i won a grid 2 giveaway, i was so happy....but when i was activating the key steam said i can't buy the game in my country...what should i do now? i think region locked giveways are not allowed right? should i contact support or what?

8 years ago

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Region locked giveaways are allowed but they need to specify that's it's region locked

8 years ago
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You should first contact the giveaway creator. If they don't provide you with a working key within 7 days, mark it as "not received".

8 years ago
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i'll try to contact him on steam then...i don't think he will provide me a working key but i'll try

8 years ago
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You can try to comment in the giveaway also.

8 years ago
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Probably not, but it's worth a try. They most likely didn't realize that it was region-locked.

8 years ago
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+1

8 years ago
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Codemasters bundle at Humble Bundle. Those were region locked, yet we still see this, where people put them up as ROW.

8 years ago
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that's probably what happened

8 years ago
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HB didn't clearly stated they are region locked, so how people can know?

Sure, if you read discussions you do, but most people don't.

8 years ago
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Wasn't it the one where they eventually put up a warning about the region lock, unlike the Capcom pack? Or was it Bundle Stars with the Bethesda pack?

8 years ago
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BS clearly stated that the bundle IS region locked, and to what region. HB didn't state that, people found themselves that those keys work only in given region (of buy).

8 years ago
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Strange, I would have sworn that the Codemasters one was eventually made clear that it uses these new region locked keys.

8 years ago
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Maybe, I can't tell for sure, but I'm nearly sure that there was nothing stated at the beginning of the bundle, and you can't blame anybody for buying bundle in first minutes, then not checking HB page every few days to check if perhaps what he bought is region locked.

Still, HB's fault.

8 years ago
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Yeah, they were absolutely not prepared to have region locks now. And apparently not quick enough to change their site to even include an IP check or just some general warning window.

8 years ago
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All true. There was nothing stated at all.

8 years ago
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Yeah, not safe to assume the worst on this one or the Capcom one, I think those were the two big ones for 'region-locked-without-warning'. :/

And apparently everyone was still paying ROW prices, so it's pretty counter-intuitive if you didn't catch notice of it. :/

8 years ago
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The bundle price still beat Russian store lowest, so I still cannot see the problem there.
At least in Capcom's case they could argue that not all keys had region locks, but with Codemasters, AFAIK, each did.

8 years ago
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It's not an issue affecting Steamgifts.

When you pay ROW prices, you usually get ROW keys- because, after all, that's the price you're paying.

If you're getting a product for a country with a weaker currency, you should be paying that weaker currency.
Put one way, people were complaining because they were paying something like $5, but now only getting $1 of product.

The entire point of region-locking, after all, is to allow people to pay local prices for the products, without leading to exploiting of the global market.
But here, they had region-locking while still paying ROW prices.

It's basically like going to the local farmer, and him demanding you pay high import fees, despite all his produce being home-grown.

The rest of the matter is just inconvenience- that part..
Well, while Humble did- as usual- offer refunds if requested, it's still not a very 'fair' situation, now is it? :/

8 years ago
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/me writes one sentence, Sooth a whole paragraph xD

8 years ago
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Sooth has a problem.
Please send help pie.

8 years ago
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These are all fair points, but you forget something: you don't actually pay prices on Humble Bundles, it is just convenient to say that for easier communication. They are pay-what-you-want packages made to support game developers/publishers and charities that happen to give you game keys or similar digital goodies in return for your contribution. If they would really be serious about selling bundles as products, then many European countries could also argue with you that they have to pay VAT on top and don't get any premium for the bigger money investment, rendering their ROW keys (if they even get ROW keys and not EU-locked ones) are worth less than the ones bought in North America.

8 years ago
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I didn't forget anything. I was trying to convey the point as it was explained to me by the numerous individuals were were upset over the matter after the fact :P

Please note that THIS is the only topic I'm attempting to clarify: And apparently everyone was still paying ROW prices, so it's pretty counter-intuitive if you didn't catch notice of it. :/

The point is that the current approach is not what people'd expect- regardless of if you can justify it or not- and so the keys not being ROW wasn't something that occurred to many people- and when they realized after the fact, given the circumstances I described, they were understandably ticked off at the misrepresentation.

As to your point, I imagine the $1 minimum for steam keys could be locked by Steam itself- who I believe is responsible for that minimum in the first place- to ROW, which would create an inability to adjust it for region-locked copies.

Still wouldn't change the fact that Humble- who, mind you, I quite respect- totally dropped the ball on properly detailing region-locking, region-restrictions, and combined tier keys for recent bundles. :/

8 years ago
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Well, they put up an FAQ page, but apart from that… it was a terrible case of communication. Almost bad enough to warrant a place at a communication course as a typical bad example.

