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Valve Responds to Steam Territory Deactivations
An anonymous reader passed us a link to Shack News, which is reporting on official commentary from Doug Lombardi of Valve about the international Orange Box code problem we talked about yesterday. According to Lombardi, the folks who bought copies of the game from a Thai gaming store are pretty much out of luck. They'll need to buy a local copy to have a working version. That said, they should be able to replace the old code with a new one. "'Some of these users have subsequently purchased a legal copy after realizing the issue and were having difficulty removing the illegitimate keys from their Steam accounts,' added Lombardi. 'Anyone having this problem should contact Steam Support to have the Thai key removed from their Steam account.'"
What about those that were and are in regions of the world where importing software is allowed like Australia?
Only console companies have been doing this same game region lock-out for YEARS. I don't see you complaining about that.
Conservatism: (n.) love of the existing evils. Liberalism: (n.) desire to substitute new evils for the existing ones.
That, in addition to the class action suit for not being able to use the software they lawfully purchased, of course.
Conservatism: (n.) love of the existing evils. Liberalism: (n.) desire to substitute new evils for the existing ones.
How many industries outside of gaming, movies, and the like, can get away with offering products in one country at a price that is significantly different from that in others (i.e. no more difference than the cost of shipping from one country to the other)?
Why cant you have two keys?
If you have legally purchased a Thai key, why do they want to take it away from you? What happens if you move to Thailand? Can you call Valve up and ask for your key back?
Can't believe people are actually trying to justify Valve's decision
Of course, AIDS vaccinations and video games are two very different things, but the same principle applies. If Valve didn't protect its regional sales like this, some kid in Thailand might not be playing Portal right now, because it would cost too much. Valve's actions are undoubtedly profit-motivated, but they also protect the game's international audience. Just some food for thought.
The major reason to hate region locking is that we are in region 4 with the Kiwis and Central & South America. A lot of stuff will be produced for region 1 or 2 but will never be 're-coded' for region 4 because "it won't sell enough." (Although some of the smarter producers in the UK make their disks 2 and 4.) Thus, Australians have to get unlocked players to be able to see it, or they can learn Spanish and Portuguese. The ACCC sees this as an unfair restriction and has supposedly taken steps to fix it.
With all of this trouble, people wonder why we just download stuff.
To answer your original question, the ACCC says this.
They do complain, but the difference is that it's made plenty clear (generally anyway) that imported games will not play on your domestic console. This is in stark contrast to the Thai copies of Orange Box, which worked JUST FINE, but were LATER deactivated by Valve. So there's the anger that something that was reasonably legitimate has been banned, and owners were affected *retroactively*
Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but I imagine it's reasonable for Valve to quick fucking with products people paid good money for and breaking things via remote control just because they're greedy. So a product moved across a national border or an ocean or whatever -- big deal. Happens all the time and that's the nature of the modern world. The copy from India or Taiwan or whatever was legal and I'm sure Valve would prefer that it stay far, far away from the more profitable countries (so as to not illustrate the price disparity) but that's not reality.
Put simply: The customer bought something from an authorized vendor; there was an exchange of good for payment. Give them their game, Valve, or return them their money. Anything less makes you a common thief. End of story.
Just curious. Are you also against reimportation of 'cheap' medicines from foreign markets back to the US?
You have said that Americans should pay more because they can. What about wealthy foreigners in otherwise poor countries. Are they taking advantage of the local market forces? Should poor Americans get a price break because they are penalized by being in an expensive market?
Now (and here's where it gets interesting...) what if the product isn't software? Pharmaceutical companies make most their profits in the US, to subsidize the socialized ("free") medicine in the rest of the world. But notice they get mighty pissed off if someone reimports their medicines from somewhere "cheap" back to the States. You see, they're still getting paid, but not as much as they want and the business plan depends on these artificial boundaries, even though the world is becoming less divided and more accessable thanks to technology. IOW, their business model is becoming antiquated. So they must either fight for more artificial boundary enforcement, or raise the prices elsewhere+lower them in USA.
Your thoughts?
Its like : "Thailand gets lower prices because there is a piracy problem there." So in order to get better prices, you say we need to go to Pirate Bay a bit more?
I live in a country that is not my native language, I wish to purchase products in MY NATIVE LANGUAGE. I have to import a lot of stuff for this reason. I may have no other choice than to no longer purchase their product if they block this. Good luck doing this in Europe also where free trade is REQUIRED.
http://www.rense.com/general79/wdx1.htm
So a product moved across a national border or an ocean or whatever -- big deal. Happens all the time and that's the nature of the modern world. The copy from India or Taiwan or whatever was legal and I'm sure Valve would prefer that it stay far, far away from the more profitable countries (so as to not illustrate the price disparity) but that's not reality.
No. Valve sold lower value products at lower prices. Why were they lower valued? Because they were region locked to Thailand and Russia. Higher valued products that work in the US and EU are sold at higher prices.
Put simply: The customer bought something from an authorized vendor; there was an exchange of good for payment. Give them their game, Valve, or return them their money. Anything less makes you a common thief. End of story.
No. The deal finders mistook a lower valued version for a higher valued version. Or perhaps the deal finders were scammed by middlemen who misrepresented the products. These deal finders now understand the phrase "a deal that is too good to be true". When you engage in such deals you should not be surprised to find that you have bought stolen or counterfeit goods. Yes, counterfeit. If the locked Russian/Thai version was sold to US/EU customers then it is counterfeit, a misrepresentation, much like a 2.4 GHz CPU that is remarked as a 3.0 GHz CPU.
This whole thing smacks of a blatant WTO violation to me.
You are not allowed to restrict products to sale in a given region. This is the whole purpose of WTO treaties. It is what allows the US to sell it's food internationally and to import international goods.
The WTO are who brought down the MPAA region codes. They could do the same to Valve.
Actually, you're incorrect. It is perfectly legal to own a US Figther Jet. Getting a hold of them is the trick. Actually anything prior to the F-14 is pretty easy to get, aircraft since then is a lot harder, because most of them are still in service and the government hasn't released them. Owning a jet simply takes one step... having the government officially "demilitarize" it. Once that is done, they can be sold to private individuals. Demilitarizing them simply ensures that no advanced equipment works, like Weapons, Radar, Radar Jamming equipment, etc. They don't want it to fall into the wrong hands. (Think about the F-14s and Iran.)
In fact, owning Soviet based aircraft is legal as well, you just can't import it, just like you said, because of it's classification as a weapon. The ATF doesn't like it. If someone was able to produce a copy of the MiG from the ground up in the US then it would be perfectly legal to own and fly it under the Experimental Aircraft category.
Bill
It's my Sig and you can't have it. Mine! All Mine!