Looks like Ill be getting most of my games from Humble Bundles or humble stores. Kinda didnt expect this especially since Valve promoted cross regions for so many years. Sad day indeed.
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Well... That sucks.
Speaking as a Brazilian myself what bothers me is not the fact that i won't be able to give any gifts anymore to people who live in US (specially here in Steam Gifts even if i know i have been away a long time now, but still), but the fact that the whole reason that South America is going to have the same lock it's just because of the prices here. And for that matter, the prices here haven't been THAT cheaper since Steam changed from $1 = R$1.5 to $1 = R$2 (yeah, they did this without any warning but it was kinda obvious they would do that soon or later). The hate that my country is getting for this is just...sad. And the worse of all, we're not even the ones to blame. It was Valve's decision (probably forced because of some developers, but you get the point) and it shows how much power they have over us. I guess this is the end of trading for me, it has been fun. And just to inform you guys, a local newsletter said this:
"Previously, Steam users of other countries were allowed to buy game keys from markets with lower value - like Brazil or Russia - and from websites or re-sellers like Nuuvem. They were also allowed to receive games as gifts from the players that are from those regions.
Now the KEYS will only work on those countries and in some near places. User gifts in places like Brazil won't be able to be activated by users who have an account in regions like US or EU."
Yes, you just read that right. They said keys. A lot of people are saying this won't affect keys, but this seems to say otherwise. I'm not 100% sure about that information because it's not coming directly from Valve, but there's that.
Well... It's a sad day, indeed.
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I just sold all of my tf2 keys lol couldn't find a russian trader to get cheap games from :P
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It affects Brazilians, but not all of South America (as far as I know).
EDIT: I am wrong : ((
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Notice: Gift purchases for About Love, Hate and the other ones can only be added to the gift recipient's library if they are in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Bahamas, Belize, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, Paraguay, Suriname, El Salvador, Uruguay and Venezuela
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fuck you Steam
I pay the same bloody prices for your games as most of the americans
I don't even live near Brazil to have the same stupid region block
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Maybe, I only get mad because they put us in the same bag as Brazil
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Is that means its the beginning of the end of the Steamgifts.com?
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I hope it's not. But i can't figure out how the site will continue to work =/ Maybe it will have switchers for regions? A bit of scripting and site will detect automatically what region you have and show you page with your region giveaways. Or it can be done manually.
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Is it possible to kill in second time someone with Avada Kedavra spell if i already casted that spell on him previosly? I already used my mass Avada Kedavra on greedy steamers when they applied that trading lock for items.
Another strange changes O_o Just 2 questions:
Let's say i live in Russia and i bought 100 games. After month, half year, year i will move to England and study or work there. As i know all my 100 games will be locked and unplayable in England, because i bought them in Russia for low region price. Is that fair? I think it's not. And what if i'm so mobile because of my work, that after half year i will leave England and move to Asia? All my games will be locked again and i will be forced to pay money again? O_o For me Steam is great because i can save all my games at one place. I can change PC, login into Steam account and get access to all my games. I don't need discs. I have Steam. It seems like new changes will harm Steam customers.
My second question is about gifting system. With these new changes it must be renamed to "Gifting System for your region friends". How many of us have friends from another countries? 100 people? 1000? 1000000? Many of Steam customers have friends and many of us would like to gift copy of games for friends. If no, than why Steam has gifting system? =) 4packed games? What's the point of creating 4pack games if you can't gift 3 copies, which you can't use? =)
Maybe i misunderstood something, but these new changes are very disappointing. Someday people will just point their eyes to similar platforms as Steam if owners of Steam will not stop this "let's lock everything for use, trade & joy" changes.
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I wonder if regions paying "the right" price will make up for the lost sales from traders, both in games and tf2 keys. I know I already have moved away from buying most things in Steam towards either buying keys from other sites (Gamersgate, Humblebundle, Indiegala, etc) as well as just completely jumping ship to GOG, due to its current stance of "DRM is a bad thing".
