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Valve Locking Out Gamers Who Buy Orange Box Internationally
Via Opposable Thumbs, a post on the Consumerist site notes that some enterprising gamers who bought the Orange Box in a territory different than the one they lived (to save a few bucks) have now found themselves unable to play the game. "One user, Todd, explains that thousands of crafty North American gamers looking for a deal have 'bought the product (and hence, the serial numbers) at well known international game stores' at a significant markdown. Activation of the purchased titles went off without a hitch. However, Valve apparently has taken issue with the region-specificity of some international versions and has begun locking out accounts of those living in North America, but owning international serial numbers with the message that the purchased game is in the 'incorrect territory.'" Worse, folks who tried to 'make it right' by buying a local copy have found they're basically SOL. I've been a big fan of the Steam concept since it launched, but this is the sort of thing you need to communicate to your users before you sting them.
So with Steam, one of its ballyhooed features is that I can get on someone else's Internet-connected computer, install and sign into Steam, and have it download my games and let me play them there... but now they say I can only do that so long as I haven't left my home country?
"In Russia, we don't have American Express. We have Russian Express: `Don't Leave Home'." -- Yakov Smirnov
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
to protect deals with distributors.
/rant
protect
protect
Once again, near obsolete middlemen decide it's far easier to shit on everyone else's rights rather than face the fact that there's no more room in this world for brick and mortar retail of "digital" goods. Certainly not at the prices THEY want to charge.
Protectionism usually works AGAINST the masses, in favor of a small group. Why should I care about a retailer who wants to charge me $5 more for something I can buy on the internet, have flown halfway around the world and delivered to my door? Not to mention the fuel to drive to his store, the lack of parking, etc. Why should we protect WASTEFUL businesses? Either the retailer drops his price, or goes out of business. Period.
I also find it amazing that in the UK software (and other computer stuff) will retail for the same price as in the US - only in POUNDS. So it's double the price nowadays. Sheesh, I guess CD's are really really expensive to burn in the UK! There's no excuse for this, it's just greed. Valve should not be protecting greed. But then again, it's a racket. Just like the music industry.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
I actually wonder if they'll also lock you out if you pay more for the game in fact. I ordered the US-import of orange box to circumvent the german censoring (no gibs 'n' blood, they're so cruel!) and also (even more than to circumvent censorship) to have a "original" Half-Life experience with English dialogues, texts, etc. I did not rip off any money and the US dealers got their normal share of money - I'm paying about 10 Euros more for this imported version than I would pay for the German version in German stores. If they kill my serial off, I'd sue them right away if I had the money :/
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Still, shopping at some UK store (don't wanna advertise) is cheaper than buying the games on mainland Europe. We pay 50-60 Euros for a game locally (about 60-70 USD), while I pay about 40 Euros in the UK.
So why should I go to the store if I can get a game delivered to me cheaper? Yes, it's "small scale globalisation", but at least if someone tries to cut that supply line, I can sue.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
don't, use the great service of the WON2 network which is free if you still have your old CD key. it may or may not be illegal in the US but who cares. steamlessproject.nl (IANAL)
The Orange Box actually had me thinking about backing down from my stance against Steam. I'm glad I didn't spend the $50 after this stunt. Valve won't be getting any of my money.
If I go on holiday to Thailand I SHOULD be able to pick up goods locally and take them home. To block your customer from doing this they should make LOCALISED LANGUAGE versions so that I won't WANT to buy it cause it would be in Thai and I don't speak Thai.
Take this further. If I AM Thai but live in the UK 6 months and in Thailand 6 months I need to buy 2 copies of the game? How fair is that?
What about Valves "GIFT" idea? If you own HL-2 or any part of the orange box already, you can gift a friend your key. Does this mean that I can only gift my UK friends now? What about my French, Belgian or Luxembourgish friends, or even my US friend? Is this not tantamount to RACISM? You can only have UK Friends...
I was gonna buy the orange box...WAS!
When all is said and done, nothing changes...
Is there some standard thing that says you're not allowed to buy software that comes from other countries?
I'm sitting here eating an apple that came from Chile, typing on a computer from China, basking in the light of a lamp that was probably made in Mexico, wearing clothes made from all over the place, and they all work fine. If I had bought them in their country of origin they would still work fine. So where is it written that software is exempt from this rule? Where does it say that I must only buy software in the country where I will use it, otherwise it will break? Am I supposed to be some kind of mind-reading genius to decide whether any given imported product will work (everything) or break (software made by assholes)? I object to your idiotic proposed status quo.
I'm an American, currently working in Mexico for 2 months. I recently bought a brand new laptop with a 8600M GT 512MB video card, and I've been looking for games to buy and play, since I haven't played many games since BF1942 and Counter-Strike.
