Ooookay, well... sh*t.
If anyone finds out if that's retroactively true too please leave me a message, cause that means that some of the keys I bought to give away are now region locked too :\
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I think so, yes. Maybe New Zealand also.
It reads "Rest Of World".
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it's not just na and europe. it's [the whole world] - {[region locked steam regions] + [countries that steam doesn't give a crap about service]}.
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Most of Europe, NA, most of Africa, and usually Japan, Australia, NZ, and Oceania. Capcom and Deep SIlver have Europe as separate region under lock, and Capcom and Square's Japanese side also has Japan under lock. Plus sometimes Oz & co. may end up in the SEA region lock.
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South Africa has its own region now so I really hope HB isn't region locked for me. I already can't gift through Steam anymore so bundles and 3rd party sites are my only means to get games for giveaways.
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Yeah, I heard, this is why we now have to say "most of". Then again– no disrespect– most of Africa isn't really known for their huge PC gaming communities…
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It's still a ROW key for now. I can't see that they'll change that unless they start charging South African buyers in Rands in the marketplace or on the bundles. I am certain we do not have the same limitations as South America (ever tried to buy fro Nuuvem)?
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our keys should work well^^ its just to prevent buying cheap keys in foreign countries and activating it in our^^
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But prices in humble bundle are same, arent they? Everyone paying in USD dollars, right?
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then you see prices in usd but your bank/paypal converts it to your local currency, just like everyone else who live outside the usa. oh and there are people who have usd bank accounts from outside the usa, so currency conversion shouldn't happen for them either.
edit: or maybe hb converts it, not your bank/paypal considering this comment. still you should pay the same (excluding the vat.).
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i'm not sure what you mean by that. i just hope you see my point and got what denosaur meant. i'm full of anger to some publishers (yes, i'm looking at you ubishit, 2k, rockstar etc.) because of this bullshit. it's really stupid to pay the same or almost the same (sometimes even more), yet getting region locked games.
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1$ tier used to be 0.70€ (now its like 0.93 euros, but lets use the 0.70 to understand better) I dont know if its the payment method or HB itself that converts, but I used to pay 0.70 € for the 1$ tier and so on with the other tiers and that didnt changed for me o:
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this is getting more and more confusing for me. i'm sorry i'm not as sharp as a real banana. anyway, wanna play mario kart or something this weekend? let's meet up in italy.
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you'll get the wii (or whatever we'll play on), right? i don't think i can make it to italy with a console in my backpack. g2g. i need to learn arabic and find syrian refugees.
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I pay in $ @ humble bundle
only bundlestars and indiegala charge me euros
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They support USD, EUR, and GBP, but the prices are fix and currencies are converted to match the USD one (fairly accurately).
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EU pays in Euros, Russia and CIS countries pays in dollars. I don't understand reason behind region lock other that to piss off some users.
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Not retroactive, only lives for a few weeks now (the Capcom bundle started it).
Plus if you live in ROW, you probably should even be happy about it, since now the ROW keys/links bought at HB will be a lot more valuable. :)
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I'm assuming it's not fully region locked - this would only apply to bundles where region restrictions are in place, such as the latest Codemasters and Capcom ones.
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Not all games/publishers even have keys that are locked to specific regions so in the case of those it cannot be.
THE KING OF FIGHTERS 2002 UNLIMITED MATCH from the latest humble for example. There are no locks listed on Steam DB.
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Yeah. Weird thing about that is, Codemasters seem to have added locks specifically for the Humble Bundle - for example, Hospital Tycoon didn't have regional subs before the bundle, but now has separate ones for Russia, China and South America.
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Because they are not stupid and know that a large portion of bundle keys end up on the grey/black market.
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Yeah, but locking a few regions - even if they're the most associated with this kind of trading - is hardly a thought out solution, just a hopeful punt. Anyone who's serious about reselling bundle keys is going to have the means to buy them from an unlocked region.
If publishers don't want people buying cheap keys and reselling them at a profit, then maybe they shouldn't sell cheap keys in the first place.
