no, do not make a new GA.
you asked for a new winner, just wait for support to respond.
you could also add in the game comments, "please reroll, key is not redeemable in Germany"
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A few days later I wrote a ticket to the support to request a new winner, got no answer.
You can't request a new winner for a giveaway you've won, only the giveaway creator can do that.
I would bet that the key is valid, so I thought I make an GA with the key and the restriction "no germany", to give the key to someone else that can use it and check my own win as "not received".
Do NOT do that. You'll get yourself suspended. Re-gifting is against the rules.
What you SHOULD do - if you've made an effort to contact the giveaway creator to let them know you cannot activate the key, you have two choices (1) let the creator know you're okay with him deleting or rerolling the giveaway by contacting him through the giveaway itself or his Steam profile or (2) mark the giveaway as "Not Received."
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If you can view the game in the store and it doesn't have a warning or a seperate page, you can work around activating the key and then download the german version from the Steam store. I had to do this with one of my wins as well, some keys are locked for us for literally no reason.
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No, but Humble Bundle have. It was the one bundle where germans got (dont know anymore) Devil May Cry and other RE IV. And both were region locked.
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Thanks for the answers.
Also no reroll and click "not received", maybe one day the support do a reroll and another one can be a happy winner.
@Riedy: I can see the site in the steam store (Resident Evil 4), but if I enter the key I get the message "The following products are not available in your country. The purchase process was canceled." The funny thing is, it does not list any game, the field is empty. xD
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Make sure to leave a comment in the giveaway, explaining the situation, so the GA creator is both clearly notified, and can easily reroll or delete (as they're required to link to a comment by the winner giving permission or explanation for reroll). This'd be the correct option, rather than putting in a support ticket (unless the GA creator has blacklisted you, in which case contacting staff can be useful to avoid miscommunication).
You don't have to mark Not Received, as a lack of feedback marking is a valid third feedback option, and is generally a more respectful approach than marking NR. That said, you're under no obligation to retain the red "won" alert, either, so you can freely mark it as Not Received, especially if the GA creator hasn't responded for a decent duration. The important things are not to mark as Received, not to share the key, and to clearly explain the situation. So long as you do those, the rest of your actions are up to your preference.
Many games- especially Capcom games- are censor-locked in Germany (due to Germany's censorship laws*, as well as Capcom's strong refusal to try and argue with them at any point), meaning international copies will fail to activate. That's something you, as a German, need to be aware of for games you enter (as GA creators won't always know when a game is locked in your region, or think to look it up without you giving them reason to). Generally speaking, any high-violence FPS or Horror game, or any Nazi-referencing game, is going to be a game that you need to give a strong look to.
*Technically, it's the fact that Germany's Unterhaltungssoftware Selbstkontrolle game rating board has strong legal power, versus the rating boards of other nations, which are often only "strong suggestions". In practice, however, the USK's approach has been heavy-handed and their strong legal controls have been influencing actual censorship changes. For example, it used to be that if you were 18+ you used to be able to buy and activate restricted games freely. Over time, restrictions have increased, with certain publishers favoring not allowing their international copies to be activated in Germany at all (to avoid any chance of running afoul the USK), and it has become a lot harder to obtain uncensored games as an adult- meaning "child protection" censorship has evolved into "actual" censorship (regardless of who is more to blame for that).
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A short time after I made the ticket I had posted a comment in the GA.
I also was successfull to contact the owner via Steam and wrote him a message about all. He was a few times online but did not answer. But he definitely knows the situation.
The really strange thing about the game is, that a german cut version does exist but the key still not work. Maybe the key itself is from another game. Steam does not say which game it is that can't be activated. :/
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that a german cut version does exist but the key still not work.
Unfortunately, there's no way to exchange an uncut version for a cut version, or vice-versa, so an international version wouldn't ever work on a german client (if it's set as region-restricted).
He was a few times online but did not answer. But he definitely knows the situation.
Online status on Steam rarely means anything, between family use, computer reboots, internet outages, and other factors that can mimic the primary account holder being active. Of course, that he accepted you as a friend on Steam in the first place does rather indicate he's at least passably aware of the situation.. unfortunately, there's nothing the site lets you do with these situations, as a winner; as such, your best option is to just mark the giveaway as not received and let yourself forget about it.
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so an international version wouldn't ever work on a german client (if it's set as region-restricted).
Have to correct you there: even if a game is "notRunnable" in Germany, it can be activated and played directly by using VPN and played even without VPN after three months.
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I was previously told that German users didn't find such to be advisable, due to concerns of breaching Steam account ToS, so I didn't consider it as a valid workaround. Since I'm not in Germany, I'd have to defer to your considerations on it. :)
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Well, it's a risk, since it's forbidden by ToS and there are always rumours about people who got their complete account banned due to VPN using. I definitely wouldn't recommend playing or buying from the store with VPN, regarding activations everyone has to decide upon it oneself if it's worth the risk.
But technically working it is.
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Has it ever been a German that got banned for using VPN to buy a game limited in their country from any neighboring country with exact same EU prices. People near the border could just drive over, use first free WLAN to buy the game and drive back home, all legit according to TOS.
Or has it always been people who VPN to Russia/Brazil/wherever the cheapest prices are to trade the games.
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Whenever I had read these "reports" they were very vaguely aka "my buddy got completely banned when using VPN" and appeared only when there was a good offer for such a game. Luckily the restriction "not runnable" is seldom, one example that comes to mind are the international versions of the new Wolfenstein parts.
I can confirm that activating these by VPN is possible and that playing them without VPN 90 days after activation is possible.
I'd also assume that if those punishments exists at all, these would affect mainly those users that either use VPN all the time or use it to get better regional prices.
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Interesting, apparently it got deindexed in 2016. While existing DE-version owners apparently still haven't had their copies updated to WW versions, new purchases of the WW version from keys or the Steam store apparently allow for activation in Germany.
However, ROW pre-purchase copies do still have region restrictions locking out Germany, Japan, and RU/CIS, so there's still a chance that this is a region-restricted copy of RE4. Or, it could be an entirely different situation. Either way, I think by this point the winner may just be best off trying to win another copy. :P
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Kein Bock auf Englisch zu schreiben:
Du kannst als Gewinner keinen Reroll beantragen, das ist die Aufgabe des Giveaway-Erstellers. Markiere es einfach als "Not received" und wenn es den Ersteller auffallen sollte, wird er sich schon melden.
ps.: Ich sehe grad das der Ersteller seit 2 Wochen nicht mehr Online war. Er wird sich bei dir also aufjedenfall melden oder wird gleich einen reroll beantragen.
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Support does not re-roll a giveaway without a request from its creator.
You have done what you should. The burden is now on the creator. Do nothing with the key itself.
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2 weeks ago I won a giveaway, but I can't activate it in my country (germany). The GA itself had no info about this.
I contacted the owner via steam, got no answer. A few days later I wrote a ticket to the support to request a new winner, got no answer.
I would bet that the key is valid, so I thought I make an GA with the key and the restriction "no germany", to give the key to someone else that can use it and check my own win as "not received".
Even if it works for the other, I can't check "received", because I would not have it in my inventory and that would make trouble.
What you guys think? Should I do that or do you have other ideas?
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