(This is my email to bombcast email address after listening to this week's podcast... it's a rant, but hopefully shed some light on this crazy and sad situation about Steam.)
Hi GB Crews,
Heard you guys were wondering how steam setup regional differences, as a gamer from china I can tell a story or 2.
I have been a steam user since 2004 and now owns 200+ games on steam, but in recent years it became increasingly difficult to purchase great games over steam in china.
Why? Because steam pretty much refuse to sale any games from a publisher that have subsidiary companies in china, probably due to contract obligation.
One of the more notable example here is 2K Games, if you went to Steam search and select 2K from the publisher list, there are tons of great games: Borderline, X-Com, Bioshock, Civ series etc.
http://store.steampowered.com/search/?category1=998&publisher=2K%20Games
But what if you went there with a Chinese IP? Well you will see 2 games: Civ 3 and Stronghold.
OK, maybe 2K is not your thing, what if you want some GTA action? Or L.A. Noire? Sorry, none of the Rockstar Games are available from within China.
By using proxy and fake address (steam also has a not so secret ?cc=country_code parameter that let you browse category without proxy), you might get lucky during purchase. But in recent years Valve has tighten up the region check, if you got a Chinese credit card (be it Visa or MasterCard), you will be detected as chinese resident and transaction will fail (even when you try to wrap it in a paypal account).
I am not sure how we got to this point really, does publisher only cares about the western market? How hard must I try to give them my money?
So I sort of give up, as a steam user and gamer… I still watch you guys’ show, but buying games? It’s just not worth the hassle (ask your friend to import a game then send it to you, now over the internet).
Have a nice day,
David Frank
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