"Valve Brings Region Locking To Steam To Prevent Value Exploits" Ok, very bad news, I know... but wait, wasn't this already in place? I mean, I used to buy loads of cheap PC games whenever I went to Poland and later redeemed them on my Steam account in the UK (one of the benefits of being an Eastern European migrant). That is, until two or three years ago when the codes stopped working due to region locks, so I don't see how this wasn't already present - at least when speaking of Eastern European countries, as I'm sure Russians or Ukrainians living abroad probably always had to double check the game they were buying wasn't region-locked too just like Poles, but I may be wrong there. Maybe it's that before this it was up to the publisher (and most of them chose to region lock their games anyway), but now they aren't even given a choice and it's just all region-locked?
Is this retroactive? I could purchase some region free games with RF prices before, until now it seems.
No idea, I sure do hope it isn't otherwise I'm saying goodbye to like a quarter of my Steam library. :shocked: It was the same with Polish games really, but most of the games I recently purchased there were region-locked. I think it was a bit easier to find region-free digital versions, but I guess now that's over as well. UPDATE: According to this, the change is not retroactive and even unredeemed gifts you have in your inventory are still usable.
Hopefully Norway won't be too affected by this... o: I'm sorry on behalf of the rest of yous, whoever might be affected by it..
This is dumb. They shouldn't restrict people from purchasing games from other countries by sanctioning a region-lock on games that they buy from other countries. What if a person lives in a very small village and he/she could go over to another country, which is only 5 minutes away from their home, to buy a steam game apposed to having to drive five hours to get to a city, in their country, that has the same game? I know it's a stupid scenario, but it fits the situation. People could still purchase the game online and not have to go through the trouble of going to the store; but what if they have very slow internet and they prefer to purchase the bulk of the game at a store (5-minutes away in another country) and download whatever little is left, at home? IDK. I just really hate Steam and any other internet-crap thing you need to register your game with in order to play.
Good points, good points. I sure do love my brand new shiny sparkling "Blazing Star" Metro 2033 Redux badge in steam though Oh wait, that makes me another one of those foolish people distracted from the real problems by useless swaggery, doesn't it? :lol:
Ha-ha-ha, it sure does! More Half-life/steam history. I remember before Steam officially put out achievement lists, people on forums would make up their own little achievement list and post it on forum for you to try out. One early HL2 achievement was to try and carry the creepy baby doll you can find in the playground, early on in the game, throughout the campaign without loosing it. Not much fun doing that, but it kept thing interesting for people who had completed the game 20-times over.
If you follow the news, it doesn't seem dumb. There is a financial crisis going on in the region, so Valve had to cut down the money drain.
I have heard about it; though, it's something I had to look up online to learn about when it happened. But Valve has been around since the 90s/worldwide and should already have a hefty cache saved up. I see this as if there is a global law that prevents people from purchasing bread from any other other grocery store other than the one closest from their home. People should have the option to to purchase a loaf of bread wherever they please.
They kept the prices the same for the affected regions instead of switching to $, but they made sure nobody would exploit and speculate on the low prices by enforcing the region locks.
hehe, I didn't hear about that one. Oh, I see. There will always be a bunch of scenarios that I could make up that'll, more than likely, never happen. From what I understand though, this financial crisis is due to the Russian/Ukraine conflict, right? I read somewhere -it was rather far back and I'm not too sure on it- that the U.S. was, and currently still is, trying to screw Russia with the cost of oil. I'd don't remember how they're doing it, but it has also affected the other oil countries. Over hear, I've noticed that the cost for gas/petrol is down by half than what if was a few months ago. Kind of crazy how it's managed to affected something so irrelevant, in a way, like gaming.
I am not the best person to answer to this, but I'll try to present the situation as best as I can and as impartial as possible. The current financial situation in the region (RF and CIS) is affected by several major factors: There is a civil war in Ukraine. Production, trading and tourism has pretty much stopped. Sanctions against RF. Kinda self-explanatory. OPEC is producing excessive amounts of oil. This leads to a drop in oil prices due to increased supply. RF economy depends on oil prices and takes a hit. Since oil is priced in US dollars, in order to get the same profits RF has to artificially lower the price of ruble. The price used to be $110 per barrel of oil and $1 used to cost ~35 rubles, which means 110x35 = 3850 rubles per barrel of oil. When the prices drop to $60 per barrel of oil this means that in order to get the same amount of profit for selling oil, the price of $ should be 64 rubles, as 60x64=3850. Currency speculation. People and banks intentionally take loans in rubles, buy USD/Euro with them, which causes the ruble to drop in value, then trade USD/Euro for rubles to pay the loans back and get a profit. For example I loaned 40 rubles, bought $1 using those 40 rubles, waited for the price of ruble to drop, then sold my $1 for 80 rubles and paid back the loan, getting 40 rubles in profits. Rinse, repeat. There are some other things to take into consideration, but most of them I can't present impartially, so I'm just posting the basics. If anyone is interested, I can try to explain those more in depth as well. These caused the following: On the 15th/16th of December the price of USD and Euro, that was about 50-60 rubles since the first sanctions were applied went up almost 2x in a few hours. $1 was sold for 85 and €1 costed 100+ rubles respectively. The prices have dropped down to the previous amounts in a few hours, but Valve decided not to be a slowpoke and found a compromise. Instead of being forced to pay in USD, players in the region can still buy their games with the same old prices in their local currencies, but they can't gift it to anyone outside said regions to avoid price speculation. The official reason is "unstable currency". The region locking was in place since 2007, but it wasn't enforced thoroughly.
Wow, thanks for the for explanation! I think you summed it up well. The ruble's taken a big hit, but I hope you've taken the advantage of the pay-and-exchange deal you've explained -that is if it works without a flaw. That would be rather gansta.
I didn't have enough money to make a meaningful exchange when the sanctions were applied a year ago and now there is no reason to exchange as the price is already low (Not that my savings increased to begin with).