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That would just promote even more piracy. The reason they are selling these keys cheap in the first place is to reduce the 90%+ piracy rates in Russia and the almost 99% one in SEA. The others… well, apparently they thought it is a good idea after a while.
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Well, obviously they should continue to sell it at the appropriate price in each region, as they already do on Steam, just they need to rethink how they handle bundles.
In this particular case, it seems like an ineffective move and an insult to users in the affected regions. I'm not in one of those areas, but if I was, it's thoughtless, disrespectful actions like this which would encourage me to pirate more.
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I can understand, but what should they do? Sell at those regions at reduced price? Halve the beat-the-average too? Then the rest-of-the-world people would be enraged, justly so, that some regions pay almost nothing for bundle games.
The problem is that publishers don't want their products end up on the second-hand market. This has been a thing for a long time, but with digital distribution, they finally managed to lock them to one person per game.
On the other hand, people who experience cheap prices and see some other people get a discount that undercuts their regional prices, feel entitled for even cheaper prices. But the publishers will never go that low. They will sooner abandon bundles entirely than reducing their prices to basically 95%+ discounts on their supposedly quality games. (What quality some high-profile publisher bundles have is an entirely different question.)
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Well, I'd favour selling in ROW regions for more rather than selling in the locked regions for even less, but the pricing structure isn't really the point. I'd even rather see them lock all regions instead of just locking a few (but obviously I'd prefer none to be locked at all), but maybe the gift sales between unlocked regions are too much to lose. What would make some sense to me - though I'm not sure if Steam's currently able to support this - is to have no region lock when the bundle is bought, but if the buyer reveals the key, it can only be activated during the lifetime of the bundle. If the key isn't revealed by the time the bundle ends, then it would be replaced with a region locked key, but with no expiry.
I'm happy to pay a respectful amount for a game I want if I feel that the people behind it are treating the customers with the same respect, but it's rare that they give me that opportunity. There's this annoying animosity between players and publishers and both sides are greedy because we can't trust the other to give us a fair deal.
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If that would be feasible… yeah, it'd be nice. More than likely would be exploited fast, but still, it would be nice. One can tell anything about how they acquired a key, but a store-specific link is easy to trace back to.
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Except that they are stupid, the price from Humble Bundle is the same in those regions, so they are not paying less, at least in South America. And keys would end in black/grey market either way, it's not like only people from those regions buy keys from Humble Bundle to resell.
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Well, they are indeed quite fucking stupid, because grey marketers will just start buying the bundle with a VPN so they don't have restrictions. Only legitimate consumers will be affected by this.
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Since the key region locks are tied to the purchase region (the country that released the bank card or the PayPal registration and validation region), they can use all the VPNs and proxies in the world. Unless they cough up a legit and non-stolen credit card registered in a RoW country, their bundle keys will get locked upon purchase. Same with Bundle Stars now too, they implemented purchase region checks, not IP checks.
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Why? I don't recall too many bundles where the games had many games with Germany-specific versions.
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Because if this is accepted, it will continue and it will grow, because the people are fine with it and then trading will fade.
Why are we tearing down borders in real life if we build new ones on the internet?
I just do not support this kind of stuff. I hate region locks, no matter if its only once in a while or on every game.
This is why people can be against a person hitting their dog, even if it is not their dog.
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The same reason cigarettes in Europe cost different amounts, yet smuggling operations from Ukraine and Turkey profit a ton (billions of Euros) on the fact that it is cheaper there on the East (half to one Euro) and can sell for 5-10 Euros a pack on the West. Same with game keys, only with slightly less profit and smaller prices individually.
So in this cases the borders are very much there and regulated. It's just it took this long for the difital world to do the same. But there is nothing new in it, at all.
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its not quite the same thing though. You cant just spawn cigs out of your $(# like you can do with digital keys so there is really no need for smugglers here :P
i just find it odd, how they expect of everyone to pay same price while half of the world is getting less valuable keys. And to make things worse, its been happening for more than a month now, but they havent actually mentioned it anywhere. Not sure why would anyone defend them because its an obvious $#$/#up on humbles side.
