Hi guys, I recently had the “smart” idea to mail my brothers in England two copies of Left 4 Dead 2 bought here in Taiwan. I thought they would work but apparently Steam has a region lock but if you buy games directly via Steam and “gift” them then it is no problem according to the Steam rep. Now I want to try one more time but this time I bought Mass Effect 2 which is a non-steam game here in Taiwan and want to mail it across…do you think it will work?
It should I have it and it asked me nothing about my location or anything, just the CD key and the network key and have the CD in the drive and I’m golden.
Now I just need to get Samara and then help her find her daughter then betray her and have her daughter take her place.
Steam can cave if you complain enough. I had an uncle who brought me all my games from Asia. If you can show proof of purchase then it should work. The reason they have the locks is because certain websites just strip and sell keys.
EA Download Manager Keys are not region locked.
You can just send them the code, and they can put it into the EA Download Manager and it should be fine.
Sucks about L4D2. You could log into your brothers account here in Taiwan and activate the game, and then the next time he logs in he’ll have it in his games list ready for download.
My brother logs into my Steam account in the UK all the time. I believe it’s against the TOS to share accounts, but so far things have been OK. I’ve never bought a retail game for Steam, but digital purchase have always worked so far. If I buy a game here, it shows up for download the next time he logs in, and vice versa. Even games that aren’t available in one store. For example, the AVP2 pre-order wasn’t available when I tried to buy it from Taiwan, so my brother bought it in the UK, and I was then able to pre-load and activate it over here at the same time as if I was in the UK.
Hey guys in the case of L4D2, I did login to my brother’s steam account here in Taiwan, activate the game and he was able to download it and install in Europe but it would not allow him to play it due to some kind of region lock message. The “play” option was grayed out. The Mass Effect 2 copies that you get here in Taiwan are not “steam based” but are a lot cheaper than in the West so I was wondering if they would have a similar sort of region locking system?
Just saw Supreme Commander 2 for $960NT. If it hadn’t been panned so badly on Amazon.com, I would of grabbed it. I’m about to send my copy of Mass Effect 2 to my nephew.
Let me know how that goes Okami. Supreme Commander 2 is pretty cool, I am playing the campaign at the moment. The graphics aren’t as good as the first but it is still a lot of fun.
I’m traveling right now so checked this out. I logged into my Steam account and downloaded L4D2, and played it for a bit. Then I connected through my VPN back in Taiwan and played again without any issues. If there is any region lock stupidity on Steam, it seems to only be for retail purchases.
Your brother should raise a ticket with Steam. If you are traveling and decide to make a purchase locally, there’s no reason to expect it to stop working when you return home. Especially since digital purchases don’t have the same restrictions.
I think part of the reason there is a region lock is because some company here in Taiwan translates the game and markets it, for example on my dawn of war II box, there is another company called “Replay Interactive” which distributes the game I guess for the cheap prices we love in Taiwan?
The reason there is a region lock is because a product sells in the US for 60$ can be as cheap as 20$ in other countries. If people had the freedom, they would never pay the extra 40$ for the same product. This would hurt US business.
I think it is a stupid practice. Change the business model to something that can handle a global audience instead of building more arbitrary walls around “regions”
Good point dj, hopefully my mailed games will work when my brother gets them.