If you've been gifted a region-locked version of a gift, show a warning or something

[[saltini] Tamius Han]

Earlier today, I've received a gift from a friend in a different region.

The friend wanted to gift me a game, and he was aware of the region restrictions, so he attempted to get a non-region-restricted version of the game (or so I was told).

This is the popup I got:

https://i.imgur.com/iJwoVbL.png

As you can see, there's nothing on this popup that would inform me that this thing is region-locked.

Seeing no restriction warnings of anything, I gladly accept the gift. I get the popup, asking me if I want to add the game to my library or to my gift inventory. Still no warnings that the gift might have been region locked. Only when I click the 'add to library' button, I get the "This item cannot be added to your library because it's restricted from your country" error.

Okay, I get it. Allowing the person buying the gift to pay the price for the same game in the recipient's region is literally impossible because the technology isn't there yet, and allowing the recipient to "upgrade" the gifted copy to a non-region locked version by paying the difference between the two might be legally iffy. But would it really kill Steam/Valve to include some sort of warning on a visible place of the 'you got a gift' dialogue?

Mockup here: https://i.imgur.com/c4v7rfx.png

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

How did he purchase the gift? 3rd party site reseller is my guess.

If done directly through the Steam store, he would have been told before checking out.

[Cheezus Crisp]

Originally posted by cSg|mc-Hotsauce:

How did he purchase the gift? 3rd party site reseller is my guess.

If done directly through the Steam store, he would have been told before checking out.

Likely bought as a gift item through third party as store gifts don't have that pop-up

Second, your friend should've been able to see very clearly the locations that the gift was only available in when clicking on the item through his inventory. He still proceeded to send it to you.
Eg: https://i.imgur.com/ANcW1tO.jpg

[Satoru]

users cannot gift to other regions by default and it warns the user if they are trying to buy a game where it cannot be activated by the recepient and doesnt let you buy the game

if your friend sent it to you, they did so by bypassing steam's protections and good luck with whatever they gave you because it wasn't steams' fault.

Feel free to have them go scream at the shady cd key store that robbed them of money knowing full well of the restrictions but said "we dont care give us your money and we'll send a dud of a game to someone else and you will have no recourse hahaha sucker"

[[saltini] Tamius Han]

Second, your friend should've been able to see very clearly the locations that the gift was only available in when clicking on the item through his inventory. He still proceeded to send it to you.

This isn't about sending region-locked games, or discussing what the gift sender did, or screaming at the gift sender for not doing it right (even though Steam doesn't allow one to do it right). This is about recipient not knowing that the game is region locked until they try to add the game to their library.

If Steam can warn me that giftable copy of a game that someone offered me in trade is region locked, it should also be able to tell me that the gift that I'm receiving — and that's the gift I'm receiving, not the gift I'm sending — is region locked as well.

And lest I forget — "sEnDeR oF tHe GiFt ShOuLd HaVe KnOwN iTs ReGiOn lOckEd" is a piss poor excuse against not informing the gift recipient about the region lock before claiming the gift.

[endrsgm]

Originally posted by Satoru:

users cannot gift to other regions by default and it warns the user if they are trying to buy a game where it cannot be activated by the recepient and doesnt let you buy the game

if your friend sent it to you, they did so by bypassing steam's protections and good luck with whatever they gave you because it wasn't steams' fault.

Feel free to have them go scream at the shady cd key store that robbed them of money knowing full well of the restrictions but said "we dont care give us your money and we'll send a dud of a game to someone else and you will have no recourse hahaha sucker"

steam screws up all the time too. I bought sleeping dogs on steam with no problem. but couldn't install because it's banned in Germany. that the fault of some shady CD key seller too?

[Satoru]

Originally posted by Salt Pool Tamius Han:

Second, your friend should've been able to see very clearly the locations that the gift was only available in when clicking on the item through his inventory. He still proceeded to send it to you.

This isn't about sending region-locked games, or discussing what the gift sender did, or screaming at the gift sender for not doing it right (even though Steam doesn't allow one to do it right). This is about recipient not knowing that the game is region locked until they try to add the game to their library.

If Steam can warn me that giftable copy of a game that someone offered me in trade is region locked, it should also be able to tell me that the gift that I'm receiving — and that's the gift I'm receiving, not the gift I'm sending — is region locked as well.

And lest I forget — "sEnDeR oF tHe GiFt ShOuLd HaVe KnOwN iTs ReGiOn lOckEd" is a piss poor excuse against not informing the gift recipient about the region lock before claiming the gift.

The sender is warned it’s region locked and won’t let them sent it.

Again if your friend is buying from shady sites to bypass region restrictions that’s not steams fault

[[saltini] Tamius Han]

The sender is warned it’s region locked and won’t let them sent it.

Again if your friend is buying from shady sites to bypass region restrictions that’s not steams fault

And I, the receiver, am not notified, even though my decision between accepting or politely declining the gift would have been different had I known

Again: "sEnDeR oF tHe GiFt ShOuLd HaVe KnOwN iTs ReGiOn lOckEd" is a ♥♥♥♥ poor excuse against not informing the gift RECIPIENT about the region lock before claiming the gift.

[Quint the Alligator Snapper]

Region locking is a load of crap, as usual.

[[saltini] Tamius Han]

@Satoru

Because you have some big trouble understanding a very simple suggestion, let me explain the issue using a different example, in a way that even someone with a single digit IQ could understand.