I've been seriously considering purchasing the Orange Box, and even signed up with Steam (they can check this fact against my unobscured email). I even watch some forum threads about TF2 and Portal, and played the Portal flash game. But, with a possible disconnection, they've just lost a sale unless they can absolutely prove otherwise. Ya hear that Valve? LOST SALE RIGHT HERE BUDDY.
Remember all of the Xbox Live players out there who love digital distribution? Well, here it is. You do not OWN ANYTHING. You can try to pry my CDs/DVDs/BlueRay Discs out of my cold dead hands, but that would be theft. Delete a bit on my game to not make it play, that is protecting your revenue stream. Why is the digital download so damned attractive? You don't get box art, you don't get a manual. You don't get the right to play your game on a non-networked machine. Now, you know why volunteering your computer to be part of a corporation's distribution network is a bad idea. Hmm, let's give away my bandwidth, HDD space and processing power to Company A when what do I get in return, disabled products. Ohh, and this is just the beginning. It will only get worse. This just proves, I am not a tinfoil hat theorist, it is true, today, not someday, it is here. Welcome to not owning anything.
This is why I play games on the consoles, you buy the game, you play the game. I want imported games, buy imported console, hook up to TV, play games. No one can come into my house and take my games away from me. The reason I stopped playing PC games was I was always treated like a darned criminal, especially when I paid for the game. The cracked games don't have the nagging that the retail versions do. Now, they are playing this game. This is just lovely. When did I stop being the person who put food on your table and became just another game citizen to keep on taxing with no accountability to? I stopped playing Valve games after steam came out. You could see the writing on the wall, this was going to end badly, just a matter of time.
One Token Ring to Rule them All, One Search Engine to Find Them, One WAN to bring them in, and TCP/IP Bind them...
Was it stated anywhere on the box that it would only work in it's home territory? Almost all region encoded DVD do...
also has anyone tried changing their Address in the profile?
Let's see... Microsoft (PC and X-box) has X-box Live, which they make you pay extra for services Steam offers for free... and they can ban you for being bad, cutting off your online gaming. Or so they say you're being bad. That guy that got a leaked Halo 3 got banned. You can buy and download games, like Steam users can.
Sony has their Playstation online stuff... Home and all. I don't know too much about that but I bet they're going for similar capabilities as Xbox Live.
Nintendo is going online with the Wii too in a similar fashion, although it hasn't happened yet. However you can buy and download games online, also like Steam! Not sure about the PS3, but I'm willing to bet all three consoles (will) let you do this.
Don't think consoles are exempt. There is no Steam-like service yet, but some online capabilities can be disabled in games, although currently you have to earn it, I suppose if you're going to imagine PC gaming going down a slippery slope I can do the same here.
It's not too hard to imagine consoles going all digital in the future. It could happen, don't rule it out so quickly. The idea of not having to go to a middleman store and pay a middleman when you could just buy and download online (especially with broadband internet becoming faster and more available and cheaper) is enticing both for the customer and the business.
http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=222993&p=43
Whirpool is an aussie forum for discussing all kinds of things over here.
Anyhow an online store 'just over the pond' in Thailand called Zest has been selling a lot of games lately, they often open the product, give you the CDkey via email and dispose of the rest, or you can pay to have the whole lot shipped.
Sounds shady but well apparently it works and very few cases of people having CD key issues.
It's hard to know where to stand on this, I can certainly see why Valve have done it. In order to stop piracy in dodgy countries like China and Thailand they simply drop the price, way way low, if I recall Microsoft were thinking (or did?) the same thing with Windows at one point..?
Technically it's still a valid key, however it was intended for that country.
All that being said Organge box (stupid bloody name) is cheap as chips right now. Despite being a tightass consumer, when you think about 45$ US for the preorder is like 55$ AUD, that's fantastic value in my mind. (yes, I purchased on steam)
However! other companies besides Valve like EA are also blocking these online sales and they DON'T release with nice prices like Valve. You want Crysis? 100$ AUD (or 91$ US) and we speak the same damn language, it's not like they need to re-author it (color/colour jokes aside) or make a 220V power supply (software here, not hardware)
I don't agree with those prices at all.
I frequent US-centric forums all the time and it kills me to hear of the bargains you guys get as consumers.
Price match this, rebate that, sale this, 2 for one on that.
I mean you get a brand new game, sure it's 50 or 60$ US but within 2 weeks a smart consumer can have it for 30$ US (40$ AUD)
Over here, the new stuff starts at 120/110/100$ AUD (109/100/91$ US!) and may drop if we're lucky to 70$ US in a month or two - what the fuck people what the fuck.
