Take this with a grain of salt as it is what I understand but I might be wrong about it.
- Yes. In general steamdb is more accurate than third party sellers.
- Not sure about Russia in that case, no price doesn't always mean that a key won't activate there, but I guess it's safer to lock them out just in case. It's really up to how the publisher sets it up. But I'd assume that Ukraine and Chine should be safe since there's no mention of them and the game is available there.
- Yes, or at least that's also how I always understood it.
To add to the general confusion of region locks I've even seen specific keys that were pretty much world-wide at one point get later restricted in more countries. I remember a year or two ago buying multiple keys for one game from the same place over the course of a few months and the first two had no restrictions whatsoever but the later two had some countries excluded and steamdb confirmed this, as far as I could tell all the keys came from the same batch since I don't think many people were buying that one so I have no clue of why the restrictions changed.
Not sure if this helps you, but I wanted to try answering.
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Thanks a lot for your answer, i encountered same situation ! XD
Games worlwide on reseller website some months ago and now locked, but sometimes steamdb now reflects the locks and sometimes steamdb says key is still worldwide.
Tbh i think that some publishers want to paralyze us by uncertainty. But here i've at least a specific game in mind, it excludes at least 3 countries on reseller website while steamdb ID looks worldwide. I wanted to talk about that not because of this specific game but because i run against this issue more and more often. I see we understand more or less the same ! :D
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Please take a look at this one : https://www.gamersgate.com/product/this-is-the-president/
On gamersgate, i see at least 5 countries excluded : Argentina, Brazil, China, Ukraine, Russia
But i'm quite certain than the steamdb ID is https://steamdb.info/sub/212996/ (worldwide ?)
Or this one : https://www.gamersgate.com/product/sniper-ghost-warrior-contracts-2/
On gamersgate at least the same restrictions : Argentina, Brazil, China, Ukraine, Russia - minimum
But i'm quite certain that the steamdb ID is https://steamdb.info/sub/589814/ (worldwide Russia excluded ? i see Russia N/A)
I've some other possibilities in mind but they all have silly locks.
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Meanwhile to me gamersgate is showing me the following info when I click on regions:
This Is the President:
"Argentina, Armenia, Azerbaiyán, Belice, Bielorrusia, Bolivia, Brasil, Chile, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Filipinas, Guatemala, Guayana, Guayana Francesa, Honduras, India, Indonesia, Kazajstán, Kirguistán, Malasia, México, Moldavia, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Perú, Surinam, Tailandia, Taiwán, Tayikistán, Turkmenistán, Turquía, Ucrania, Uruguay, Uzbekistán, Venezuela, Vietnam"
Which kinda matches this: https://steamdb.info/sub/648602/
and
Sniper Ghost Warrior Contracts 2:
"Antigua y Barbuda, Argentina, Barbados, Belice, Bermudas, Bolivia, Brasil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Granada, Guatemala, Guayana, Guayana Francesa, Haití, Honduras, Islas Georgias del Sur y Sandwich del Sur, Islas Malvinas (Falkland), Jamaica, México, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Perú, República Dominicana, San Cristóbal y Nieves, San Vicente y las Granadinas, Santa Lucía, Surinam, Uruguay, Venezuela"
Which matches this: https://steamdb.info/sub/579411/
So they do have regional keys, but I'm not certain that they have the correct lists of countries for said keys. This might be an error on the side of the sellers or it might be the publishers that messed up the info they give to the sellers, or they modified the regions and didn't bother to tell the sellers so they can update. Such a messy thing.
Edit: unrelated but I was looking at the store page for This Is the President, watching the trailer, reading the description, etc. And I'm kinda confused by this game, it seems to be one of those really complicated and somewhat abstract strategy games where a wrong click can cascade into everything going to hell. I'm intimidated by just looking at this thing but the premise in the description is hilarious XD
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This is the president is a game like Suzerain, but you play the imaginary president of USA.
Some people don't like it, some like it because they liked Suzerain.
For the region-lock, i would like to say... No from that i can't guess nothing lol !
Just that you're unlucky to be in a super-restricted region.
