Quote: "Am i allowed to buy the gift for the specific region of the winner?"
I think you have a very good justification and if noted in the giveaway it should be fine, but how are you actually going to buy the gift for another region? Using a VPN to do that is something that Steam frowns upon.
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I think everything relevant has been said already. As long as you state it in the giveaway description there shouldn't be any problems. However, I would check with support first. It could extremely loosely be interpreted as a giveaway rule, which is no longer allowed.
Also, regarding the "Why I thought about giving the giveaway winner a copy for his region is because..." part, I would assume most people don't do that. So in that sense it's not perhaps terribly important to go through this. After all, most us aren't doing it.
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This is interesting, however there are a few problems I can think of, so I would advise creating a region restricted giveaway if you want to give away a copy to a specific region. I understand this is not what you are asking, though, so I'll try to explain.
The main issue with this is that most (if not all) gifts are now both activation locked and play locked on the regions you mention. Note that I am talking about gifts, not purchases for your own account, those do not have a "play lock" (not sure how else to put it). This can cause an issue if the winner does not always live in the same region/plans to move/doesn't plan to move but might move eventually, since they will have the game activated on their account but if any of the previous situations occur they will not be able to play the game you sent them and were able to activate at the time. So, even if technically they did receive that gift in this hypothetical situation, they will end up unable to play it due to region restrictions.
This sounds like an awkward situation were a giveaway was not initially region restricted but ends up region restricted, since if the user had purchased the exact same title for themselves from the region they were in, even if it was the same region you got the copy you gave them from, they will be able to play it on another region. If they activated a gift from that region, they won't. Eventually, they might decide to contact Steam support to have the issue fixed or the game removed so they can get a new copy or whatever else you can do in a situation like that. Depending on the case, this might have implications on the giveaway that would have been avoided if it wasn't a locked copy. Honestly, I haven't come across a situation like that, especially now that we have a way to indicate locked copies.
That's why giveaways that have no indication of a restriction should be for non locked copies, even if the winner can activate a locked copy.
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Hi everybody.
Let's say for example i wanna make a giveway for Just Cause 3, without having the gift yet. The giveaway ends and the winner is from one of the regions who have cheaper prices : Indonesia, Russia, Brazil, Turkey, etc... Am i allowed to buy the gift for the specific region of the winner ? What if the winner claims to recieve a ROW gift even if he's able to activate the one for his specific region ? Obviously if the winner is from a country that requires a ROW gift - he'll get a ROW one, but if the winner is for example from Brazil - why would i have to pay about 50$ for a region free gift when i can buy a Brazil gift for only 30$ ? This would be a complete waste of money...
I wrote this on the forum just in case anybody from the community previously asked support about it, or hoping that somebody from support would clarify it. Overwise i'll just write a support ticket later.
Why i thought about giving the giveaway winner a copy for his region is because i noticed several times when people from cheaper regions like RU / SEA / etc won some new AAA games, they were buying the game from their local store, activate it on their account, and the ROW copy they won - sell for profit. I never bothered to report any of them since i didn't have any exact proof, and considering that i still have support tickets for reported users from 5 months ago which were never checked. However it looks strange when a Russian, who won recently Batman Arkham Knight for example, has the game activated on his account, and is also selling a ROW copy of the same game.... doesn't it ?
Anyways i find it ridiculous to waste money on buying a ROW gift with US or EU price for the winner of the giveaway which is in a region where it costs twice or even three times cheaper, even if he won't be one of those many people trying to use the above method for profit...
Many thanks for any info. Cheers :)
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