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1Update: Valve has sent along a shot of the Thai Orange Box packaging, which bears a warning on the front cover that reads: "For Sale In Thailand Only."
Comments
Most companies have rules about their products being used in other countries. So Valve is the bad guy when they decide to enforce it?
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Really? Screwing gamers because you want to make a coupla extra bucks ontop of your already earned million dollar grossing games?
Thanks Doug, thanks Valve, awesome :)
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There are lots of things with "For Sale Only in <country>" on them which don't have any restrictions on where you use them, so the phrase definitely does not imply anything to the end-user. I would only take it as being relevant to the retailer who is making the sale. Clearly the retailer is breaking the rules here so it's more their fault than Valve's, but I still don't like the fact that even a legitimate transaction within Thailand results in a game you cannot use if you take it overseas legitimately.
I understand the desire for regional pricing (much as I dislike the way that, as usual, companies get the benefits of a global ecomony while individuals are restricted from them), and the desire that comes from that to prevent people from other countries taking advantage of it, but any such system needs to have something in place to ensure that it never harms a legitimate customer doing legitimate things. Such people should at least be able to email Valve, explain what happened and get their game unlocked or get a refund, or maybe be offered to pay the difference depending on how recent the transaction was (which would do a decent job of preventing people importing the game that way on purpose without penalising people who bought it at home and then moved months later).
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How is Valve screwing anyone? Be pissed at the scam artist in Thailand who deceived you, not the company who delivered exactly what they said they would.
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http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/CamelsandRubberDuckies.html
All from the power of segmentation: separating your customers into different groups according to how much they are willing to pay, and extracting the maximal consumer surplus from each customer.
...
The hard part is that everything I just told you is sort of wrong.
Working my way backwards, this business about segmenting? It pisses the heck off of people.
One of the 'joys' of digital distribution is that you can just log in and play. If I buy HL2 and then move to Thailand, then I should be able to install steam. Log in, and have access to my game. (I definitely could do that if I bought a disk.)
So it should work the same if I was in Thailand and then moved to the US.
Now, here's how it SHOULD work, (to let Valve continue the territory contracts but not screw the gamers.)
On initial activation, they check your region. So if you buy a Thai key, you have to activate from a computer in Thailand. That's absurdly simple to get around, (call a friend, or just some fancy proxy) but it's 'due diligence' without screwing over your customers. Then, after activation, it doesn't matter where you come from because....it SHOULDN'T matter where you are when you want to play.
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Countries like Thailand, China, and Russia have rampant problems with piracy, and any piracy laws are almost never enforced by the local government bodies. The mindset of the public is why buy a movie for $15-$20 when you can get a pirated copy sooner and a lot cheaper (anywhere between $1-$5)? Movie's were selling very poorly or little at all. Not enough to recoup the cost of manufacturing. To combat this the big name movie studios will release a dvd-screener quality version of their movies about 2-3 weeks after the movie release for dirt cheap to get a jump start on the boot leggers, and make some cash on the whole transaction.
It's not surprising at all to see games making the move into this type of marketing mentality. Orange box wouldn't sell very well (if at all) for $50 in Thailand. The bootleggers would crack in less than a week after release and begin throwing it up for sale in the market places for $15 - $20 bucks. So Valve and EA wants to make money and make it available for the people of Thailand to purchase legitimately for $15-$20. This is their solution. These 'keys' were never meant for anyone outside of Thailand to be using.
People who imported their keys from over seas thinking "hey 50% off!" got a nice surprise when they tried to circumvent normal channels of purchasing to get a great deal. When will people learn that if it sounds too good to be true, it likely is?
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I think what companies should do is say something to the effect of, "This product is not to be exported from _____" or "This product will not function outside of _______," because that is what they *really* mean.
IANAL, so I don't know what the import/export laws are, but from a logical linguistics perspective, the buyers are not in the wrong.
Is Valve obligated to honor their purchase? It's arguable. The admirable thing to do is at least offer all those people who had purchased copies prior to this becoming frontpage news a discount on a US-bought copy.
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The "But I didn't know!" all aside, you can't really argue against Valve seeking fair market value for a product they made.
How many of you w/ Thailand keys would be willing to purchase an incremental Region-upgrade that made up the difference? If you're not willing, then I'd suggest you earned your locked copy. If you are, then petition Valve, maybe they'll be nice and help.