I already hate having 426 different regions on steam because it makes things such a pain in the $#(# especially for people who, god forbid, change countries from time to time and its 110% anti consumer move, because we dont really gain anything... crap, im going off topic now, Now humble and probably other bundle sites going into that direction... yeah its awesome.
this is why competition is nice. When steam was just a young gun, they had all the awesome things including trading that made them as big as they are now. But now when they dont need to lure people anymore and have no real competition, they can make as many $(#)# moves as they want and we cant really do much about it :P
Oh well, havent thought id say this but i think its time to root for Origin, lol. Or maybe GoG, but gog isnt region lock crazy so naturally publishers dont like it all that much (:
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Both of those two have black markets for their keys, funny enough. Although Origin and GoG key prices with the lack of regional pricing ironically just steer all the cheap Steam regions to Valve's platform.
And to make things worse, its been happening for more than a month now, but they havent actually mentioned it anywhere.
Frankly, this is where I can absolutely agree with people, since HB still didn1t communicate it clearly, outside support tickets, that this is a thing and which regions are affected.
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So will they get regional bundle pricing then? Oh no? Then it's fully BS...
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Why would they? The prices are a lot lower than the Russian Steam store on sale. How else would you explain the 0.20-2.00 USD ROW Steam keys on G2A, Kinguin, and the like? They are not from resellers but bundles, and even those prices carry around 100% profit.
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My point is as long as they pay same price as rest of the world for bundles, I see locking those as stupid thing to do.
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Yes, the same dirt cheap prices that are cheaper than the cheapest region on Steam can ever be. Why would they cut it even more?
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because $12 in russia isnt same as $12 in US?
right now we have a very odd situation :
$12 in US gets you a bundle that gives you more valuable keys vs
$12 fn RU, where $12 is much more valuable, gives you cheaper version of those games.
No seriously its both odd and unfair to people in affected regions. And yeah i know about people who sell keys for profit and all that but i dont believe how locking out half of the world is the way to go either.
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Exactly, we pay the same DOLLAR, we dont pay less, I pay in dollar as the rest of the world pay, but I gain my salary in Real currency(aka I gain less than the Na/Eu) , when I bot a bundle I paid the dollars and the TAXES for use the credit card outside my country. It's totally unfair mainly because it was not warned in any time
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It shouldn't affect us buying in EU2 since everything is usually ROW (except poor Deutschland), but it's gonna get hairy when trading for one. They should disclose this kind of thing more publicly, damnit.
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I agree, they should clearly put a message stating where that key can't be activated. :c
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Wha? Germany is treated differently? I live there and I wasn't even aware. Now I feel prejudiced against. Damn!
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Lots of things are censored or removed from sale there because of German decency in entertainment laws (no red blood etc)
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Germany is EU1 I think not EU2? I thought EU2 was Romania and other similar countries, not someplace as rich as DE
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Yep, Germany is EU1, but I'm not from Germany :D
Keys from EU1 and EU2 are usually ROW, but Germany's tend to have restrictions like "German language only" and censorship. Not really region locked, but with limitations. Then there is that "Germany lock" where you can't activate keys bought outside of Germany because those versions are not compliant with Germany's censorship law.
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A follow-up question: Will the previous bundles bought be also region-locked (ones older than the Capcom Bundle)?
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I think no, they can't do anything with their previous product, these restrictions can't affect them. Same as with gifts in Steam, gifts bought before adding a reglock still remain ROW
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No, because the keys are generated, so they cannot be modified to work differently later.
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This is sad. Region lock makes sense on Steam because of regional pricing (it's cheaper for that region, not for the whole world to buy from) but if a site give keys for the same cost for everyone... meh.
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even then steam region locking is still bulshit, south america gets region lockd as a whole but i am from argentina and have the pay the same price as USA, there are several countries that pay less, like brasil and mexico but they just put us all on the same sack
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region locking, tons of trading barriers that just get more and more complicated, we are supposed to be paying for a convinience, simplicity should be a must on this kind of things
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And there are several countries who pay even more than you with being in the Euro tier even though their monthly income is less than half of yours. Yet we live somehow. :)
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So? you are only making my argument more true,steam region locking is BS, also i dont have an income, i am a student, a student56 if you will.
