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All Russian/Brazillian (or similar) games on Steam now have regional activation locks

J

John Kowalski

Banned
Eh, business as usual.

Kinda bummed that i won't be able to gift people in the states, but oh well. Hopefully they'll continue to publish all games across all regions.
 
G

Green Biker Dude

Banned
does this mean i can have nudity in my steam games now? since they aren't the same ones sold to the americucks and no one here gives a shit about titties in video games

gabe please
 
H

Hellsing321

Member
Prices were already criminally low for people buying and trading for Russian keys. With the Ruble in free fall you couldn't have expected them to keep this loophole open.
 
C

Corpekata

Banned
takoyaki said:
I've never heard of Nuuvem before, but they are currently selling Witcher 3 for 90BRL which is about 26 Euro. If I can buy that code either normally or via VPN and activate it on Steam, than yes, Nuuvem is a "cheap key-vendor, at least from Valve's point of view.
Click to expand...

Nuuvem is a partnered retailer. "Cheap key vendors" tend to be the Russian sites that buy retail copies and just paste you the code.
 
M

mantidor

Member
What's not clear to me is if it's only the purchases that are region locked or if its the games themselves. I move between Brazil and other countries quite often, I understand if I'm forced to pay the prices of the region I'm in, but it would suck beyond words if the game I bought here in Brazil suddenly stops working once I leave the country.
 
J

JaseC

gave away the keys to the kingdom.
I'm so sorry, GAF.

Me said:
I don't think Valve wants to curb cross-region trading entirely; it just wants to remove keys from the equation. If it really wanted to stamp out CRT, it could apply ACRTAG to every active store sub in one fell swoop.
Click to expand...


mantidor said:
What's not clear to me is if it's only the purchases that are region locked or if its the games themselves. I move between Brazil and other countries quite often, I understand if I'm forced to pay the prices of the region I'm in, but it would suck beyond words if the game I bought here in Brazil suddenly stops working once I leave the country.
Click to expand...

It's an activation-level restriction, not a runtime-level one.
 
Q

Qassim

Member
Hellsing321 said:
Prices were already criminally low for people buying and trading for Russian keys. With the Ruble in free fall you couldn't have expected them to keep this loophole open.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I suspect the Russian rouble situation is partly to blame for this. Not entirely, but perhaps the trigger to set off something Valve were planning or thinking about for a while.

Apple have shut their Russian online store, for example, due to the Rouble troubles (heh).
 
N

ngff02

Member
good riddance to the bottom feeders buying russian cdkeys

sucks for the honest people that are locked out of certain games/exchange rate is ridiculous.
 
C

chadskin

Member
JaseC said:
I'm so sorry, GAF.
Click to expand...

Simpsons-Movie-pitchforks-and-torches.jpg
 
T

takoyaki

Member
Corpekata said:
Nuuvem is a partnered retailer. "Cheap key vendors" tend to be the Russian sites that buy retail copies and just paste you the code.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the clarification, I didn't know that. Are we sure there won't be exceptions for official partners like Nuuvem or Humble Bundles?
 
U

UrbanRats

Member
takoyaki said:
I've never heard of Nuuvem before, but they are currently selling Witcher 3 for 90BRL which is about 26 Euro. If I can buy that code either normally or via VPN and activate it on Steam, than yes, Nuuvem is a "cheap key-vendor, at least from Valve's point of view.
Click to expand...

Corpekata said:
Nuuvem is a partnered retailer. "Cheap key vendors" tend to be the Russian sites that buy retail copies and just paste you the code.
Click to expand...

Yeah this is mostly what i meant.
They are not some shady key reseller site.
-
Either way, there's not much we can do about it, as i said, just gonna buy less games as a whole, and be a bit more conservative in my choices.
 
L

Linkark07

Banned
seph1roth said:
But are only a few of them or ROW keys in Nuuvem are minority?
Click to expand...

I think there are a few of them. Either in the game description the website tells you the game is region locked to Brazil or you can't add it to the cart.

Most (if not all) EA games can't be added to the cart unless you use a VPN.
 
T

Tagyhag

Member
That sucks, I understand why they did it but it's really a shame. I never bought outside keys but I know a lot of people got great savings from them.
 
A

Agent_ShortBus

Member
Damn and here I was piling up some $$$ for the steam sale. Guess I'll use it for something else, all those games would have sat in my backlog anyways.
 
J

josecitoxnyo

Member
Casimir said:
Witcher 3?