Maybe from this Valve will eventually think to give Eastern Europe halfway fair pricing. I'm sure it won't happen, but countries like Poland sharing a price with Germany, etc, is complete bullshit. I just know that the day I can't give my Polish friends games via steam is probably the day I just jump ship from Steam completely and use it solely to play what I already have in my library and a so-so instant messaging service.
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This will affect Steam's profits too. Every year people were buying hundreds of games they don't need and hundreds of copies of them from resellers from Russia. It won't be the same again. Diminishing marginal utility will kick in this time. After buying a game for $30 once or even twice, a user will not be willing to buy a third one at that price but they would buy many times over if the price was $10. Perhaps that was one of the reasons that Valve games were never region locked before. When CSGO just came out (there were already lots of new region locked games), it was not locked. Trading/Selling across regions was satisfying a certain part of the market and giving Valve a slice of it. Valve is greedy but the big game publishers are greedier and probably twisted Steam's arm to do this (if Valve wasn't "intelligently greedy" it would have locked all its new games and tf2 stuff before this). Big companies got scared of the rouble hype and decided to make changes. Steam's greedy instinct kicked in after that and they decided to lock their own games too. But here is the truth, "stupidly greedy" companies. Buying your 10th copy of a game from Russia will not inflict you 10 times more losses (from opportunity cost) because people would be buying only one copy at the expensive price and only games that they really want. Moreover, companies make most of their money from when the game is just released and somewhat less money from later sales (and a big part of cross-region trading/selling are older games that were on sale as new games were locked anyways). The rouble thing is just a pretext. There are many other countries in the CIS that use the US dollar (prices are lower but unaffected by the rouble). Some games were also only a few dollars apart in price when 75% off, so for just a few dollars less per game, Valve and big publishers were making much more money from their older games (with people buying more and more). And let us not forget that these are all digital goods. Even selling millions of copies for $1 will bring some big profits (after maintenance costs, hello humble bundle). Well, Steam let us see how you do this Winter Sale and whether it will make you change your mind (as you have done before).
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I am actually curious how this will pan out. Will there be a sudden spike of sales in more expensive regions due to this, since it is now not possible to trade with Russians? Will the spike offset the losses incurred from Russian resellers not buying a huge number of keys to sell later? What of tf2 keys? Tf2 keys have been the item of exchange used for such trades, will the price of them on the market crash now that trading is being relegated to same region?
Basically I am just curious if this will workout or if it will blow up in Valve's face.
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just like un-cracked drm doesn't magically increase sales, this lockdown won't either. People don't have more money available to spend than before, if at all, they'll buy less of more expensive games, netting the same revenue at best. But as valves own sale-data shows, lower prices increase revenue exponentially higher, bringing more dollars in than higher prices ever would.
Including all the anger and loss of good-will, sales from the affected people will diminish significantly. The amount of such people must have risen high enough for valve to care to take action at all, so they will get a significant negative effect.
Enough to change their mind though? Not so likely I fear..
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That is my guess as well. Best case scenario for Valve is if fewer people buying at higher prices manage to match the cashflow from lots of people buying for cheap.
Suppose on the plus side, maybe Valve's servers will for the first time ever during a sale not just crash and burn. Maybe this was a ploy all along to avoid having to upgrade/add more servers. =P
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It's really interesting to see how the market moves in response to each of these developments. Gem prices just made a rebound because people in region-locked countries just realized that the only way now to still get gifts outside of 2- or 4- packs is through the Auction. Definitely going to see some heavy bid inflations incoming, I predict.
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Until the price in ruble recovers back to $1usd=35-45rub don't expect Steam to just change back. Yesterday it soared up to 1usd=80rub. If Valve were to sell games to the Russians at the same price as before, Valve would lose a lot of money. If they raised the price, there would be no russian traders because it would be too expensive to profit for the russian traders. So all of you complaining about the region locks in Russia needs to stop and read the news. However, the region lock in South America or whatever seems a bit unfair. I don't think they are related to the rubles.