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Bullshit in the sense that it probably needs to go further with prices (and lock) reflecting more regional differences, not just a selected handful ones.
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i only talked about my country because thats what i know about.
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Yes, I know, but this is also a form of a common problem: everybody is thinking about their own place and assumes that all other places will be very similar to that. But they are not. Very not.
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also yeah, it would be cool to be able to buy stuff with my own currency, but lockings is really bad while trying to gift to someone on another region, like its the case here, i would really like if steam lets us pay a little extra fee for a row copy
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Well they do have the Humble Store and sell the same the games in there that they put in the bundles a lot of the time. The store itself has some form of regional pricing although I'm not sure on the exact details. They have $, € and £ currencies at least, and $ has been cheaper in the past as I once used a VPN to buy something. Guessing they might've first have been introducing region locked keys to the store and then decided to roll it out across the bundles as a matter of convenience of having everything on the same system. Kind of crappy, but it would sort of make sense.
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No regional pricing, only regional currencies, but they are always converted and match the original USD price. The currency you pay in may change, but the price is always fixed.
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There are regional prices in Humble Store - for example Total War: ATTILA costs 40EUR in EU but costs 45 USD in US.
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Which is conversion, yes. I mean literally nobody can do a simple search?
http://blog.humblebundle.com/post/77003764174/weve-added-euro-and-british-pricing-on-the-humble
"Humble Pricing doesn’t scale up for VAT or other charges. It simply translates a single worldwide price to each currency."
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I mean literally you cannot even bother to check store before you start making idiot of yourself?
Humble Store does no conversion but has a set of prices decided on by the publisher. Same as Steam Store and most of the retail stores. If you claim that ATTILA costs 40 EUR because of conversion - then why Fallout 4 (https://www.humblebundle.com/store/p/fallout4_storefront) costs 60EUR? I USD-EUR conversion rate dependant on game-to-game basis? ;p
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I USD-EUR conversion rate dependant on game-to-game basis? ;p
Yes, if the publisher says so.
But I have to admit: it is mildly humorous seeing you try to argue about their own system with their own FAQ. :)
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They may say whartever they wish in their FAQ, when I can see actual store prices that stands contrary to it ;p Numbers don't lie - and numbers for a lot of games on Humble Store clearly indicate that while they may have their "fair pricing" system it does not work for a lot of games avaiable in their store.
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Thank people buying bundles in thousand or tens of thousand and reselling them for their own profit. The publishers are not stupid, no matter how idiotic decisions they make sometimes, so they won't gladly stuff other people's pockets.
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What's the difference between me buying bundles for 1$ and reselling them in bulk or a guy in the US or RUS doing the same if the bundle costs similarly 1 USD for all of us? I mean at bundle sites.
In case you were refering to Steam's region locks on store-bought items:
While I also got 2-3 games from eastern traders before the region locks on Steam, I still understand Steam's/Valve's decision. Sucks if I'd get a real-gift from a russian friend, but they prevented a lot of misuse (and loss) that was because of the russiant traders. I'm not happy about it, but it was a really good decision on their part.
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Bundles were… in other sites still are… the only cheap and legit way of locked region users to get ROW keys to sell, and those keys sell for higher prices always. Plus bundles are, except for some cases, cheaper than a discount even in the Russian store (the cheapest region, at least it used to be). So locking down bundles means they are out of another cheap ROW key source to trade and have to stick to region-only trading, like with Steam gift copies.
At least this can be one of the causes, but I cannot think of another valid reason to lock down bundles too apart from the same reason they locked down Steam trading. (It wasn't even a secret it was aimed against the Russians; we all heard the stories of people there actually making a living of selling their cheap games with a small profit that still was like a 80-90% discount for Westerners.)
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The difference is that you're making profit off for non-resale keys. Lets say you buy the bottom tier $1 of a bundle with 5 games, and then you resell each of those games individually for $1. Then let's say you repeat this through a little scripting or botting, and sell a mere 10 bundles. You have spent $10 and made $100 profit, while the developer won't even see the $10 if you leave it on a default split. When a developer opts to allow their game to be bundled, they have already negotiated with the bundle provider for any price minimums, length of bundle sale, and have given consideration to how the bundle may devalue the overall price of whichever games were bundled, and so on.
