I don't think it's fair for you to screw over good devs because their owners are dumbasses.

I didn't particularly enjoy the game at all. It was more like "press X to win" instead of "look at dem skillz". So other than getting the steam gift pile achievement, you're seriously not missing out on much if you're not in to button mashing. The only thing I found to be interesting was the art direction, but the game... meh.

Installed, got achievement, uninstalled. :I

I very much agree. :(

I understand, but their owners are really asking for it.

BTW what with this bullshit on steam! Region block games thats retarded!

Regional blocking is rampant on Steam. I honestly like the service, but this aspect of it is extremely annoying. One would think Valve could use their massive leverage to fight for a change, but they don't seem to be very interested.

Yep, they don't offer the entire Bethesda/id lineup in Russia. It's like someone's paying them to keep out.

They are very likely due to distribution contracts. On company might have the "exclusive distribution rights" of a game for one region (Russia, e.g.). Than Steam can only get a contract with that publisher where they must make sure that those "exclusives" aren't touched. Otherwise either Steam or the Publisher are liabel.

Therefore you also won't ever see a GOG game that is sold "exclusively" elsewhere.

Edit: But this, of course, makes absolutely no sense for an MMO...

It's region blocked in Poland for sure.

And region blocking free2play MMO is just crazy ;)

And then giving it as an objective in the holiday sale... what, they want to minimize their gains by deliberately cutting out people? It's like advertising a product in countries where you don't sell said product. Hurts my head so much. Should have given the position to someone else.

We've got problems with Bethesda over here as well -- after all, our distributor (Cenega) is a daughter company of Russia's 1C. We do have the id games, but no Skyrim, for example, for some reason or other. And the Lonesome Road DLC for New Vegas still wasn't released here, and no-one knows when it will.
Yeah, I understand that, but it still sucks for the customers. Still, if Valve insisted, they might be able to find a way to weasel out of those contracts. Or at the very least make sure they are not renewed. They've got a huge customer base and a lot of money, that's nothing to sneeze at.

I do hope this is just a transition period; with globalisation marching on, things like that will have to stop eventually.

Talking about stupid regional issues, do you have any idea how hard it is to find a copy of Drakensang: River of time here in Sweden? I spent months searching for the darn thing because someone had put (possibly illegal) export restrictions on the darn thing! So you don't want me to buy your game, even if I am buying it from another European country? Well, I don't like you either... Sorry, but it was just so frustrating, I really liked the first Drakensang, and I had heard that the second one was even better, but the publisher of the game apparently did not think that it would be a good idea to sell any copies in my part of the world. (I was just inches from falling for the temptation of piracy)
They don't mind selling the expansion to us though...
(Am I possibly the only swede who bought the Drakensang: River of time expansion locally?)

Good luck pirating an MMO.

For educational purposes only, there are Perfect World private servers out there.