Edit: I mean raise the price but with the same region locks as before
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I've been reading the comments, to my understanding this wouldn't be a problem if there was:
Should I add anything else? let me know.
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There definately should be an EU-B (Balkans). Personally I don't care much cause I have stopped buying from steam a while now, but Balkan countries cannot be considered the same as UK or Germany. Instead they have the high prices of EU-2.
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i don't get it, why are so many people freaking out over this? lower priced games are meant to help out russia and those other places, not the rest of the world. everyone just take a deep breath and calm down, this isn't valve's fault. from a business standpoint this change makes sense. Praise GabeN!
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For one, there are plenty of countries that frankly need a lower price but are given the same price as the UK and Germany. Just look through this thread and you'll see countries like Spain and Poland in Europe, and a good chunk of Central and South America receive the raw end of the deal.
For another, people with friends across the border cannot gift each other games anymore, at least in the locked regions. It is specifically this bs that has waylaid a friend of mine from grabbing a DS - the price is too high where she lives and if she sends me the money to buy it here and ship it, guess what, different region, meaning that any game she wants she would have to buy through me.
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Here in Portugal is the same, 60€ is more than 10% of a salary around here, most people take home between 500 and 600 a month.
So if you live in uk, usa, or another country like that and for the same job you get paid 4/5 times that amount, so 60€ would be nothing for AAA new games.
I guess some guys don not know that in Europe you can have different economic realities regarding each country, and crysis has nothing to do with it, has been like this for ages
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and Egypt too :( "whole of Africa actually" get the US prices with our pound worth 1/7 of their dollar :(
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Ha! So, we need to increase piracy rate in EU2 zone and they will decrease prices!
Brilliant!
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THIS IS STUPID I AM NOT MOVING TO ANOTHER COUNTRY JUST TO PLAY A GAME
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"Tip: A gift in inventory may become region locked. If you bought it from a foreign country trader remember to redeem it as soon as possible."
From Steamlock checker
May... shit. But its just speculating.
When I think about it... they cant do this can they? Well ofcourse they can, but legally?
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It happened to me 2 games I had row and became CIS locked, some months ago.
Contacted support but they just didn't give a shit about it.
I told them, that it was a gift from a friend, not a trade and that it was row at that moment and that in the shop page I have the option to buy it to give away to friends, so it was all legit, but they just didn't care, was all about copy paste reply I guess.
They say that you can buy to give to friends but then they seem to resctrict you to have friends only in your living area.
So, I guess we could take them to court if we wanted for descrimination
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they can, valiant heart e.g. but i think most situations were on situation like price bug
If they had retroactively changed all gifts to region lock it would make massive bad press on him. A lot of us have gifts even few months old. In EU you could sue them and Valve should lose at court.
That's nothing, think about mass traders from russia who hoarded many copies. They still have a looot games and they have to do something with them, yes?
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traders are not mainstream. Read at real press or computer gaming sites. Some are even happy with that. Almost non negative opinions.
Journalists can't admit that they trade for cheaper gifts :) but if steam would have blocked them recent gifts from friends etc. they would rage.
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Man, so many whiny people. You know, you never had "the right" or "deserved" a way to get cheap prices/games. You do not have the money to buy games? Then don't buy them. Or just wait a few months/years, until they are on sale. That's what I do. And yes, I am from the EU tier 2, where a new game would cost me a third of my salary. Still, do you see me complaining?
Yes, it's a little bad considering the giveaways, but that's the only thing you can whine about. Yet only a few people I see commenting about that. Minous2 signing out.
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I'm complaining about the way they implemented this new rule. Sneaky sneaky like.
Starting with the locks-by-default, and now a full lock within a week or so.
I'm complaining because the small indie devs will take the punches. Yes I actually care about them.
And about the consequences this will have for steamtrades and steamgifts, a community I grew very fond of.