Some of you will respond by saying "then why don't they just sell it for a reduced price EVERYWHERE?" Because if companies did that they would make no money at all and therefore would have no reason to put out the product in the first place. Face it, if you live in a country with a strong economy, you pay more for things. Get over it or move. Plain and simple.
Valve is doing nothing more than what console game makers and movie studios have been doing all along. For example, US games and movies are NTSC format which allows them to be used in the US and Japan. PAL format games and movies can oly be used in European countries. This prevents US retailers (and unfortuneately consumers) from going to a poorer country, buying a big quantity of an item and then attempting to resell them for a profit in their home country which has a stronger economy and therefore higher retail values.
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If someone buys it from America it is still being sold in Thailand isn't it? I mean the person/company doing the selling is in Thailand....
This is one of those things that is more about the precedent it sets and the potential for "abuse" of the system with Steam. I'm not so much ticked about what they did as I am about where this could go...I've always had vague worries about Steam and this sort of thing isn't reassuring. On the other hand, if there aren't situations where products ONLY come out in a specific set of countries and importing is prevented...then I'm more likely to be ok with this. This isn't nearly as bad as the rampant region locking in the console world...where games have arbitrary release schedules and some just don't fucking come out in some countries. Sony really irks me on that front after they sued Lik-Sang in multiple countries for selling import consoles to people (on the basis that PSPs in Japan might not be safe enough for Europeans...and after some of Sony Europe's execs bought import PSPs FROM Lik-Sang).
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Have the CD key contain, in the first portion of the string, the country it is for. This isn't really part of the security, it is just so that people entering CD-Keys know what they are getting, and so that they aren't sold wrong region keys from people online without them knowing.
If a situation like this arises they should offer to "upgrade" people's keys. They shouldn't lose all the money they paid for the original copy.
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I really have no other way of letting valve know I don't approve of this so I say it here. Perhaps if they see enough people saying they don't approve, they will reconsider in the future.
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This abuse of shutting down certain customers who paid for an original product, just because Valve doesn't like it, is an abuse of drm.
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Region-locking anything is fucking stupid and would be a violation of freedom of choice.
If I go to some poor-as-shit country and buy a brand-name shirt for three dollars, are the manufacturers going to come to my house and take the shirt from me because I didn't pay enough?
If the bread store across the street is too expensive and I go to the next town to buy bread that the same bread company made and trucked over because it's a discount superstore, can the bread store come and take the loaf of bread I just bought?
If I buy a vacation directly myself from the hotel in Sunny Vacation Spot X along with the flights, can the travel company three blocks over force me to buy it from them?
How about mail order? If I buy the same product from a discount store, does the manufacturer come and make sure I pay the full price for my new hard-drive?
Here's a simpler question. if I went to a burger joint by a trailer park, would they charge me more money than the people who live in the tornado-target just because I have it?
Hey, I have an idea, why don't we do the same thing with medical care? If you have lots of money, we take half your yearly income. If you're poor, we take a lot less, but everyone receives the same standard of care. Sorry Bob, but isn't that socialism? Why yes it is! Americans HATE socialism, don't they, Bob? They sure do! Americans sure are fucking hypocrites, aren't they Bob? Sure are! However, we maximise the amount of money we can skin off people this way!
You don't let your government run like this, but for businesses it's just fine?
Making artificial barriers to buying a cheaper product is fucking retarded and a violation of that free market most people hold oh-so-fucking dear.
Don't get me started on NAFTA.
Everyone wants to have their cake and eat it too, the trouble is that the cake is a lie.
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I think that Valve has the right to allow keys to only be activated in the region they were bought in, but I don't think they should restrict the region the key can be used after it has been activated.
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By the way, the price of Orange Box in Thailand is 598Baht ~ $17.45
Does the product box say anywhere that you're only allowed to play the product in the country you bought it in? That's totally just greedy BS, Valve. If you don't want people to buy and play the Thai version, don't sell the game in Thailand. If someone wants to shop around for the cheapest price then that's their choice. Does Valve not make any money off products sold in Thailand?
Wtf?
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But now they have Steam they can look and see that they're sending them over there, then some middle man over there sees the price difference and ships em all back to the US/UK, making an instant profit.
Valve aren't being pricks, they're just saying this it stupid, and has gotta stop.
http://steamreview.org/posts/regionrestriction/
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I guess they're only worried about the newer titles?
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This is about the same thing, just delayed.
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