All I can say is that publishers need to wise the fuck up, it's 2013 people! Here I have several games restricted in STEAM, I know that some of them can still be activated and played if bought via retail, while others not even that. So if publishers don't want my money, that's fine with me! (And I'm pretty sure the restriction is not because of some law).

Probably has more to do with contracts than with any particular law.

It's still annoying, I agree.

I asked a German friend to log into my account and activate the game. Heck, I'm a German citizen anyway, if he hadn't done it I would have done it next time I go there myself. :P

There don't seem to be any problems after a successful activation, I also added DLC bought through the Polish Steam store without any issues. And I move a lot between Germany and Poland and haven't ever had any issues installing and playing games that I bought in "the other" country (although reportedly Sleeping Dogs was censored for German users who had used a UK key retroactively - so I'm a little afraid that one day Steam might do that to some of my games if I log into my account in Germany). I'm not sure whether you mean the part with lying about the address or finding games cheaper in other European countries. One thing I can say is that I did not have to lie about my address or anything, it was a legitimate order with my real IP and billing address and Dark Siders 2 was the only case so far where Steam didn't allow me to activate a UK serial in Poland. As for the offers themselves - I've already found many games on Amazon.co.uk much cheaper than on German Amazon, some even cheaper than in Polish retail (which totally blew my mind). For Dark Souls I paid approximately one third of the German price, curiously even ordering a release tagged as "UK import" in German Amazon would have been almost twice as expensive as directly from Amazon UK. Also the delivery is free throughout the whole European Union if the total value of your order surpasses a certain value (20 or 25 pounds, I think) and while it says 7-10 business days it only took two business days in case of my orders. So considering that I don't even have to lie about my location and get a free delivery ordering from Amazon UK seems to be a good idea.

Well, Germany is a special case due to their strict child protection laws and UK is special because of their currency. However, the rules on where which serials can be activated don't seem to be directly related to the pricing regions and they certainly aren't consistent. It's just fucked up.