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I just pasted the two lists to show that they're not always a perfect match to what steamdb says, which means that they're likely wrong sometimes. The keys sometimes can be activated in more countries that they claim, probably because they struggle to keep up with this mess and would rather stay on the side of caution and list fewer countries, specially if they also have keys for other regions, after all they're only really meant to sell keys for personal use as far as their agreements with publishers go.
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Thank you for your lists, i noticed from these that there are much more than 5 countries with issues.
I contacted gamesplanet once telling them i wanted to know about a key to gift to another country here, gamesplanet support answered me with the specific restrictions, told me that i could ask them no problem on case by case, and they see no problem gifting to random foreign countries, but that the number of keys i can buy from each game is limited.
In fact they have been very nice.
Here for this is the president what i got https://steamdb.info/sub/212996/
and i would tend to think you could redeem it in Argentina.
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This is the President:
Did you notice this sub: https://steamdb.info/sub/648602/? It's LATAM+CIS+a few more countries (probably for cheaper pricing). Now I'd assume that Gamersgate key is for sub https://steamdb.info/sub/212994/, so it won't work in the countries of first sub (because they have a special package).
Sniper Ghost Warrior Contracts 2:
This is way more complicated, because there are several restricted packages, but mostly LATAM, CIS and SEA packages. I'd assume that it's this package: https://steamdb.info/sub/468030/, which can't be activated in LATAM, CIS and SEA, because they have their own packages.
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Thank you but no i just bought "this is the president" and checked, it's this sub : https://steamdb.info/sub/212996/
that looks worldwide despite at least 5 countries excluded on gamersgate : Argentina, Brazil, China, Ukraine, Russia
100% it's not 212994 it's 212996 so steamdb already has the token for this one
Also i don't have sniper ghost warrior contracts 2 but i'm fairly sure i would get https://steamdb.info/sub/589814/ with Russia N/A
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Oh, good, then it's really a global one, so either Gamersgate (wrong guessing) or the publisher made a mistake (provided wrong information).
Regarding Sniper and no price in Russia: alancml is right, so Russian people should still be able to activate a key (given that it's not for a restricted package).
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Thank you very much for confirming for this is the president ! :D
edit : oh i just understood too what explained alancml, thanks my bad !
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give the key to your Ukraine/Russia/ China friend who already has this game, so that he can check it for you OR set the RegLock to "no one can enter from anywhere"
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I don't have a "lock-country friend who already has the game" for every game, that's why it's better to understand the general rule so that we can manage on our own rather than on a case-by-case basis, but given the rest of your answer, i see you joke ! ;)
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2) If there is no price tag for a country, it only means you can't buy the game from steam store if you are from that region. If you want to know whether the key version of it is region-locked, you should check in the metadata section of the said package.
3) Cross-region trading and gifting only applies to gifting through steam or the redeemable region of the gift item. It means nothing to a key.
Actually we can't really sure which key is provided based on information of steamdb, especially for a game that is not bundled before. There is always a possibility that the package is not yet indexed on steamdb.
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For 3 technically a edge case exists, 4 packs and other keys with extra copies, where it will affect those gifts :P
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Thank you it clarifies a lot about 3) !
This is the president is https://steamdb.info/sub/212996/ i just bought it from gamersgate and tested the sub.
So steamdb pretends it's worldwide despite heavy region-restrictions on gamersgate
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My bad ! Thanks for your explanations, i just understood what you explained about 2)
You're right that for Jusant it's written in the metadata https://steamdb.info/sub/713860/info/
Please do you think that the metadata section is automatized too ? If it is then it's always reliable.
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I think only the "no price set" banner is auto-generated. And I don't remember that part before, maybe added recently. It is same as no price tag which means you can't buy the game from steam store.
"This package can NOT be activated or purchased in the following countries" is where the part indicating the region-locked region of a key. And this is set by the publisher.
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Thank you very much ! So we depend on the good will of the publishers to give the info.
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I think you misunderstood something. A publisher doesn't provide info to steamdb themsleves. Steamdb grabbed those info by tokens(directly from steam), which is much more complicated to explain and not relevent to our discussion.