When you start to gank personal-use keys for commercial profit, you are acting against the terms of service as a form of parasite, and as an uncontrolled agent. Let's say 10 people resell 10 bundles each this way. That loss of control certainly starts to add up, doesn' t it? But we're not talking about just ten people reselling just ten bundles of individual games at one dollar, are we? The numbers are bigger all across this hypothetical. It's not even bundles that suffer this, when you get into regional pricing. It's not like people are just laying down restrictions to stop us from throwing our hard-earned money at them. They want our money, believe me :P
Bundles still offer a significant discount, and for people to systematically abuse them? It's only natural that bundle hosts would apply escalating levels of restrictions in an effort to staunch the open wound of 'uncontrolled' keys. People also felt incredibly bitter when Humble dared to include price tiering on bundles, complete with the same "goodbye Humble!", "boycott Humble!", "Humble is dead to me!" and "What a dick move" echoes. These are all repercussions of developers getting twitchy about bundle-culture and resellers. It does suck for people who like to gift across regions (if you have friends worldwide), but it just seems odd to me that people take it so personally. Let them hammer out the new restrictions, and then let the customer complaints file in. There are always adjustments to be made, if their customers uniformly make their concerns / lost purchases known.
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Sorry mate, I think you didn't read my comment entirely, or in context. I was asking why should be there a region lock on bundles (Referring to Talgady's "Thank people buying bundles in thousand or tens of thousand and reselling them for their own profit" part - it's not the region, but the behaviour (like you said, the buying-reselling) that's hurting the developer. I'm still pondering that besides the possibility of having a different retailer like Poland with some games, what can possibly be a legit reason to regionlock a bundle that costs 1 USD everywhere. :\
PS: Honestly, I'm still absolutely agreeing you. I think I've never sold a bundled game for profit, only for it's share (3 games in 1$ tier - 0.33 each), traded some, gifted or gave away. There was an old article about Mercenary Kings - it was bundled long time ago (not the recent one) and it made the sales crash-land because it flooded the gray-markets at a low price that basically nullified the sells in Steam store.
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for some countries, HB is too expensive, like in russia and south american, here in germany it's kind of a good deal, but i don't like the bundles HB gives
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Yeah, 1 dollar is almost 4 reais here in Brazil now (increased in 40% when compared to last year), so higher tiers are ridiculously expensive to me now.
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In my country, last year 1 dollar used to be 100 of my national currency, now it's 250.
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I feel your pain, my friend. Do you at least have Steam prices in your currency?
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I wish, I get the standard USA store, with current price of the american dollar in my country, a 60$ game will cost me 150$.
This is all caused by corruption from the government, it got to the point the USA is sending investigators to my country, they will decide if we will be allowed to continue using dollars. All dollar debit/credit cards, bank transfers and exchanges are closed, if they decide to forbid us from using dollars my country will not have credit or debit cards anymore. I have been to use my debit card since the beginning of the year.
I've been relying in gifts and selling cards on the steam market.
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I'm really sorry to here this. We're also suffering with great corruption and the possibility of impeachment. Our government is corrupt and incompetent.
I really wish things can improve there, my good friend.
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Thank you, to you too. I heard about the problems there, the people are angry with Dilma.
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Iam afraid from HB notifications o.O how u can know if your gift link is row or locked? I need to know earlier than while trying activate key in Steam.. i have same guy from support on my mail... he said smth like "We are definitely working on a better system" (with nofity about region locks) but i think we get nothing :D (wuhuhu region locks is better system)
I cant accept any gift link from trade stranger bcs u dont know if he get row or locked key... -_- he can also lie about his region... omg HB... now u must follow region laws? 2/3 years it was all okay with no prob and now existing any laws? HB PLZ, they just want broke reselling / trading, thats all.
He also forgot tell me if EU keys are row or eu restricted or what happens...
