Not Spaceghost
Spaceghost
So this past steam sale I was notified that Lost Planet 2 had gone on sale for 60% off and was 8 dollars. I excitedly purchased it, saw that the sale was running till the 22nd and thought "neat maybe I'll be able to convince a few other friends to buy it so we can play!". Now, I've played the PS3 version of Lost Planet 2 a ton when it released, basically spent a whole summer on EDN III, but I have friends who I felt would enjoy it but didn't have a PS3, so I thought this would be an awesome opportunity to introduce them to the game at a great entry fee.
Lost Planet 2 is normally a 20 dollar game, and on top of that hasn't gone on sale in about 2 years (some places online say in 3). Now Lost Planet 2 wasn't a well reviewed game but it was a fun co-op experience and it's honestly a solid game but that's just like my opinion man. The game also while not a blockbuster hit did manage to sell a modest 1.5 million copies in its first 8 months, which is respectable for a title that's kind of a bit different from your standard third person shooters, but I believe this was a lot lower of a figure than what capcom was expecting.
That all being said, let's move on to where things get weird. So as I mentioned before the game hasn't gone on sale in quite some time and has been curiously been absent from several "CAPCOM sales week!" events on steam, and seeing it on sale made me jump at the chance to snag it. However the next morning I mentioned it to my friends and they said "uh dude it's 20 bucks" so thuroughly confounded I went to go check on the steam website and found myself staring at a "this game is not available in your region" message. The reason that I had never noticed this is because I usually live in the US, but I am currently living in South America. On top of that back when I was visiting family in Italy in 2009 I contacted steam support so they could force my region to the US so the prices wouldn't appear in euros. I guess this is why I was able to purchase it from my steam client without ever encountering the message.
After digging around a bit, I found out the game was actually never supposed to go on sale, it was just a steam systematization error that accidentally listed the game as going on sale when the other two went on sale, probably a left over from previous steam summer sales.
This got me wondering, if something was going on with Lost Planet 2 because relative to all the other capcom titles on steam Lost Planet 2 seems to be in some kind of strange limbo.
So I did a little bit more sleuthing and this is all the info I have put together so let's take a look at the possible evidence.
Lost Planet 2 is one of two capcom titles on steam that has been absent from all recent capcom sales events. The other being Street Fighter X Tekken
Lost Planet 2 is one of two capcom titles on steam that appears to have strange region restrictions on steam. The other being Street Fighter X Tekken
Lost Planet 2 is again one of two capcom titles on steam that has a strong multiplayer component that has had no effort to be moved off of GFWL (probably due to low player numbers on PC, now it's basically just small groups of friends playing). The other - you guessed it - Street fighter X Tekken
The first point has a legitimate explanation behind it, apparently all capcom GFWL titles are no longer allowed to go on sales. My only assumption here is that this is probably because GFWL is essentially an abandoned platform - despite the fact that the online still works and everything is fine.
The second point is the strangest of the three, I could sort of understand why Street Fighter X Tekken might see region restrictions since namco is involved as well and who knows what is going on there. But for Lost Planet 2 it makes almost no sense. LP2 has as far as I can see, no strange licensing issues that could be the root of this either. LP2 was developed completely in house, using capcom own MT framework, the sound track includes no licensed music, capcom personally published the game, and it has no distinct quality that makes it stand apart from any other GFWL capcom PC release. It's basically the same situation as RE5 was before it got merged into GFWL and everything I can google says that RE5 never had region restrictions on steam, while LP2 has apparently had them since 2010.
The final point is pure speculation but I think it's got some solid logic behind it. LP2 and SFXT were never redone to function without GFWL integration. The most obvious reason is resource management. Clearly capcom looked at their data saw that these were probably the least played of their PC ports online and maybe even the least selling ones so they thought there was no point in bringing them over to steamworks from GFWL. However that all being said it's still a very strange situation. Why are these two games region restricted to the point that you cannot even view their store pages? Are there other games that have a similar situation going for them?
I don't really know what discussion this could possibly trigger but honestly I thought that it was just a rather peculiar situation, especially for an IP that had such a semi strong push early on. The sort of parallel situation that's going on with SFXT is also strange because of the weight behind the street fighter brand. If you have any insight or see that anything I've said is wrong or missing information please feel free to correct me!
So yeah thanks for reading!
