I believe that problem is only with very gory games or like games with nazi's and etc. in it due to germany's censorship laws, not all ROW games can't be activated in germany
EDIT: I've seen a select few games that couldn't be activated in japan either
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The Problem is mostly the publishers of the games, which would not have to restrict the games from activating here.
It is a bit similar to, for example, Adult only rated stuff in the us.
Every Place is allowed to sell that stuff (to adults), but a lot of stores won't sell it (cause of restrictions to display the stuff/random decision of the retailers)
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_banned_video_games
see what i found : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RapeLay
o_O
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RapeLay is no longer cool, it's all about CustomMaid 3D 2 now! ;p
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Australia has banned most of the games that ever existed. xD
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They'll go out of they way to say they didn't ban it, they just disliked it so much that they didn't give it a classification.
Oh and you're not allowed to sell games or movies without a classification in AU so there.
But not banned!
(in case you can't tell, I'm being sarcastic, and they're arseholes)
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Friend acticated games banned in Germany just fine from keys and many just VPN to a neighboring country to activate the game. Also see Germans often asking people from other countries to buy them bundles so that it will include keys for those games. It's not a very strict lock like banning cross-region trading for RU+CIS games.
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That's problem on steamgift. can made givawyes for region locked games, but "can't" make giveaways for game which can not be activated in some country/region.
second problem, region restricted for europe. you can put only region restricted - none
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Japan often gets the shaft too. I don't think it's because of censorship/violence -- rather I believe it's mostly due to publishing/licensing restrictions as big publishers here tend to have sticks up their arses with respect to PC gaming (or there are some sort of contractual clauses set with the consoles with respect to exclusivity periods).
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I know that Australia, Germany, Japan and Korea have issues with certain games. Australia and Germany it's because of censorship, Japan and Korea I have no idea
The rest of the world is generally ok
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Thank you for the answer. And please look at thekuribo's answer above, to see why Japan & Korea have regional shackles.
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I have read on many giveaway descriptions, that a game won't activate in Germany (doesn't work on German Steam accounts).
The games in question are region free, also known as "Rest of World region" games -- anyone can activate it even if they are living in a restricted region. However, this doesn't apply to Germany. The problem here is that German users can still enter these giveaways.
Following this, are there other regions/countries that cannot activate Rest of the World (ROW) games?
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