Remember when Valve announced regional pricing in Steam Dev Days? It has apparently come with an unannounced side effect, as many players are complaining region locks have been placed on regional purchases.
When Valve originally revealed regional pricing for Steam in Steam Dev Days, they touted it as an improvement to Steam, and that they also hoped to introduce money transfers between Steam wallets this year to come with it as well. There was no mention then of the consequent side effect of these changes, but ironically, it would be GOGcom that would field this issue first in their announcement of regional pricing.
So, let’s do a roundup of prices for Dark Souls 2 on Steam, which is where the issue blew up in the 1st place:
Games bought in Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Indonesia are only playable for those countries. They currently have Dark Souls 2 for $ 50.
Games bought in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Bahamas, Belize, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, Paraguay, Suriname, El Salvador, Uruguay and Venezuela are only playable in those countries. These countries also have Dark Souls for $ 50, except for Brazil. Brazil has Dark Souls for $ 37.
They investigated further and generally found restrictions applied to these South East Asian and South American countries, whereas US Steam account owners could buy region free copies, at the same or lower prices.
The OP expressed puzzlement at why Steam would suddenly apply region locks to their games, but like I posited writing about GOGcom’s region locks, this is not up to the platform holders. Region locks have been made a fact of life by laws and rules regulating the distribution of goods in different countries, whether they may be games, medicines, etc. There are other factors at play as well, such as untapped economics of emerging markets, among others. In this case, Bandai Namco may not anticipate lower prices for these countries worthwhile as there won't be as many buyers. It puts these countries in a disadvantage, of course, but that's how things stand.
If we gamers did not experience region locks before, it was mostly because of inconsistencies applying these rules, but now it’s all catching up even to digital distributors. Much like use of the cloud and online multiplayer, this is part of what will be the new normal for gaming.
Image is from Dark Souls 2.