8 years ago
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The bundle price still beat Russian store lowest

Still, when everybody pays the same, what justification is there for a lock?

8 years ago
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Right. That's the factor. Since the lock is publisher-required, not Steam or Humble, the question is, why does the Publisher want to give lower valued keys for the same price?

Hmm, yeah, the intuitive answer to that isn't a respectable one :P

There's all sorts of situational conditions you can put into effect, trying to justify it, but it still mostly seems on the surface a sketchy situation.

But, more importantly, it's the lack of stating the region-locking upfront, WHILE retaining ROW prices, that's the distasteful bit. :X

8 years ago
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The giveaway creator probably did not try to give away a region locked key intentionally. Humble recently started having region locked keys, but they never actually gave any warning about certain keys being region locked.

8 years ago
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this, had this on a ga, too.

8 years ago
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or cut the person some slack because its not their fault its not activatable in your region and ask for a reroll (the non douche solution).

8 years ago
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Reroll will probably result in more people being restricted, the giveaway should be deleted and re-done, not rerolled.

8 years ago
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or that, either way it can be a pain, GF had to reroll like 6 times on a DLC because everyone had it,makes me wonder if thats the norm and I should stay away from doing DLCs, would not look forward to asking for so many rerolls and being asked to provide proof of them having it, way too much work for trying to give away something. DLCs should require a little more than just a click to enter

8 years ago
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There are 3 problems with DLCs:

  • Steam doesn't properly report DLCs as owned, which means that anybody owning the base game can join DLC giveaways, regardless if he owns them or not.
  • People tend to win/activate games and forget to quit ongoing giveaways for those. I try to always quit ongoing giveaways for games that I activate, yet it happens from time to time that I actually forget to leave something, and I win.
  • People are too lazy to hide DLCs they own. When I see a DLC on giveaways list, first thing I'm doing is checking if I own it already, and if yes, I'm immediately adding it to my hidden giveaways list, so I can be sure to not join it accidentally.
8 years ago
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Regarding third point: there are some rare cases, when steam doesn't properly show whether you own game/DLC (for example Bioshock Infinite: Columbia's Finest - steam store page doesn't say that I already own it).

8 years ago
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You don't need any magical steam API response to hide the DLCs you own - there's a button for that next to game's name.

8 years ago
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I mean that I go to steam store page, see that I "don't own it" and enter giveaway, but actually I already own it.

8 years ago
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Doesn't affect in any way the option I mentioned above.

8 years ago
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Weird. because I get "Bioshock Infinite: Columbia's Finest is already in your Steam library" when I browse to the page.

8 years ago
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Did you buy it from steam store?
I used steam key - it can be the case.

8 years ago
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Yes, I did. There might be different packages id between the Steam store version and the retail keys.

Now that I think about it, I have a similar issue with Arma 2. There are two different ID for the game, and the Arma X pack I got it from included a different one than the one on the NA Steam Store.

8 years ago
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I had no idea that button was even there, I find myself opening the steam client to check if I own certain DLC too often, not anymore tho, thanks :b

8 years ago
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yeah, recently i started searching for "dlc" and hiding all that i own, its quite annoying when they pop in the normal search and i have to rethink if i have it or not and go check to confirm

8 years ago
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If you believe that the creator had bad intentions, just explain to him the situation, he has 7 days to provide you with working key, otherwise mark as not received.
If you believe that the creator didn't have bad intentions, tell him to delete the giveaway, and agree on that, so he can re-create it with proper region.

If you ask me, I think he didn't know about region lock, HB started doing that recently, so I'd go with non-douche version.

8 years ago
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^

8 years ago
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he has some reason to do this on purpose? like more cv? otherwise we can be sure he didn't do on purpose

8 years ago
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No, there's really no advantage for doing ROW giveaways, apart from some available sgtools rules that compare e.g. ROW ratio to region locked one, but I really doubt he'd do that. I'm almost 100% sure he just didn't know.

8 years ago
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then i am sure he was in good faith, i'll go with your non-douche solution:)

8 years ago
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It's always better for your own morale to assume an honest mistake, especially as you don't lose anything for giving them the benefit of the doubt (since if they can't give you a key you can use, you'll still not get one either way- making demanding a key from them a fairly jerk move. :/ )

And since SG doesn't have different CV for different regions, yeah, there's no exploit gain to it.

So definitely assume the best.

To allow them to delete and repost it, you'll have to write in the giveaway itself, a comment that says "I agree to cancel' or 'I agree to the deletion'- otherwise staff won't accept the deletion request.

:)

8 years ago
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