this is called Regionlock and the reason i leave Steam.
The next step is censored games in countries, DRM and so on...

edit: i buyd Witcher 3 for 43€ and was happy to do this ;) cause on Steam it were 50€ and the 12$ voucher are very good

Oops, bad move, but it can be done better - scrap detecting the user by IP address, so proxies won't be needed. Instead, use user's selected country (this can be easily changed). I think GOG uses this for The Wicher 2 (it was regionally priced at the beginning), because the Australian version is censored. So switch from Australia to a country with uncensored version of the game and it should work. This could be done for other games, but there must be differences (like cheaper price - less languages).

Used that. Court order forced them to move to IP based identification.
The Witcher 2 was regionally priced for quite a bit, until its price dropped to ~$20. And during sales, regional price was ignored.

The same as Uplay. :P By the way, I have 70 games in GOG, and only 12 of them are available in Spanish... I would prefer American version then. XD

Hopefully this list will not extend beyond these 5 items... But the day 1 DLC somehow carries the germ of more to come...

I'm hoping that's just an odd case due to the DLC contents being bound to the original release in an unusual way (crowdfunding rewards). I'd rather it not be a harbinger of times to come.

It's naieve to think this will be the last Region priced game. As they said, it's the publisher's choice from now on.

I'm not convinced it is - no business can prevent a personal import of physical items, it would be illegal to try and do so. Why should digital goods be different, simply because it's easy to create the region blocks?

Did they? I recall them recanting and saying that they wouldn't release anymore regionally priced games after the ones they had already agreed on were released.

So... Then, copyright infringement is theft, in your opinion? You can't use "physical laws" for digital products. Neither for "theft", nor for imported goods.

Right, they can't prevent you from buying and importing things that are offered to you. But they're not obliged to offer you a possibility to buy it online "from foreign countries". The publisher is free to decide what he wants to sell (what's included), where he sells his game (which stores) and who will be able to buy his game (which countries). If the publisher decides that he doesn't want to offer you the "Russian version" of a game, it's his right to do so. He's not obliged to give British folks the same offer as Russians. He can't and doesn't prevent you from travelling to Russia, buying the game there and importing it to your home country. But using a proxy isn't a visit in Russia. A proxy is a technical measure to conceal your location. You're not importing something, you're taking something that's not offered to you. Just as pirates do. I think it's the same.

If you want to "translate" a proxy to our physical world, it's like walking into your local store with a fur hat on your head, saying something like "Listen, comrade... You give me good Russian price, suka bljad!" oO A proxy has nothing to do with importing goods. You can't import what's not available for purchase.

I'm not aware of them ever saying such a thing. It's the people who read 'Back to our roots' and completely mistook it for 'Not going to do regional pricing then' that kept saying such things. But even in the back to our roots manifesto they clearly said that they would *try* to get fair pricing but that it was ultimately up to the devs. (so nothing changed from their first announcement really except a commitment to compensation with their 'fair pricing')

II believe in first sale doctrine. Publishers circumvented a right since they found a way to do so. I won't be using a proxy, but I'm not going to condemn those who do, and I have zero sympathy for the publishers.

Thanks, I was mistaken. I went a re-read the Back to Our Roots post, and you're right. Too bad. Good for Russians though.

Seems like the The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is another candidate for this list.

I was wondering where to find a list for these regional priced titles, thanks to Sinistar for making it, and to Grargar for bumping it at the right time.