1. Guy buys The Orange Box from India while home for winter
2. Guy tries to install game in the US
3. Guy finds out game is region locked
4. ???
5. Profit!! (Valve, not guy)

Sorry about that. I read too many comments on Digg. But the above is exactly what happened. The copy of The Orange Box I bought while in India will not work here because Steam checks my IP and refuses to let me play the game. I’ve tried everything but it won’t work. So just because I happened to buy the game (a legit copy) while at home, Steam hates me. Good going guys. Of course, I can still play the game when I go home next but what if someone was on vacation and will not be going back again? Valve just frakked them out of their hard-earned cash.

Steam was annoying enough 3 years ago when I first played Half Life 2 with the painfully slow decrypting/updating process. But this is far more irritating. Valve is punishing legitimate customers just because some unscrupulous retailer in Thailand was selling CD Keys to US customers.

There is a reason why more and more people like console games over PC games. In addition to hardware upgrade costs, publishers are making gamers jump through more and more hoops just to be able to play a game they purchased (legitimately). Stop treating your customers like criminals. It’s what the RIAA and MPAA have been doing and see where it’s gotten them. It’s great that you want to make games more affordable in poorer areas of the world, but don’t put bullshit restrictions on them.

I’ve always maintained that Steam is a bad idea. All it does is make life more difficult for us PC gamers. Why should it matter where I am located when I install the game? I paid for it, it’s my computer, then why am I not able to use the product the way I want to? Any type of DRM sucks. And they wonder why piracy is so rampant. People get frustrated when companies resort to tactics like region-locking. DVDs anyone? They enforced region-locking but has it affected piracy one bit? Nope.

I can put up with CD Keys. They are a one-time thing and after entering the string of alphanumeric characters, your game will install and you can play it all you want. Activation via Steam just blows.

I own a Nintendo DS and love being able to just get a game, pop it in, and play. I don’t have a TV here or I would probably own an Xbox 360 too. I always buy retail copies of games - no downloading or buying illegal copies. Yet, issues like region-locking really make me think twice.