well i'm certainly not capable of buying the games i want because of it.
I don't know why buy half of them look restricted.
*sniff*

Regional restrictions ARE publisher imposed. If one service has European sales enabled and another not, it means the former was chosen for whatever reason to be the European digital sales arm by the games publisher.
Actually, I know of at least one case where a game on Steam was regionally restricted in Japan, despite the publisher actually wanting it sold there. So in that case, at least, the restriction was imposed by Valve. And that makes you really wonder how many more they self-impose...

Braid. Steam. $4.99. Now.

Steam dude....

what's so horrible about steam that makes picking up $5 Braid a bad idea?
never mind with that last question. I can probably find the answer by reading other replies on the boards.
Also I can't find an edit button , so I'm replying again
Edit-oh I see it edits automatically. I'm still learning how these boards work

The question I would ask then is "Was that Valve actively restricting it?" Or was it actually an issue of red tape or even an accident?
I could easily see Valve saying "We need to see a document showing you have legal right to sell that game in that region first" or even "Sorry every other game has been restricted, and we missed un-restricting this one. Sorry."

too bad, i've got braid weeks ago in that 10-pack indie bundle deal.

Yeah, doesn't make sense, even for Valve. It could only have made money for them, so there must have been some other reason it wasn't available in Japan other than them just being pricks about it.
Braid for $5, huh? Almost tempting enough to buy from Steam.

Five bucks is just about exactly what I'd be willing to pay for a DRM-free copy of Braid.
Sorry Valve, but unless you start cutting a lot deeper, I have no use for a Steam account.

The Direct2Drive's version of Braid is DRM-free. I suggest you to wait two (or three? I forget) weeks until D2D reveal their indie sale and hoping that Braid is one of them.

Good idea. If I'm really lucky, Aquaria will be on sale as well.
The demo of Braid did not really excite me very much, and I laughed out loud at the writing, but I'm willing to invest five bucks in it. It's a puzzle side-scroller, which is rare, and it seemed to at least have the potential for some solid puzzles.

How is that game? Someone I know says it's a rather good, but pretentious sidescroller and another says it's *meh*. I know the critics have been fawning over it, but I honestly don't trust most of them anymore.
I'm kind of on the fence. The music sounds great and the gameplay reminds me of Jill of the Jungle, Jazz Jackrabbit, et al but with puzzles which sounds good.
But every interview with the author makes him seem like an incredibly egomaniacal douchebag. On a scale of 1-10, what's the level of in-game douchebaggery? Does the character randomly break into pomo babble or anything? I'm imagining the writing is awful. Is there a lot of it?

The puzzle is genius (and rather hard in later stages). I'm a sucker for this kind of story, so I don't feel I could give a proper rating of douchebaggery for you. ;) But you can almost completely ignore the story if you want. Haven't encountered any cutscenes or lines of dialogues, and the character, AFAIK, is mute.
Note: I haven't collect all the puzzle pieces, though, so I don't know yet about the final stage.

Ah, you can skip the story. Very well. That may warrant a purchase from me then. Thanks for the info!

I wouldn't really compare it to those games, as it's very low-key and constructed around puzzles, with the platforming action and enemy-head-stomping just serving as the medium for those puzzles. Each level incorporates some manner of time manipulation (for example, in some levels, walking right moves time forward, and walking left moves it backwards).
The story (or rather the backstory) is told mostly by little books that you can either read or completely ignore between levels. Here is an example of the writing style.
The demo lets you play a few levels of each world (and read the story), so you might want to check that out.