CDProjekt added a new Witcher 3 sub, and changed the old one, so that un-redeemed RU/CIS copies could not be gifted or traded to non RU/CIS accounts. You have the older sub which could be gifted/traded to non RU/CIS accounts. If you had left the game as a gift in your inventory, it would be blocked from being permanently associated with your account.
Click to expand...

Yes, that one, thankfully i just managed to activate it without any issue, i was not interested in the game, better this than losing it forever.
 
S

seph1roth

Member
JaseC said:
The former. Region-locked retail BR subs are the exception, not the rule.
Click to expand...

So, i can buy Nuuvem game as always...if they keys are not Brazil locked.

THANK GOD

About the Russian keys, never bought russian keys so...personally i'm not affected but i understand all the complains.
 
M

MUnited83

For you.
I believe this is the Dev Community Announcment

As most of you know, our developer tools suggest pricing based on market research and purchasing power parity. In the case of territories such as Russia, Brazil, and SE Asia, we suggested pricing that is lower than the direct USD conversion. This is based on our assessment of actual pricing of comparable products in that market. Recently Rubles have hit an all-time low which has been a concern of many game developers. We are still assessing the market to see if suggesting new prices in Russia is right for customers who live in that market. We do not think that pricing based on currency conversion only is the right way to approach the Russian market necessarily.
What we are doing immediately in response to the Ruble drop is limiting trading and gifting from Russia to prevent people from taking advantage of the situation. We have been applying a gifting and trading lock of this type on all newly created packages on Steam since mid-2014. Today we have propped a change that will affect all packages on Steam which will not allow them to be unpacked to an account, if gifted or traded from a lower priced region to a higher priced region. This change is not retroactive and only affects new purchases. It also will not affect customers in that region from gifting a copy to other people in that same region. All customers will have proper warning when they are purchasing a gift prior to checkout in those regions as well. We will continue to assess the situation and make changes if necessary in the future. If you have any questions please feel free to write us via the contact form via the Steamworks Development site - Documentation & Help -> Contact Steam Publishing."
Click to expand...
 
M

Momentary

Banned
Tagyhag said:
That sucks, I understand why they did it but it's really a shame. I never bought outside keys but I know a lot of people got great savings from them.
Click to expand...

At least seasonal sales will feel special again instead people harping about 75%-90% off not being a deep enough discount.
 
R

RazorbackDB

Member
I haven't been buying games lately since I'm mainly playing WoW right now, but I guess I won't be buying games at all anymore outside GOG.
 
J

JaseC

gave away the keys to the kingdom.
Basileus777 said:
I don't think the UAE is affected by this lockout, but I'm not sure which regions Valve is referring to with "SE Asia."
Click to expand...

Eastern Europe: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Republic of Moldova, Russian Federation, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan
South America: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Bahamas, Belize, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, Paraguay, Suriname, El Salvador, Uruguay and Venezuela
South-east Asia: Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand
and Turkey.

Other said:
So does this affect gifting a game(Like the new CoD) that's regular us price to Australia where's it's higher priced in USD? Sure sounds possible from that not very detailed announcement
Click to expand...

It affects every new gift purchased in the territories listed above. Gifts bought elsewhere are unrestricted.
 
L

Linkark07

Banned
JaseC said:
It affects every gift purchased in the territories listed above. Gifts bought elsewhere are unrestricted.
Click to expand...
Just for confirm, since I live in Panama, I can get a gift copy from someone that lives in the US or UK but I can't gift anyone that doesn't lives in Latin America?
 
O

Omnii-chan

Member
Almost all RU games are locked anyway. Probably because the games are cheap (probably to try to curb piracy) and most games are Russian dubbed with no other language support, so who would want them anyway?

I still dislike region lock though.

Some Aussie and US games are locked too I've noticed.
I wanted to buy a hunting game that was coming out, but it was locked to America. Not happy.
 
J

JaseC

gave away the keys to the kingdom.
Linkark07 said:
Just for confirm, since I live in Panama, I can get a gift copy from someone that lives in the US or UK but I can't gift anyone that doesn't lives in Latin America?
Click to expand...

Correct.

chadskin said:
So just gifts, RU/BR keys or keys in general are not affected?
Click to expand...

The AllowCrossRegionTradingAndGifting flag doesn't affect keys with the exception of gift copies earned by activating a multi-pack key. For instance, if you lived in Russia and activated a four-pack key for Age of Mythology, the resulting three spare copies would be region-locked.
 
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