All gifts are now region-locked if bought in an ACRTAG region

[OldPeasant]

Valve has taken advantage of the falling price of the ruble and locked all games from the following regions with the following tag; "AllowCrossRegionTradingAndGifting=No". The result of this will for all intensive purposes kill off game trading. Well, it was interesting while it lasted. It's been a fun ride lads.

Russia/CIS
Southeast Asia
South America
Turkey

They're publicly stating that this is due the price of the ruble, but that really doesn't explain why they've decided to clamp down on every other cheap region. They're essentially using the situation of the russian economy to silently lock down the steam platform to prevent cross region trading. With that said, I'm not blaming them for this as they're a company and naturally the objective of all businesses are to maximise profits. However, the underhanded way they've gone about this instead of simply straight out saying that they are stopping cross -region game trading is rather annoying.

What are other peoples thoughts about this? Are you supportive of this move or not?

Originally posted by Valve:

As most of you know, our developer tools suggest pricing based on market research and purchasing power parity. In the case of territories such as Russia, Brazil, and SE Asia, we suggested pricing that is lower than the direct USD conversion. This is based on our assessment of actual pricing of comparable products in that market. Recently Rubles have hit an all-time low which has been a concern of many game developers. We are still assessing the market to see if suggesting new prices in Russia is right for customers who live in that market. We do not think that pricing based on currency conversion only is the right way to approach the Russian market necessarily.

What we are doing immediately in response to the Ruble drop is limiting trading and gifting from Russia to prevent people from taking advantage of the situation. We have been applying a gifting and trading lock of this type on all newly created packages on Steam since mid-2014. Today we have propped a change that will affect all packages on Steam which will not allow them to be unpacked to an account, if gifted or traded from a lower priced region to a higher priced region. This change is not retroactive and only affects new purchases. It also will not affect customers in that region from gifting a copy to other people in that same region. All customers will have proper warning when they are purchasing a gift prior to checkout in those regions as well. We will continue to assess the situation and make changes if necessary in the future. If you have any questions please feel free to write us via the contact form via the Steamworks Development site - Documentation & Help -> Contact Steam Publishing.

[eram]

....For all intents and purposes. :(

Plus this was information for the steamworks developer group.

[OldPeasant]

Originally posted by eram:

....For all intents and purposes, i dislike it when people think it's intensive.

I like my misconstrued verison :(

Originally posted by eram:

Plus this was information for the steamworks developer group.

I'm not part of the steamworks dev group, I only snatched it (and the title) from SGS. I still think the wider steam community deserves to know why all the tags on games were suddenly switched though.

[eram]

Stop focusing on your purposes!

Traders should not be taking advantage of region locked products in this way, the new rules for trading are more in line with the steam store.

[HLCinSC]

Doesn't this just protect other users who are tricked into trading or buying a game that they can't activate

[Satoru]

Steam could have simply ignored such regions and simply made them pay USD/Euro and called it a day like most other online stores. Grey market leakage is a much bigger issue in the digital realm.

[BridgetFisher]

Originally posted by OldPeasant:

Valve has taken advantage of the falling price of the ruble and locked all games from the following regions with the following tag; "AllowCrossRegionTradingAndGifting=No". The result of this will for all intensive purposes kill off game trading. Well, it was interesting while it lasted. It's been a fun ride lads.

Russia/CIS
Southeast Asia
South America
Turkey

They're publicly stating that this is due the price of the ruble, but that really doesn't explain why they've decided to clamp down on every other cheap region. They're essentially using the situation of the russian economy to silently lock down the steam platform to prevent cross region trading. With that said, I'm not blaming them for this as they're a company and naturally the objective of all businesses are to maximise profits. However, the underhanded way they've gone about this instead of simply straight out saying that they are stopping cross -region game trading is rather annoying.

What are other peoples thoughts about this? Are you supportive of this move or not?

Originally posted by Valve:

As most of you know, our developer tools suggest pricing based on market research and purchasing power parity. In the case of territories such as Russia, Brazil, and SE Asia, we suggested pricing that is lower than the direct USD conversion. This is based on our assessment of actual pricing of comparable products in that market. Recently Rubles have hit an all-time low which has been a concern of many game developers. We are still assessing the market to see if suggesting new prices in Russia is right for customers who live in that market. We do not think that pricing based on currency conversion only is the right way to approach the Russian market necessarily.

What we are doing immediately in response to the Ruble drop is limiting trading and gifting from Russia to prevent people from taking advantage of the situation. We have been applying a gifting and trading lock of this type on all newly created packages on Steam since mid-2014. Today we have propped a change that will affect all packages on Steam which will not allow them to be unpacked to an account, if gifted or traded from a lower priced region to a higher priced region. This change is not retroactive and only affects new purchases. It also will not affect customers in that region from gifting a copy to other people in that same region. All customers will have proper warning when they are purchasing a gift prior to checkout in those regions as well. We will continue to assess the situation and make changes if necessary in the future. If you have any questions please feel free to write us via the contact form via the Steamworks Development site - Documentation & Help -> Contact Steam Publishing.

Isnt it illegal to post this outside the steam dev group per the TOS?

[Satoru]

The SDK and its documentation is protected by the TOS

Group communications aren't really

[Corsario]

Hey Valve,

I buy my games in US dollars, with US prizes just like American citizens.

Why am I trade locked within South America? Just because I happen to live near Brazil?

Also, nice move lumping EVERYTHING together from El Paso to Antartica. It's not like the economic reality of 30 countries has any differences or anything.

[Dagnabbit]

Originally posted by Tatsuya Hiroki (HU):

Originally posted by eram:

....For all intents and purposes, i dislike it when people think it's intensive.

Plus this was information for the steamworks developer group.

right because silently doing things is more ethical, right?
With all my respect, I have to disagree.
My problem isnt about booho evil Valve killing of price exploiters. Its with Valve apparently not trying to apply some sort of transparency with those although it would be nice

They don't have to tell you jack. The ONLY people they have to tell is the pubs/devs. Other than that, see previous statement.

[Teddy Westside]

It was fun while it lasted.

[Shellshock]

RIP Steam store.

[imelman]

Its sad that the Russians cannot trade with non Russian friends.

[himmatsj]

I think this is a good move really, and it doesn't affect anyone outside of the small subset of the trading community.

Don't forget, region lock DOES NOT mean you cannot play the game outside of your region. It plays EVERYWHERE.

The only limitation now is that people cannot buy gifts cheaply from Russia, and then sell them to Americans.

I have been a trader for over a year and saved a lot of money that way, but considering South East Asia has the second lowest prices (around 40-50% cheaper than US), it makes this move a slightly easier pill to swallow.

[Aimbot]

What are other peoples thoughts about this? Are you supportive of this move or not?

Welp, this means games like Hatred won't be able to be played in my region due to it being banned. As well as other games.

Fun times, not.

[himmatsj]

Originally posted by mudlord:

What are other peoples thoughts about this? Are you supportive of this move or not?

Welp, this means games like Hatred won't be able to be played in my region due to it being banned. As well as other games.

Fun times, not.

They can be played, they just can't be bought.