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Interesting. I wasn't aware of that. Is it just something that happens to a handful of games?

As a fellow German, I always wondered about this as well. It really seems to be dependent on the game, a German region lock is apparently not necessarily the same as another German region lock.
Since you mentioned Wolfenstein 2: From what I heard, Wolfenstein: The New Order could not even be activated without VPN. Both activating and playing it was only possible with the use of VPN. After three months, playing the uncut version of the game was possible without VPN.

Talking of the Wolfenstein games... I always wanted to play Wolfenstein: The New Order in its uncut version, but I didn't want to use a VPN. Although most people claim that it works perfectly fine, I just didn't want to risk any problems with Steam. I live in Canada currently so I considered getting a key here. However, since my Steam account/store is set to Germany, I wondered if it might prevent me from activating the key. Would the browser activation change anything, since the browser obviously still lists prices in € (due to my settings)? On the other hand, people still managed to activate uncut keys via VPN, which also shouldn't change the settings... Enlighten me, please.

Yeah, you're right, didn't think of old gifts earlier.
88? What a weird number.