So ultimately, this isn't cool for some tightasses but really go complain to EA about blocking regional games from Thailand, because those cockhats DON'T offer a cheap good download service like Valve yet they are doing the same thing.
Bullshit. Utter and complete bullshit. They may make less of a profit, but they're damn sure making a profit. You know why they're making less of a profit? Because, as you noted, the economy there can't sustain a 50 dollar per game rate.
But as many have pointed out, this is a global market. You know what happens to laborers in nations that demand more pay then overseas? They have to either adjust their pay expectations to a degree where it is appealing enough to offset the hassle or expenses with exporting the labor elsewhere. Or they lose their jobs.
The exact same should happen here. Valve needs to adjust their rates to a degree where it is more appealing for me to buy from the corner store or a local online store or.....lose the local sale.
It's called capitalism. Open markets and Fair trade...all those banners we see raised high over corporate America (and corporate EU and corporate China....). A global market leads to normalized prices globally as well as normalized cost of labor, products, and expenses. The day that this can be considered in any way just is the day that labor can demand that all products be made locally. I, as a staunch advocate of capitalism, hope to never see a day when either of these slip under the radar.
Yes. If they put a product in stores, I'm entitled to buy it.
If they chose to license their games, I eagerly await them having customers *sign* a contract in front of them, at the store (pre-payment) with witnesses. Otherwise, it's a sale and I'll treat it like one.
Have you ever been at a company that negotiated a volume license with Microsoft? You *know* you've licensed software, as you sign a contract that says it. When you buy Windows or Half-Life at Costco you buy in with other commodities, and the *sale* looks exactly the same. WinXP $250, Socks $2.50, Half-Life $50, Snacks $1.50, etc. If you own your socks and snacks, which you do, then why don't you own Windows? If it's because of the EULA, what happens when sock companies start putting "contracts" in sock packages?
And finally, if I'm entitled to buy something, they're not allowed to disable it remotely or throw non-technological barriers at it. The game works on my PC, so them keeping me from using it for the purpose it was advertised, is fraud.
You can't throw up trade barriers like this one, it's illegal as it involves sabotaging a legally purchased product. It's their own fault that the Thai version is attractive to foreigners.
Anyways, I'm off to shut down Steam. They employ a Russian coder and this violates the pricing model that keeps my cushy North American job paying so much. They should know that they can't run a service on cheap Russian coding, that's only acceptable for third-world services. I'll stop the DDoS attack when they fire the foreigners, pay back all the lower wages for these years, and agree to hiring only union workers from first-world countries.
You as the end consumer are NOT bound by agreements between other people. The place where you bought it from may have sold something to you in contravention of their contracts with THEIR partners, but that's not your problem... or it SHOULDN'T be your problem... and if law and/or reality contradict that, then the law and/or reality is in error and needs fixing.
Wish it had worked that way with me and VMware. Last year, I bought a shrinkwrapped copy of Workstation 5.5 from an Amazon vendor, registered with VMware, etc., and life was good for a while. It's a great piece of software, and probably the single most useful package I own. Fast forward a bit to the 6.0 release. I participated in the pre-release beta, and was really looking forward to picking up the retail package. VMware offered 6.0 as a $100 upgrade from 5.x, so of course I jumped at that. However, I found I was unable to register on the site with my 5.x key and when I contacted VMware about it, they said they'd had some kind of issue with the vendor, and had invalidated all of his licenses instead of pursuing whatever direct legal action would have been appropriate. They refused to work with me *at all* on the upgrade pricing, even though I had a legitimate shrink-wrapped package and by their own admission, a legitimate license key. To add insult to injury, they insinuated that the problem was my fault because I didn't check the VMware web site before purchasing to make sure the vendor was a VMware Authorized Reseller.
It'll be a cold day in hell before I do business with VMware again, and I've recommended Xen to more than a couple of folks since then.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
Little correction - actually, despite pulling this on the PC release, the 360 version has no region locking whatsoever. Many other games do, but The Orange Box isn't one of them.
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
Play the german version for more than 10 minutes and I assure you, that you get another opinion. Alone the fact that you have no hit indicator (because they have removed the blood) is sad.
When I went to buy the Orange Box last night, I was informed by the store owner (it pays to buy from small game stores) that I would need to download a large portion of the game via the internet. Over dialup. This is apparently required to ensure that I'm not pirating it.
Fuck that.
If they don't want to sell me a game, so be it. I'll spend my money elsewhere. I really wish people would stop rewarding companies who do this sort of thing. They don't deserve it.
The reason for higher prices in Britain is sales tax. You pay 17.5% VAT on a game in Britain but in the US sales tax normally isn't included in the prices as it varies from state to state. Now you could argue that sales tax in the UK is too high but that is another discussion altogether.