I recently ordered a copy of Spider-Man: Web of Shadows for the PC off Amazon, since PC versions of such games are rarer than hen's teeth for some reason. Well, it arrived today, and I can't help but notice that instead of being rated T, it's rated PEGI 12, meaning this is a European copy of the game, which worries me as I live in Canada. I'll freely admit that I don't really know a damned thing about region-locking, and nobody'll touch an opened PC game, so I thought I'd ask first:
 
Are PC games region-locked? That is to say, will this copy of Web of Shadows from the UK function properly on my computer in Canada?

 Uhh... nope?

i am 99.9% sure there is no region coding on PC games, unless there is some crazy DRM that requires activation from a European IP address. hopefully that helps...

I don't belive so.

I just looked, and I have a UK copy of Crysis and that works fine.  I would think that any problems you would encounter would be highly dependent upon the publisher.  For the most part, I haven't heard of any game that won't work on a PC from a different territory.

Thanks, guys, I kinda figured this was the case, since PCs aren't made from a universal set of components the way consoles are, but it's still nice to be reassured. Now, if you'll excuse me, there's a city in need of saving. :-)

While a PC game could theoretically include some form of proprietary region-locking, this is fortunately not a common thing. I'm not even sure it exists in the real world.

DVDs do have region-locking, but it's only used for video and I'm not sure if it's even possible to region-lock other types of DVDs.

Yeah, some games are region-locked. I think some of the Call of Duty games are region-locked, for example.

I bought a couple of Games for Windows Live PC games from Amazon which turned out to be European copies, and they still worked. Those games were Dawn of War II and Quantum of Solace by the way.

@Deusoma: You'll be fine. I order tons of games from the UK all the time. Its a great way for collectors like me to get disc-based indie games

Edit: I live in ontario

The only region locking in PC software is whether or not the vendor allows the sale. You can see this a lot in the MMO scene where it can be hard to get a vendor to ship you disks or take money online because the currency is wrong, shipping is too much or not allowed, or account tools are in a language the user doesn't understand and can't control. Once one gets over that hurdle software runs anywhere.