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Yes i don't think publishers give infos to steamdb thelmselves, i think they set infos to Steam. And Steamdb grabbed these infos from Steam using the tokens. So i think it depends if the publishers set the correct infos on Steam.
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3) If cross-region trading and gifting are disabled, then the key can still be worldwide, but games can't be gifted directly through Steam between different Steam-regions
This is a more or less deprecated tag, because it's about inventory gifting.
For direct gifting upon purchase are important: 10% rule and store sub not being blocked in recipient's store region.
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But we don't all understand the same even about this 3rd rule.
Axelflox and me were persuaded that it was an additional rule apart of the 10% rule ! XD
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🤔Is there no earth government?🌏 🔭🌕🛸😊
I guess we all get in trouble every time we stumble upon a regional restriction.😅
Thank You info😊
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Check the other GA too if you wanna enter you're welcome
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The "cross-region trading and gifting" part only relates to inventory gifts and thus is basically deprecated, since gifting games via inventory doesn't really exist anymore apart from really old leftovers in some people's inventories.
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So to make things even more cumbersome, I think you may need to check the app ID as well. I gave someone this sub, which metadata looks fine. But once you pop into the app ID metadata, you can see restricted countries = DE. I assume this specific issue is down to the recent Germany age rating thing and won't be a problem for games that people would actually want to giveaway (as they would have set it) but may also happen to other apps for other countries? But the user got the error "This item is currently unavailable in your region" when attempting to redeem even though the specific sub is clean.
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I am pretty sure, restrictions directly on the app had been mostly for working aorund the fact, that a couple of countries like Germany required actually working age checks for sexual content and a couple of other countries like China outright banned some games.
And then the absolute debacle of Steam trying to accommodate to the general age rating requirement in Germany happened.
Games with restrictions on app level including Germany (plus other countries in some cases) are 33354:
https://steamdb.info/search/?a=app_keynames&type=1&keyname=544&operator=1&keyvalue=DE&all=1
Games with restrictions on app level NOT including Germany are 0:
https://steamdb.info/search/?a=app_keynames&type=1&keyname=544&operator=2&keyvalue=DE&all=1
So Germany is part of every single one of these.
But there's also 6708 of these that are including China and probably some more including other countries as well:
https://steamdb.info/search/?a=app_keynames&type=1&keyname=544&operator=1&keyvalue=CN&all=1
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Hello,
Please i would like to recap to be sure if i understand correctly.
You buy a game you already had, and get the package ID (you're sure about the ID),
we suppose the resellers list region-locks for example Ukraine, Russia, China excluded but...
1) If a steamdb ID looks like this https://steamdb.info/sub/416276/
then the game is redeemable everywhere, and the resellers are wrong
here we agree about this, steamdb is more reliable than resellers indications, resellers even legit often don't know well
2) If a steamdb ID looks like this https://steamdb.info/sub/713860/ but there is no price set for Russia N/A
then the game is redeemable everywhere except Russia (or another country if another country is N/A), but the resellers are wrong about Ukraine and China
here alancml is right, if a key can't be redeemed in a specific N/A country, it's written in the steamdb package metadata, so here Jusant can't be redeemed in Russia but not because N/A, it's because https://steamdb.info/sub/713860/info/ (depends on publisher goodwill to specify on Steam) ; but some N/A games can still be redeemed in these N/A countries
3) If cross-region trading and gifting are disabled, then the key can still be worldwide, but games can't be gifted directly through Steam between different Steam-regions
here we agree that keys are not affected, just direct gifts through Steam but we ignore the extent - it seems it was about the old gifts in inventory but some think it also triggers the +10% rule price difference between gifter/receiver, we don't know if the 10% rule applies aside or because of that
Sorry, i'm checking because it's getting harder and harder to find resellers who sell worlwide keys. Currently i actively avoid giving away some games because the list of locks indicated by resellers is as long as your arm, while the Steamdb ID looks worldwide except some countries N/A
JT3 (not a puzzle just replace $$$ with these letters)XfsE2 (not a puzzle just replace €€€€€ with that reverse order)Comment has been collapsed.