually ROW, but there a few publisher that region-lock it.
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What are you talking about? I'm from Poland and ever since I've made my steam account, I had the same prices as everybody else. 60 euro for a new game on Steam. Unless you're talking about something else. I might have misunderstood something.
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You should have had lower prices on a good amount of games, not all. If Poland would have been a "real" Steam region, you wouldn't see only a handful of Poland-locked games here compared to some other regions.
Plus there it was still more like a regional thing. I assume because Cenega covers/covered some part of the market in the name of other publishers.
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That's just not true. As I wrote before, all the games on steam in my country, have the same prices as the rest of the UE. Cenega covers only "retail" games, which is why almost nobody buys from them anymore. I suppose if you were to buy a game from them AND that game would have a steam key INSIDE, then yeah, It could be cheaper. If you were to buy the same game, directly from steam, It would ALWAYS have the same price as the rest of the UE. I'm pretty sure of it, as I bought my FO3, FONV and Skyrim on steam. (The games that "Cenega" should be covering). Which is what most people do. Buying games 5-10 eu cheaper is not worth it, considering that you would have to, not only wait, but pay postage costs as well. So digital all the way~! :]
The only thing I would consider as an incentive to buy games from Cenega, is that, they have polish subtitles in their version of the game. You won't find polish subtitles on the games bought directly from Steam. Still, I prefer to play games and watch shows in their original language, so I don't mind.
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If people from low wages buy less games, then publisher will have to use other ways to take their money. They are definitively not abandoning low wage countries. 😈
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It's simply wrong to have the same price in different countries who share the same currency but don't have fiscal transfers.
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EU1 and EU2 were aimed at financial differences between the regions and were only only different in price, it was not a region lock. These are in question are region locks though it seems.
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This is totally pointless: I live in Hungary and we pay the exact amount of money here as do people in for example Germany. What we receive sometimes (in the case of Dishonored) is discrimination -> a dumbed down version of the game.
The problem is with Russia, where people buy games for less money and that can indeed cause problems. Fortunately many developers and publishers CAN make a difference between eastern-European EU member states and third world countries (they probably know how to use world maps) while only a few number of publishers can't.
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This is totally pointless: I live in Hungary and we pay the exact amount of money here as do people in for example Germany. What we receive sometimes (in the case of Dishonored) is discrimination -> a dumbed down version of the game.
Flip that one around. Now Germans can buy games with all the blood, gore & Nazi flags they want!
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Well, that's because of their own regulaions, the EU has nothing to do with that.
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Yes, their regulations are not EU-based, but if they decide that region locking within the EU is no longer allowed, people living in Germany will be able to activate keys for games that previously would be locked out for them.
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Incoming -10 billions black hole to gabe's pockets.
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Well, people seem to think that in future everyone can buy game keys at reduced prices in other region's stores. Normally, it works the other way round: Prices everywhere are going to end up closer to the highest prices, so everyone is going to pay EU prices.
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Makes me remember how I cannot purchase or activate any GTA game thanks to geo-blocking and Rockstar.
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Specifically keys locked to certain EU contries, not games locked non-EU keys.
Steam already has mostly ended EU2 pricing, so this can potentially kill it on key sites too.
Sauce 1
Source 2
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