me too, do post your results here when you have a suitable sample size :)

bump for answered!

DONE

i bet that gaben is testing hl3 and laughing at us :V

edit:. is this the price for the release of hl3?

Doesn't show results, lame.

Done :)

you should have added option nobody to q4 who would benefit the most

Done

survey link

I think the other 600-comment thread would have given you more insight on the matter compared to "Good thing/Bad thing/I don't know".

Done

Just my 2 cents: this voting doesn't give you an idea about the choices Valve had, don't forget that they(Valve) turned black eye on cross-region trading for a long time, allowing people from region with cheaper prices make money from nothing and people from more expensive regions pay less for some games; but recently some currencies (Ruble specifically) have had HUGE problems with it's value towards USD and Valve had to do something with it, from rumors the choice was to

1) increase the prices in RU region 50% or even more
2) or return dollar as a currency in RU store
3) Leave the prices for games older than 6 months the same BUT lock everything on Steam

As of now they implemented inly the 3rd option and that is why I (I live in RU region) voted that lock is a good thing (it's a lesser evil for me)
One more time: Valve allowed cross-region trading (Or didn't do much to prevent it until lately) for really long time and only now took some action due to economic problems in Russia, so I kind of don't get the hate towards them

94 is close enough to 100, I'll post now. I'll post again if we hit 200 or around Midnight Eastern.

Also, do people want me to update the main post with the results? I have them down here currently so I don't bias people.

90% of the replies were from at least occasional gifters (~20% of whom were frequent gifters)

Only 25% of replies were people who don't trade games.

People get games from many sources - 80% use their home region for steam, 45% use a different region, 90% get bundles, 60% get company freebies, 70% use private giveaways, 50% use steam trading and 40% trade keys or otherwise don't use steam, about 10% wrote in other stores. (yeah, I should have had that as an option.)

50% think valve benefits most from region locks while 30% think developers benefit most.

Unsurprisingly 70% think region locks are bad.

60% are from a more expensive buying region, 20% are from an average cost region. Again this isn't surprising based on when I posted.

I am hopeful we will get a sampling from other regions as the day goes on.

Thanks to everyone who has replied so far!

Apparently google forms hate me as well... we have 128 replies yet it is only summarizing 67 of them... But at least I have all the data, I just have to share it somehow.

Result Summary (I'm tired and its late so I apologize for typoes etc)

90% of respondents gift games

85% trade games

People get games from a lot of places, the most prominent being 85% bundles, 64% local steam store, 51% a steam store outside their own region, 56% use steam gift trading and 40% use other means of trading. (I can give the full results if you want)

35% think valve benefits most from region locks, 27% think the developers and 26% think no one benefits.

74% think region locks are a bad thing. (unsurprising)

70% of those who replied are from "expensive" regions.

I reset the count in the survey (but saved the data), so people are still welcome to reply. Google will tell me if it gets updated. I would love to hear from people in the less expensive regions to see their opinion.

Thanks again for taking the time to reply!

I was away from home for 1 year. Just came back home to see that Steam has introduced regional in my country, about 50% less than usual USD prices. I thought I was gonna be on shopping spree like mad this winter sale. But then I found out that Steam has removed paypal payment option and changing billing address will have to go through steam support first. I was bummed.

I wonder how many are American games that vote 'More Expensive" because they are comparing to Russia?

My personal opinion - I understand why region locks exist, because different areas of the world have different incomes and demographics and therefore require different prices. It's fully within Valve's right to restrict gifts and do whatever to "protect the trading economy," but they'll have to note that people are going to trade less and buy less as a result of this.

For example, I was planning to go buy a bunch of Naughty Keys for TF2 as soon as they come out and start trading them for slightly more than normal keys, but seeing as there's a 1 week trade limit on these I'm probably not going to do that now.