What?!? Is this for real? Newly purchased keys or previously purchased keys too?!?
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I'm pretty sure it depends on the game, and the region. Some games are region locked for censorship or distribution reasons, others for pricing reasons. But plenty of games don't even have region variants in Steam.
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Some games are region locked. I signed up for the monthly bundle to get Mad Max, only to find the key wouldn't activate in my country.
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Well, uhm, yes. Mad Max, along with many games, has a Japan-only lock, where you have to get a special version for yourself as the ROW keys are disabled to work in Japan. That's not Humbe Bundle's fault though.
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Yeah, it was a little frustrating because I didn't see any warning when I paid for the bundle subscription. But anyway I was able to resolve the problem and can play it just fine now :-)
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I didn't see any warning when I paid for the bundle subscription.
Sadly, this is where the real problem lies. They are still terrible at telling people if a key is not 100% worldwide or "normally" region locked. They promised to address it, but so far, nothing happened.
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I traded my Humble copy of Mad Max with someone in SA yesterday and they didn't report any issues though?
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I dont think thats true.
Some bundles had region locked keys indeed. But they usually note that on the storefront (Edit: they dont. screw them)
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Some are region locked, but most aren't. But they always activate in your region, so as long as you're buying for yourself you won't run into any problem. If you wanna trade or give it away then you should use the gift-link option, I think that solved the problem (not sure, don't quote me).
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The gift-link option doesn't work for bypassing region restrictions any longer.
I do agree that HB should be a lot more transparent and upfront about these matters.
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I just try to avoid doing giveaways from a bundle when I read that they might be region locked. It's easier.
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Just do region locked ga's if the game is region locked. Just to be safe, I always put South America region lock on my games from HB.
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Not always an option as the sites region selection is severly limited and the restrictions on some keys are hard to match up to anything.
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Region is assigned based on payment information, so the address your bank card is registered to. Same with PayPal that gets the info from the bank account you associate it with. So you'd need a virtual debit card for another country first.
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Nope. They check your Paypal, or other, method registered address.
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it depends on the developer/publisher, like codmasters. https://www.steamgifts.com/discussion/6CxmN/now-it-is-official-humble-bundle-is-fully-region-locked
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They're not Humble Bundle region locks, they're PUBLISHER/DEVELOPER region locks of games that happen to be included in Humble Bundles.
The PUBLISHERS/DEVELOPERS make these determinations, not Humble.
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But there should be a warning message on the bundle page
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Yes, I agree. Humble should tell customers up front when they know. I suspect that a lot of times, the publishers/developers just give them keys and don't say anything about region locks.
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Like I said, unless the publisher, who actually gives Humble the specific keys for the bundles tells them, they wouldn't know. Keys don't have signs on them that say "I'm region restricted!".
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You haven't thought this through. Yes the publishers decide on region-locking but HB have to know which keys to give to their customers, and identify the customers region.
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It's not that the humble bundle keys themselves are region locked, it's actually the developers of the games who provide region locked keys, for example the previous SEGA bundle was region locked because SEGA wanted to give region locked keys. Moral of the story, humble bundle DOES NOT region lock its keys, the developers do.
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Yeah but since we all pay in dollar's and the humble can just ignore and give us world-wide keys, them they are a bit the bad guys to.
Sometimes on those bundles it's better to ask for a friend with EU-US adress to buy it since you will receive and ww key.
There's some problems with keys that have locked content / censured.
Sometimes it's hard for me to buy the bundles because they are not worth since i cant send them to people outside the south-america region, and even with the discount the dollar is almost 4 times my currency and steam sells almost everything for half the price in dollar.
So in a sale where steam sell's the same games with cut's of 66% or more it is better buying them on steam than on any other place.
And bundle also has the one key per tier thing, that is also something the publisher do, but humble can deny it and ask for single keys or nothing done, but the publisher know's that most of the people already have some of the games, so it's better to sell them things that they will not really receive.
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"...humble can just ignore..."
No, they can't. They're contractually bound and would get sued and lose business, in other words, games would get pulled from the Humble store and none of them would ever appear there or in a bundle ever again.
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Humblebundle team has no hand in this, it's the publisher who decided whether the keys should be region locked and if a key should cover a single game or an entire tier. Thing of it as two people a and b, a has the resources and can make products but doesn't know how to forward them to the market but he also wants to remain in a closed market, b can do that for him. An agreement between and b means that b will sell a products but only to people a wants his product to forward for, this is how humbebundle selling works, they get the keys from a certain publisher with the publisher's desire on how the key functions and then they just sell them. Keep in mind as well that region locked keys aren't only done by publishers, by also by law in those certain territories.
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gift link is not region locked only keys as mush as i heard
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Depend from bundle. they done some with region restricted like:
Humble Codemasters Bundle (November 24, 2015)
Humble Capcom Bundle (October 13, 2015)
I don't seen any region locked bundles after this.
Update: You alwas can make ticket to HB with question about checking your keys. Thay works pretty fast.
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The bad thing is that is not stated in the bundle page :(
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So if it isn't mentioned do we just... Have to find out by trial and error? That seems bogus :/
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Yep, you have to check the forums here or anywhere where bundles are discussed to see if people report region locks or not. HB does not indicate it in any way.
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Okay, I paid upfront for May's bundle already but now that I've found out about this, I'm unsubscribing and not buying from them anymore until they clearly state the region locks upfront. I'm assuming trying to get them to not use them anymore at all might not be feasible though I am against region locking, so I'll take an honest warning up front as sufficient. Thanks for the info!
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I'm part sad to hear that, but I cannot say you are wrong. While region locking is strictly up to the publishers, but HB needs to be a lot more upfront.
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People have said that every key from Humble Bundle is now region locked. Is this true?
I have a Alien: Isolation from 1 of the monthly bundles that I'm trying to trade away. Is it region locked?
On another note, what is Alien: Isolation's value in trading?
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