Personally this will only mean I will be buying less games and/or wait for sales. It was nice to get games cheaper, got some games I normally wouldnt consider buying. Trading was fun most of the time and gifting as well, because you could get games cheap.
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Locking gifts sucks, but the main problem is that Valve is limiting the users options without any notice and is also giving stupid excuses. Ruble is going down? Better region lock half of the world.
And making excuses for Valves inability to give all the regions fair prices is stupid. If food at your local store suddenly became twice as expensive for some bullshit reason you will be fine with that? If you can't afford food just don't eat?
They locked the gifts for a bullshit reason for a very big part of the user base, limited the market, limited trading while at the same time they have shit customer support and unfair prices. Well fuck me for wanting a decent service and fair prices.
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That is correct. Food prices in Greece are according to Greek Wallets, not German or Russian. So if games were the same way (Ok food is not the same as games but let's make the comparison anyway), Greece and many other countries like it would have a price between the russian and the German one, not exactly the German (I take Germany as an example, you can put in its place uk or another high salary (in comparison to Greece) country).
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Yes, but I cant see any connection with regional trading. Those are two totally different things IMO. Regional trading was black market, in principe basically the same as some smugglers trying to sneak some drugs from Thailand to Europe.
If there will be EU3 tier on steam anytime soon, that thing depends on actual publishers. But while there are some like Activision, Ubisoft, EA... there are no big chances IMO, so only way for us is waiting for big sales. Not a big deal for me
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Well, actually if the food that my country produced is more expensive than the same, imported product, I'm not paying more, I'm buying the imported stuff.
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Comparing digital goods to non-digital goods is always hard.
Anyway, yes, I totally would buy my food or other items from other countries if they'd cost me only half the price or less than they'd cost me if I bought them in my country, especially if it's the identical product (and not just a similar or worse quality).
Last month I ordered some winter clothes from a UK shop, because the same items from the same seller would have cost me 30% more if I had bought them through their German Amazon shop.
I've even split my order, because shipping cost with 2 packages was cheaper than buying all in one sweep (I assume this was due to the package weight).
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i see it the other way
im german and pay full price and it sucks hard when i buy games and have them in my inventory and this cheap russians DEVALUE my games by getting exact same copy but for half the money or lower
now its fine - they can buy cheap games and dont fuck with my money
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Okay, I understand they had to do something about Russian Store.But why lock the others too ? We buy for like %20 discounted and it isn't much of a difference.And some games are %200 expensive for us.
Anyway, it won't affect me since I started buying everything from my Steam Store after recently added currencies.I still buy cheaper but I pity those who will have to pay twice the amount for a game now.
Sincerely, somoene who once loved Steam.
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Response from dev forum:
"As most of you know, our developer tools suggest pricing based on market research and purchasing power parity. In the case of territories such as Russia, Brazil, and SE Asia, we suggested pricing that is lower than the direct USD conversion. This is based on our assessment of actual pricing of comparable products in that market. Recently Rubles have hit an all-time low which has been a concern of many game developers. We are still assessing the market to see if suggesting new prices in Russia is right for customers who live in that market. We do not think that pricing based on currency conversion only is the right way to approach the Russian market necessarily.
What we are doing immediately in response to the Ruble drop is limiting trading and gifting from Russia to prevent people from taking advantage of the situation. We have been applying a gifting and trading lock of this type on all newly created packages on Steam since mid-2014. Today we have propped a change that will affect all packages on Steam which will not allow them to be unpacked to an account, if gifted or traded from a lower priced region to a higher priced region. This change is not retroactive and only affects new purchases. It also will not affect customers in that region from gifting a copy to other people in that same region. All customers will have proper warning when they are purchasing a gift prior to checkout in those regions as well. We will continue to assess the situation and make changes if necessary in the future. If you have any questions please feel free to write us via the contact form via the Steamworks Development site - Documentation & Help -> Contact Steam Publishing."
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