TL;DR: Lost Planet 2 is one of two capcom games that feels like it's in a strange limbo, it's never a part of any of the sales and it's never going to be moved off of GFWL and the cherry on top is that it's got strange region restrictions for who knows why when other capcom games in a similar situation never did / don't.
Lost Planet 2 is normally a 20 dollar game, and on top of that hasn't gone on sale in about 2 years (some places online say in 3). Now Lost Planet 2 wasn't a well reviewed game but it was a fun co-op experience and it's honestly a solid game but that's just like my opinion man. The game also while not a blockbuster hit did manage to sell a modest 1.5 million copies in its first 8 months, which is respectable for a title that's kind of a bit different from your standard third person shooters, but I believe this was a lot lower of a figure than what capcom was expecting.
That all being said, let's move on to where things get weird. So as I mentioned before the game hasn't gone on sale in quite some time and has been curiously been absent from several "CAPCOM sales week!" events on steam, and seeing it on sale made me jump at the chance to snag it. However the next morning I mentioned it to my friends and they said "uh dude it's 20 bucks" so thuroughly confounded I went to go check on the steam website and found myself staring at a "this game is not available in your region" message. The reason that I had never noticed this is because I usually live in the US, but I am currently living in South America. On top of that back when I was visiting family in Italy in 2009 I contacted steam support so they could force my region to the US so the prices wouldn't appear in euros. I guess this is why I was able to purchase it from my steam client without ever encountering the message.
After digging around a bit, I found out the game was actually never supposed to go on sale, it was just a steam systematization error that accidentally listed the game as going on sale when the other two went on sale, probably a left over from previous steam summer sales.
This got me wondering, if something was going on with Lost Planet 2 because relative to all the other capcom titles on steam Lost Planet 2 seems to be in some kind of strange limbo.
So I did a little bit more sleuthing and this is all the info I have put together so let's take a look at the possible evidence.
Lost Planet 2 is one of two capcom titles on steam that has been absent from all recent capcom sales events. The other being Street Fighter X Tekken
Lost Planet 2 is one of two capcom titles on steam that appears to have strange region restrictions on steam. The other being Street Fighter X Tekken
Lost Planet 2 is again one of two capcom titles on steam that has a strong multiplayer component that has had no effort to be moved off of GFWL (probably due to low player numbers on PC, now it's basically just small groups of friends playing). The other - you guessed it - Street fighter X Tekken
The first point has a legitimate explanation behind it, apparently all capcom GFWL titles are no longer allowed to go on sales. My only assumption here is that this is probably because GFWL is essentially an abandoned platform - despite the fact that the online still works and everything is fine.
The second point is the strangest of the three, I could sort of understand why Street Fighter X Tekken might see region restrictions since namco is involved as well and who knows what is going on there. But for Lost Planet 2 it makes almost no sense. LP2 has as far as I can see, no strange licensing issues that could be the root of this either. LP2 was developed completely in house, using capcom own MT framework, the sound track includes no licensed music, capcom personally published the game, and it has no distinct quality that makes it stand apart from any other GFWL capcom PC release. It's basically the same situation as RE5 was before it got merged into GFWL and everything I can google says that RE5 never had region restrictions on steam, while LP2 has apparently had them since 2010.
The final point is pure speculation but I think it's got some solid logic behind it. LP2 and SFXT were never redone to function without GFWL integration. The most obvious reason is resource management. Clearly capcom looked at their data saw that these were probably the least played of their PC ports online and maybe even the least selling ones so they thought there was no point in bringing them over to steamworks from GFWL. However that all being said it's still a very strange situation. Why are these two games region restricted to the point that you cannot even view their store pages? Are there other games that have a similar situation going for them?
I don't really know what discussion this could possibly trigger but honestly I thought that it was just a rather peculiar situation, especially for an IP that had such a semi strong push early on. The sort of parallel situation that's going on with SFXT is also strange because of the weight behind the street fighter brand. If you have any insight or see that anything I've said is wrong or missing information please feel free to correct me!
So yeah thanks for reading!
TL;DR: Lost Planet 2 is one of two capcom games that feels like it's in a strange limbo, it's never a part of any of the sales and it's never going to be moved off of GFWL and the cherry on top is that it's got strange region restrictions for who knows why when other capcom games in a similar situation never did / don't.