Region Lock? Different Pricings? What are they thinking? What is the reason behind these?

theoreticaly i think region pricing is supposed to create a sense of equality. meaning the games are supossed to be cheaper where people earn less money and more expensive where people have higher purchasing power. because of greed and cultural diferences region pricing is about greed. look at steam their policy is 1 dollar =1 euro. that way they earn more money.

Grow up and move your head of your ass and you'll know.

Actually in my country most of the valve games which cost $20 on the US, cost $15. btw i live in Chile.

Also.. i cant activate my Batman AC DLCs on my country :(

Not only in PC games prices. Yes, in Russia PC games like twice cheaper, but on the other hand console games cost $80-100. And never drop, so some mid-old (for current console generation) game like Bioshock still cost $80.

Publishers region-lock items so they can price them differently in different parts of the world without those price differences harming the market in higher-priced regions. This is EXACTLY why DVDs have different regions, and Europe and Japan share one region, but North America is separate. The chances of hundreds of thousands of Japanese people importing a DVD from Europe without a Japanese language track or subtitles is pretty low (Japanese prices are typically high), but importing from America would be much easier since there's only one ocean in the way.

Another example is, in China, because copyright belonging to other countries (and frequently within China itself) is usually totally ignored, DVDs might be sold, legitimately, for the equivalent of $2 in China, but that same DVD is $25 in the USA because they know the Chinese will just make illegal copies instead of paying $25, but they can use copyright law to force Americans to pay the sticker price--and the American market WILL buy them at that price.

The system of regional licensing and pricing is decades old.

Money. Next? ;)

Long answer, if you charge a price that the market won't bear, you lose out on sales. Some territories get lower prices because publishers realise that if they charge more, their game will be pirated/ignored. It works the other way too, if a publisher thinks it can get away with overcharging a territory, it will. :) Region-locking exists to enforce this.

I don't understand GfWL, I've already stated my feelings on that pile of shit and I'm lucky enough to live somewhere it's supported.

As for me, personally, I live in New Zealand where we're frequently stuffed in the anoos over pricing. If the price difference is small, I don't mind paying a little extra. But when it's been ridiculous, on a few occasions, I've bought a retail copy of a game from Amazon (US/UK) and had the physical copy of the game shipped here to save money. How fucking stupid is that? The most egregious price difference (still exists) was Modern Warfare 2. The non-sale price is still US$89.99! This is partly because Steam/Publishers lump NZ in with Australia, which is a pretty rich country, but still, $90 is shitting horrendous for a 2 year old game.

Basically, producers reducing consumer surplus, if my understanding of economics is correct.

Tell me if it isn't.

yeah i hate that... =/

i hate that so match that i pirate most of the games not available in my area and then i create a torrent or an upload =/

I was always curious but I assume it's against steams TOS to change your location to buy a game cheaper in the UK (assuming it is) and adding it to your US account via gifting or something?

Another thing is, sometimes the digital price is more than the retail price. For example, I bought Diablo 3 as retail and paid ~50€ whereas the digital price of it is 60€. Remind me if I'm wrong but isn't the digital price supposed to be lower than retail? Removing 3rd parties out of the way should let the price down I believe...

We have 2 Eu regions with almost same prices.
L.A. Noire

EUR1 € 29.99 - salary 1000-2000€
USD $ 19.99 - salary $?
EUR2 € 29.99 - salary ~300-400€
well, that's fair

Peki La Noire ($14.99) neden daha ucuz onu anlamadım.
http://store.steampowered.com/app/110800/?cc=tr

Dead Space 2 is $49.98 here and this is not even Europe.