(lol my english, i just wake up)
If keys are ever region specific, and you buy them in that region, you will get the region locked keys. If you gift them, the giftee will still get region restricted keys.
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But like in case of Bethesda games Poland has got "special" RHCP versions. So I don't know if Bethesda will ever make HB the keys will be region locked for Poland.
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potentially.. yes, same way germany has to get cut versions of certain games and stuff
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Bethesda… making bundles… that may actually have more than 75% discount…
Ha. Haha. Hahahahahahaha! Bwhahahahahahahaha!
Oh boy, you made my day.
We'll sooner see Donald Trump french kiss a gay Mexican guy on live television then a cheap Bethesda bundle.
The PLCZRU versions of their games were made because they wanted to prolong the launch in this sector because they thought that either a) the USSR actually exists still or b) Russian hackers making day one cracks are a thing (and it's totally not US, Brazil, and German teams cracking all the games on day 1 or even day 0…).
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you do realize there is also Humble Store and they do sell Bethesda games there?
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Bundlestars sells F:NV locked to PL and informs about that. When games in bundle are locked also is shown. Last bundles from HB make me doubt that their store sells only row keys
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And you do realise that the store has only 66-75% discounts from the US price at best there, yes? Or point me to a Bethesda bundle that is on par of the EA or the Capcom ones, where they give you a dozen of their games– any of those games– for 15 bucks.
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GamersGate had the "Price Error Bundle" with all Bethesda games for $28 back in 2012... does that count. :P
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Heh. Good one.
Sort of can count, yes. It wasn't in their intention, true, but at least it was available.
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Not exactly. 1C/Cenega had(has) exclusive distribution rights for this geographical area. They have also been adding localization to pl/cz/ru languages. Bad planning/not enoug resources end up in delays. No biggie for them, peasants will not go to someone else thanks to region-locks
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1C only has rights for the Russian market, and not even the entire CIS region. This is why you can find specific, Russian-only deposits literally named "1C" for those, while the rest are simply just country-locked, but Bethesda-owned ones.
I have no idea where this rumour came from, but 1C really is just the Russia-only publisher.
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1C does not work on Russian market only - again maybe chech your facts before you start posting ;p Simple example - what prus is talking about - in 2005 1C bought out Cenega. Cenega is middle-european publisher focusing on Polish, Czech, Hungarian and some other markets. So 1C owns Cenega, Cenega is still publishing in Central Europe. And Cenega did publish Polish-locked or PL/CZ/HU locked Bethesda games.
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Hm. Then I guess that huge Bethesda logo and the absence of Cenega logo on my Hungarian store on New Vegas (the game in question) is just a ruse?
http://576kb.hu/fallout-new-vegas-pg-pc
http://576kb.hu/fallout-new-vegas-xbox360
http://576kb.hu/fallout-new-vegas-ps3
Because only the budget resale category is sold by Cenega, just like how in this region UbiSoft is the publisher for most older EA games: http://576kb.hu/fallout-new-vegas-tgm-pc
Those re-releases indeed carry the Cenega logo and Cenega as the local publisher. They were also released two years after the game.
So… what facts do I need to check again?
Edit: Also, look, Steam depots: https://steamdb.info/app/22490/depots/
Notice how ENPLCZRU and 1C are two totally different depots? It's like they are two totally different packs.
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so? I say some games have been locked and you give a specific example to counter that? That's not how argumewntation work. If I say some meals in McDonalds does not contain beef (for example Chicken Burgers) do you counter it by "you're idiot! Because BigMac has beef in it!"? -.-
Also does the depot need to have 1C in it's name to be published by 1C or one of the companies it owns? -.-
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No, you said Cenega published them, not Bethesda, and I countered that Cenega published the budget range one, but the original release in our region was handled by Bethesda itself: as evidence states. Also, on Steam, Bethesda publishes the Eastern versions too, unless you want to now dispute Steam store itself. :)
No, that depot means it is the 1C edition, and it is Russia-only, and only accessible by buying a game disc from Russia. As one unlucky Polish guy once in the forums sadly experienced it, after installing a disc version that was Russian only. (Also, a fun fact about that version that it is so different that the script extender didn't even support it.)