Let's say that my brother has a friend who lives in Russia. Let's call my brother Bogdan and his friend Alexander (or Alex for short). Maybe Bogdan met Alex through DotA or CSGO, maybe the two have met on reddit or discord, it doesn't matter. Alex does not know where Bogdan lives other than "not Russia."

Bogdan and Alex get along very well, and Alex has a free giftable copy of a game lying around — so he decides to gift me the copy. He sees the warning that the game is only playable in CIS, but assumes that — while not being Russian — Bogdan lives in one of the adjacent countries. After all, they're both online at similar times and Bogdan has this thick, typical slavic accent when speaking English. Alex tries to stalk Bogdan a bit to confirm or deny his assumptions, but Bogdan's profile says nothing about his location, and he doesn't want to ask Bogdan where he's from as he doesn't want to risk ruining the surprise.

So Alex goes ahead and tries to gift the game to Bogdan. When he does, he gets absolutely zero warning that Bogdan lives in a region where the gift cannot be activated: https://imgur.com/Ic0ZMF1

So he sends the gift.




Now let's pretend my brother has some principles that I hold dear — such as, for example, not letting friends gifting you something that he knows he won't be able to use (or would otherwise be a waste of money for the friend). This isn't the case, but let's pretend that it is.

But that's not the only thing that me and my brother differ in. While I am fairly familiar with computers, technology and know about region restrictions on Steam, Bogdan is the kind of person who will use the recycle bin to store his most important files. He's the kind of person who doesn't know what an adblock is. He's the kind of person who doesn't know that things like Ctrl+C/V/T/W/Z/X/Y/A exist, when he gets a new phone I'm the one who has to connect it to the wifi for him. He's the kind of person who buys overpriced pre-builts, thinks Skyrim is the best game ever, preorders games and thinks that i7 920 is better than i5-9400 because i7 > i5. If you mention Ryzen 9 9950X he'll scoff and comment that there's "no way a cpu made by a third world knockoff company is as good as intel." He gets his daily dose of memes off Facebook and instagram instead of reddit, never reads the comments under said memes and never engages.

TL;DR: you get the picture. He's pretty uninformed about the world beyond his country's borders, so it should come to you as no surprise that he is blissfully unaware about regional restrictions on steam.

One day, Bogdan sits down behind his PC. He opens steam and gets a notification; "Hey, you got a gift!"

If he got a notification that looked like this[imgur.com], he would click 'Decline' and that would be the end of it, because he's a decent human being who hates seeing people gift him stuff that he wouldn't be able to use. Instead, he would decline the gift and tell Alexander to send that gift to someone else who could actually play it.

But the popup he gets doesn't look like that. Instead, he gets a popup that looks like this[imgur.com]. He gratefully accepts the gift, not knowing he can't actually redeem it until it's too late. Now, instead of clicking a single button, Bogdan has to go through the hassle of navigating through the maze in order to find inventory and send the gift back — something which he deems to be much more hassle than it needs to be.



Over the dinner, Bogdan complains about this situation to me. I agree that this is clearly an example of ♥♥♥♥ user experience and immediately get a PTSD to about a year ago, when a web app we were making for a client (it has like 20-30 users) had a less severe UX issue than the one this thread is about, yet I still got screamed at by my boss like the world was ending.

[AmsterdamHeavy]

Bogdan can play his region locked game with no restrictions in 90 days.

If the person who sent Bogdan the gift sent it through Steam,, I agree with you.

If Bogdan was activating a key that was gifted to him from elsewhere, any other place but Steam, then I do not agree with you. Since the words "activating a key" are being used here, I assume this is the case.

The lesson here is dont buy from ♥♥♥♥♥♥ key sites; you can very easily end up with a region locked key that was not disclosed by the seller. That is not Steam's problem.

EDIT: Looked at the image. This is a Steam gift.

[endrsgm]

Originally posted by Satoru:

Again if your friend is buying from shady sites to bypass region restrictions that’s not steams fault

Originally posted by Satoru:

Feel free to have them go scream at the shady cd key store that robbed them of money knowing full well of the restrictions but said "we dont care give us your money and we'll send a dud of a game to someone else and you will have no recourse hahaha sucker"

Originally posted by AmsterdamHeavy:

EDIT: Looked at the image. This is a Steam gift.

if only satoru had instead of deciding he just KNEW what was up and then flying off half ♥♥♥♥♥♥ and well ... getting it all wrong ... again. funny he can take the minute or two to write but cant take a minute or two to READ first or the second or two needed to look at the enclosed picture.

[YO Y 4 BURROS]

.(

[Roxor128]

Or, Valve could just take the simplest possible approach to region-locking and not support it at all, making all these problems vanish overnight.

[Snapjak]

Originally posted by Roxor128:

Or, Valve could just take the simplest possible approach to region-locking and not support it at all, making all these problems vanish overnight.

Along with a ton of developers and publishers.

[[saltini] Tamius Han]

Originally posted by Roxor128:

Or, Valve could just take the simplest possible approach to region-locking and not support it at all, making all these problems vanish overnight.

That also means getting rid of regional pricing, which is considered a necessary, lesser evil (getting rid of G2A and the likes would also work and it would surely be nice, but let's be honest: that's not realistic).

SEA/CIS/South America are gonna just laugh at western prices, because while it takes you a few hours of work to earn enough to buy a game, they'd need a week. Mind, they'd still get their games, but from Tortuga instead of Steam.

EDIT: Did steam seriously censor our least favourite shady grey market scam site"key marketplace" I was trying to take a #2 all over? LOL