Region lock on family sharing

[hamblo]

So my brother lives in Ukraine now and he activated Doom Eternal in his account (available in his region). He can play the game fine. He shares his steam library with me. I live in INDIA. But I cannot access this game.

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

What game?

[Wolf Knight]

Originally posted by pal97das:

Originally posted by cSg|mc-Hotsauce:

What game?

:qr:

Doom Eternal

that game does not support family sharing

[Washell]

Originally posted by pal97das:

It does. Because I can play the shared game with a vpn.

Section 3A:

You agree that you will not use IP proxying or other methods to disguise the place of your residence, whether to circumvent geographical restrictions on game content, to purchase at pricing not applicable to your geography, or for any other purpose. If you do this, Valve may terminate your access to your Account.

Bad idea to do that.

https://store.steampowered.com/subscriber_agreement/

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

Originally posted by pal97das:

Originally posted by Washell:

Section 3A:

Bad idea to do that.

https://store.steampowered.com/subscriber_agreement/

Purchasing/ Activating games with a VPN is illegal.
The game was purchased from Ukraine, without a VPN, with a Ukraine debit card.

Playing Games with a vpn is NOT a breach of TOS.

To bypass region restrictions on games, it is a violation of the SSA.

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

Originally posted by pal97das:

Originally posted by cSg|mc-Hotsauce:

To bypass region restrictions on games, it is a violation of the SSA.

So you mean, people using a vpn for security reasons, should not be playing games on steam ?

VPN to a place in your own country and you are fine. VPN to outside your country and you put your account at risk for an account lock or termination.

[rawWwRrr]

Originally posted by pal97das:

Originally posted by cSg|mc-Hotsauce:

To bypass region restrictions on games, it is a violation of the SSA.

:qr:

So you mean, people using a vpn for security reasons, should not be playing games on steam ?

You can play games on Steam as long as they aren't ones that would otherwise be restricted to you without the use of a VPN.

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

Originally posted by pal97das:

Originally posted by cSg|mc-Hotsauce:

VPN to a place in your own country and you are fine. VPN to outside your country and you put your account at risk for an account lock or termination.

This is not relevant to the question asked.

It is "more" relevant than what you asked.

[Snapjak]

Ask yourself this: why is everyone talking about something else other than what I asked?

The answer? Because we're not going to help you bypass region restrictions since you admitted to using a VPN in order to play it.

[Hanomaly]

Why not just wait 90 days and find out?
i guess you want to know earlier because you are excited to play the game, maybe..

i think, also, people are iffy about helping you because the number of people with “brothers living in russia”, on steam, is exceptionally high. Lol. So it seems more likely that all these “brothers” are alt-accounts (meant to get cheap access to games in other countries without “region hopping” on one account) or friends and not really family.

i don’t mind saying to you... just wait 90 days and see? Why must you know before 90 days if you will have access to this one particular game of your brother’s?

[Washell]

Originally posted by pal97das:

Purchasing/ Activating games with a VPN is illegal.

Read the whole thing, primarily, the bit that says "or for any other purpose.". But hey, I don't really care, just let me know where to send the flowers for your account's funeral.

As for your other question, you should be able to play it the proper way after 90 days, assuming you still have a working account by then.

[Elucidator]

Just ask valve about the details, don't ask the community. Most people don't know anything concerning legal stuff and such.

About the community. People love attacking people on flaws and mistakes and want to beat it into them. So, yeah, uhm, they're going to assume based on stereotypes that you maybe purposely bypassing stuff with a vpn and such, idk. Sometimes you need to remind them the goal of the forum is to help people, not to accuse them with whatever and hope they get put in jail or whatever the idea is. Not too sure. Anyway...

From what I can tell on SteamDB[steamdb.info]
The game is available in your region. The game is also available in their region. So.........I basically think it maybe a bug? I'm not too sure. There shouldn't even be a region issue from what I can tell basically. I think you may need to do some deeper investigating and then ask Valve (steam support) about it. Make sure you gather as much info as you can, as they are moderators that, apparently don't entirely know the Code of Conduct by heart either for example, so yeah, make sure things really happened within lines and such and put links here and there, like that Steam DB link, maybe useful. Yeah that's all I can say basically.

Family sharing is a bit buggy. I have seen other problems with it, like when people have multiple people whome they share a library with and some of them have the same game. e.e;

(edit: these things about ssa grayness tend to go back and forth, because people aren't truly sure if it is limited to just that section's topic or... meh- even mods don't exactly know, but they will likely advise "better don't risk it". I don't know why these topics always go overboard. Derail and prone to huge argument rules are as such regularly broken.)

Edit 2: https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=3784-QLBM-5731#dontlivewithme

here, this question in FAQ about family sharing shows that issues may occur when you share with people outside of the region. (they themselves basically admit it isn't perfect. )

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

It doesn't matter if it it purchasable in the region. The region restriction was put into place for a good reason, one of which is in this very thread.

It has nothing to do with the Family Sharing issue that may arise from not living in the same residence either.

[Washell]

Originally posted by Elucidator:

Sometimes you need to remind them the goal of the forum is to help people

And telling them that they're potentially getting their account terminated if they continue to do a certain action isn't helping? I mean, his:
"Purchasing/ Activating games with a VPN is illegal.
The game was purchased from Ukraine, without a VPN, with a Ukraine debit card.

Playing Games with a vpn is NOT a breach of TOS."
Isn't exactly going to make Valve go "Gosh, you're right, we'll reinstate your account!" should the worst happen. By his own admission there's a region restriction in place, which he avoids with a VPN. Legal doesn't really come into account when there is zero ambiguity. With all the non applicable fluff removed:

You agree that you will not use other methods (VPN) to disguise the place of your residence, to circumvent geographical restrictions for any purpose.

[Silicon Vampire]

The only answer is, vpn restrictions are to prevent access to region restricted games.

If you want to disregard that fact, it’s on you.

[Elucidator]

I just wondered how it is possible for a Steam key to be region restricted if the game is available in both regions.
OP made a mistake of mentioning he tested it with a VPN, so .... yeah I can see why people went on on that, but from what I read is that he wants to play the game without.

It was about the way the point was delivered. It could be done in a less harsh way, I think. At least to me it is clear that OP felt attacked.
I am apparently not allowed to point to posts specifically, but.... yeah.

It wasn't the intention to ignore it, but rather to look at the problem from a different perspective.

Why did OP think that the key is region restricted? How can someone in an entirely different region know that the key is region restricted?
From what I could tell in the Family Sharing FAQ is that region restrictions apply and due to this the game would likely either show the status that he can't play it or that it won't show up in his llibrary at all.
There at least wouldn't be a cooldown / timeout.

So.. I took a look to see if the game was available in his region and it turned out it was, meaning it wouldn't even apply in this case.
https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=1266-QFZC-2141
I looked at the store page and found no such info https://store.steampowered.com/app/782330/DOOM_Eternal/
and I was like "How the heck?"

I guess it doesn't really matter, but yeah that let me to the conclusion that it could be a bug or something very odd has happened. It at least seemed to me that OPs story was incomplete, so that is what made me give the advise I did, okay.

(again wasn't trying to ignore it, but-- just trying to see if there maybe something odd going on.)