I really hate that Steam buries old threads and only display to a certain extent (and I have no idea on what criteria), because it was an interesting thread…
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budget range ones - like Skyrim for example? ;p Because at release Skyrim was not even purchasable on Steam from Poland, there was only Polish version sold on discs by Cenega, with polish (and Czech I believe) region lock, not compatibile with ROW DLCs and only later on the Polish versions got changed to ROW ones, because Cenega was slacking with releasing expansion content
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Now that… that is correct. Skyrim was handled by Cenega in this region.
Well, by this region I mean Poland and the Czechs, because us in Hungary got the RoW one in stores too. (I mean this is the original, this is the first re-release, and this is the other re-release: all by Bethesda itself again, and not even a Cenega edition in the later budget range releases.) Don't know about the other countries around here, but based on Steam repos, it seems only you Poles and the Czech got this "special treatment" next to the Russian-speaking countries (which, for some reason for some publishers, means the entire CIS…).
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Same deal was with F:NV. Row DLCs not compatible, working ones released (through Steam!) with months long delay. AFAIR lock was on PL/CZ/RU distributed by Cenega in PL/CZ and 1C(?) in Russia.
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That one I remember vividly: lock was a month delay on DLC. I heard about some translation delay bullshit, which I almost believed…
…until I learnt that the Ultimate Edition was available, which had all DLC, inclusing the unpublished one. So I had to buy UE on top of my other purchases to unlock the DLC which was "delayed because of translation", yet very happily had the translated repos available long before official release.
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One more argument to buy Bethesda games only in GOTY package p
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From legal POV you are right. But 1C is not a single company, it's whole web of Ltd companies in Russia, Poland, Czech, Cyprus and god knows where else. One deal with Zenimax went through more than one company.
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Oh gods, if we go into the details of game publishing in Europe, that can be a very long and convoluted thing. I mean I literally have a game box saying "UbiSoft Exclusive: Age of Empires Gold"… which is a MicroSoft-publihsed game. But I had a UbiSoft-published copy of Red Alert 2 too (EA Games). And to add a few twists, there is some local small-time company flagged as the exclusive publisher of New Vegas in Romania (not Bethesda, ZeniMax or 1C/Cenega), who sells base game only disks and codes as full (Ultimate) edition.
Local publishing rights, especially in the disk re-release range, can be a mess. (Had a few cases in the forums before we finally figured this one out.)
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Yup, it is a mess. But I was talking about first releases ( bought FNV boxed copy :( - after that I had no interest in re-releases ). And the fact that 1C and Cenega are effectively a single entity
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I know about this since Capcom bundle, so now i just repeat what i said before, but "officially" - officially fuck you HB!
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HB doesn't determine region-locks, the developers and publishers creating the bundles do [Source: HB Support (though in fairness, from a fair while back)].
If you pay attention, the Humble response was solely related to the Codemaster's bundle (or at least, vague enough on anything else to still not be certain).
Humble has been nothing but good to us, don't blame them for things out of their control, or Vini intentionally misrepresenting them.
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I understand that this is fault of shitty publishers too, but HB is douchebags too. They didn't put any warning about region locks on bundles page and give they official answer on this only month later. Hell, they still didn't answered on my support ticket that i send few weeks ago about HB codemasters bundle. And i'm still paying same price as ROW buyers, but getting region locked keys, and this is most annoying bullshit i saw for ages. If you putting fucking region locked keys, then also localize your prices for this regions or GTFO.
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They certainly haven't been the same quality since the layoffs, yeah :X
And sure, they've been really dropping the ball on providing adequate information, no argument.
But, as far as everyone has thus far indicated, they do at least offer no-hassle refunds once the matter is brought to their attention, so at least they're not scamming anyone.
As far as unfair pricing if you do want to stick with the purchase, well, pricing- and most things- are rarely fair.
Getting hateful over it rather than trying to figure out why they're not providing appropriate regional pricing, is a bit peculiar.
Besides, we still don't have any indication that Humble is the one enforcing the pricing.
