ALL Steam games are now region-locked in RU/CIS, South America, South East Asia and Turkey

I'm fine with region prices based on GDP or whatever, not on market size, so Russian region gets halved price while less developed EU countries pay same as Germany etc. It's just middle finger to their customers, either act like the games are luxury goods and put exact same price everywhere or split EU and rest of the world into properly valued regions.

btw i see new info on TF2 keys
Note: Starting in the next few days, items purchased for Team Fortress 2 either in-game or on the Steam Community Market will not be tradable or marketable for one week after purchase. We are making this change to combat fraud and scams, and to help maintain a safe and healthy item economy within Team Fortress 2.

i saw some threads with arguing what will be next steam currency now :D (but for what now;)

So... what's the cheapest region around? should i resort to unofficial resellers now?

Does this have anything to do with a game that I won and can't redeem? The gifter is from Russia I think and I'm in America, and can't redeem the key on Steam.

I guess the cheapest non-locked region is Norway right now, around 20% - 30% cheaper than the EU price and 5% - 10% cheaper than the US. Right after Norway there comes Canada, which is around 20% - 25% cheaper than the EU price and 3% - 7% cheaper than US. It's something.

The SteamConnomy is dead, totally, it's unbelievable how market is dead and slow now. Before i couldn't catch it up when it's sale, now, now i can't even sell the keys for the cheapest prices for like 10 minutes. And looking at Recent activity on keys i only see posted for listing. It's very rare case that someone buys them.

Just a heads up - apparently, auction wins are region-restricted, too, for some reason.

"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."

Uh, so this is going to screw over some giveaways here in the future? Or no more package GAs from now on..?

According to Steamprices, Mexico still offers a somewhat decent discount on games...and since it is apart of North America...Steam shouldn't have touched it with the region lock correct? Can anyone confirm this?

I am from Southamerica, so I guess I can't use SteamGifts anymore, nor gift games to my American friends this christmas or anytime anymore.

Congrats Steam. You dun goof'd

This is going to be the end of SteamTrades.

I bought 23 keys on the market, what the hell am I going to do with those now? God dammit.

By the way, I don't know if anyone talked about this earlier, but when buying a 4-pack, after unpacking it, the games are NOT region locked.

Too bad this doesn't apply to even half the games on Steam.

Is that a great move? Honestly, I'm confused.

Update: The cheapest non-region locked market is Japan! The games are quite cheap there. Not as cheap as in Russia, but cheap enough to make good savings!

i tried to buy extra copy any game and i got message "you can trade in your country"

a bit late to post, but nobody answered my question so i'll try again: are the US gifts locked? can u activate an US gift in Europe?

Has someone used Nuuvem after the new restriction?
Can you redeem ROW games from there or not?

I honestly fail to see what the problem with this is O.o
You can still buy the games you want and play it just like you did before... so why the ruckus?

Does it limit our options to buy a game for our friends, if we choose the "Purchase as a gift" option? If so, then yeah I can see why it's a problem :/

Or is it just because people are no longer able to exploit the extremely cheap prices so they can resell it for something of much, much higher value? If so, then all of them should probably keep their mouths shut, because that's a shame.

So because some people "abuse" the system I can't buy Christmas or birthday gifts through Steam for my long time foreign friends?

Well, fuck you too, Valve.

I was going to buy a gift on Steam to GA here in celebration of the holidays and my 1 year of SG, but they're restricted already. Bad luck for everyone. :(

So if I understand correctly, now ALL gifts purchased from those regions are locked to those regions respectively? Previously it was only some games (only ones with newly created store pages?) and the default setting was to use this region-locking policy but the developer/publisher had the option of removing it I think. I'm guessing that using Enhanced Steam add-on does not reflect this on the product pages? For example, The Walking Dead: Season 2 doesn't say anything about restrictions, but Game of Thrones - Telltale does have a warning notice. Or as far as Enhanced Steam goes, am I simply confusing inter-regional trade restrictions with regional activation restrictions -- as in these are not necessarily the same thing??

Russians like i dislike region lock,because we can't gift games(for free or whatever)to non Russian players. If they lock our friends to your country friends only,well goodbye Steam and my non Russian friends. On 2nd side no exploits to market,but thats just plain sad for gift system.

Some people in SEA were rumored to be exploiting the prices. IIRC back when the conversion took place,they were no region locks at all and they had
2nd-3rd cheapest prices according to SteamDB.
I was scared that these exploiters were gonna ruin it for regular store buyers.(Steam hiking prices,etc)
They only added region locks but left the prices intact.So atleast that's good news.

That's really bad news for Steam traders from Russia.

I don't mind giving a bit more money for games I like. However, what I do mind is the censorship in Germany. How the hell am I now supposed to play the uncensored/uncut versions of the games such as: Borderlands, Titan Quest, Left 4 Dead, Fallout 3... ?! If Steam wants me to spend less money on games, so be it.

The same reason I hated Nintendo the most.