Or, most likely, they were caught blind-sided by the publishers pushing region-locking, and are having trouble updating their payment system to allow for regional payments, in a quick enough manner.
Meaning the alternative here ISN'T regional pricing, but COMPLETELY IGNORING those regions until such a payment method is implemented.
And more options is always good- no?
It's just a lot of hearsay at this point, and other than the 'yeah, Humble needs to present bundle details better, we all agree on that' bit, it's really too early to tell if we should be upset with Humble yet.
Besides, if we've got angst over it, I hear flooding someone's e-mail with complaints gets a message across just fine :'P
PS: Support requests are delayed because of the layoffs :( Not much they can do about that, unfortunately.
Again, not arguing that it doesn't suck and isn't needlessly confusing in presentation- just that the 'fuck you Humble' seems a bit overdone and premature, given how respectable they've been so far.
Save it a bit longer until we're totally sure, then let it all out without any reservations, mm? :)
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They are trying really hard to piss everone off, aren't they?
Let's hope IndieGala won't jump in on this bullshit bandwagon.
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Bundle Stars already did.
Not sure about IndieGala. They are, after all, in the EU like Bundle Stars.
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As I read it, this e-mail was only about South-America. There is no information about other countries.
non-South American account = working key
South-Amercan key = region locked
Can we assume only SA is region locked?
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bump 4 lulz:D
please more restrictions, i still can breath ROW air
"are yuo sure this game run on my PAL PC?"
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Steam region locked beacuse of lower price,but HB same price for global areas:(shit
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yeah i just twitted them why even region lock if the price is the same, i am not expecting them to remply me tho
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Still not clear if this is only for specific publisher bundles, or for everything going forward including the Indie bundles etc.
So it's not clear who's pulling the strings on this - the publishers, or Humble themselves.
Or maybe it's Valve that's dicking around to force everyone into the same region locking as their store - it's also not clear if this applies to steam keys only, or to the rest as well. (Guess we can check next time there's a Uplay or Origin bundle..)
All the same, all this region locking is getting annoying. Especially when you have bundles that are not priced on a per-region basis and thus are priced after the most expensive rest-of-world market anyway.
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im in Asia so no region locks... except if i bought from steam store xD
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Damn...
I'm from Chile, and I consider this a really stupid decision. The whole South American region pays in U.S. dollars when buying from Humble Bundle! We pay the same as everyone else, not less. Even more in some countries, due to the currency conversion.
/facepalm >_<
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Will VPN work anyone? It doesn't affect me in the UK, but I did once use VPN on their store to shave about $1 off a copy of This War of Mine and pretended to be in the US.
Could you not set VPNs to USA, Canada, (western) Europe, Aussie, New Zeland etc if it applies to you?
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I'd like to know this too - I just gave a ROW key to another Steamgifts user who is in Brazil and it worked - but as I understand it his keys won't work for me?
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No, HB purchases are locked to the purchasing region, not IP. You'd need a verified PayPal with American (or other RoW) address or a bank card registered in a bank in a RoW country.
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Thanks for the info, this is sad, hoped USA VPN will work, still will try, already made new account
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I understand the cenconrship thing, but why region-lock everything without changing the prices?
Also they should clearly state it on all their pages/during the process of payment/like EVERYWHERE to avoid any confusion and frustration. =(
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I would assume, this is only applicable to very few bundles, but still not nice to sell region locked keys and ROW keys for the same price...
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...and not a single warning about the region-lock before paying. Just a shady silence.
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I'm inclined to agree with that.
If the key itself is not region locked (it is most of the games for now, according to SteamDB), there is no possible way to HB to implement any lock - only Steam is able to to that.
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I was talking about this issue earlier on these forums and I saw couple topics discussing it but with no official news about it.
Thinking about it, I sent a ticket to hb to know a little more about it. Surprisingly, hb is now fully region locked:
Now, keys AND gifts are region locked.
I'm about to create a ticket to delete a giveaway which I gave hb link and it didn't work out (first time it didn't work via gift link).
Hope this thread helps someone else because sooner or later we all may face this.
I think the douchebag awards goes to...
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