Steam: This item is currently unavailable in your region? Here's how to bypass it!

MetalSoup

MetalSoup

There's a GIF for that
How to access some of the region restricted games on Steam.

If you go to http://store.steampowered.com/app/234080/ you will get the following error:

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You can bypass this by adding "?cc=US" to the end of the URL,

Like this: http://store.steampowered.com/app/234080/?cc=US

This should allow you to search for, and purchase games that we're normally not allowed to view.

Enjoy!
 
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Nice, but what if they catch you bypassing their system, wont they disable you account? I would hate to lose 120 games+ because I violated their TAC. May be best to buy on another account then gift them to yourself.

Edit- I've found posts where people used VPN and proxies to buy a game and gift it to themselves, and had both accounts banned. May be best to get the game through amazon (bypass their restrictions) or greenman or something

Eugene did you try actually buying the game, or just viewed it. I would be interested to know if the transaction went through.
 
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Neat, I always find it odd that Steam store was the only one that blocked you.

If you bought the game via GmG or such you could still add & install it. This now allows me to skip the middle man.
 
Is this legit, though? I believe there's a clause in the Steam EULA that says you're not allowed to bypass region restrictions on the Store or in order to play region restricted content.

I've got quite a bit of games on Steam, so I don't really want to risk losing them.
 
Clive Woofer said:
Is this legit, though? I believe there's a clause in the Steam EULA that says you're not allowed to bypass region restrictions on the Store or in order to play region restricted content.

I've got quite a bit of games on Steam, so I don't really want to risk losing them.
Click to expand...

Well ridle me this:

If you go and buy for example Dark Sector via GMG or BundleStars there is no sign or indication that you not allowed to get it in SA

And both give keys for Steam that work, even worse BundleStars and some other stores where you can buy the game even give you SA currencies.

How is the FPB going to prove that I deliberately tried to bypass SA restrictions in a civil court to acquire said game. (Yes this is a civil matter not Criminal.)
 
ave said:
Nice, but what if they catch you bypassing their system, wont they disable you account? I would hate to lose 120 games+ because I violated their TAC. May be best to buy on another account then gift them to yourself.

Edit- I've found posts where people used VPN and proxies to buy a game and gift it to themselves, and had both accounts banned. May be best to get the game through amazon (bypass their restrictions) or greenman or something

Eugene did you try actually buying the game, or just viewed it. I would be interested to know if the transaction went through.
Click to expand...

If steam finds using a VPN or using bypassing methods to attain software, you. Will. Get. Banned.

People have attempted and successfully bought software via Steam's Russian store got caught and lost their accounts, when they asked Steam Support they simply emailed them a copy of the TOS highlighting the use of VPN/Back doors/purchases in non native countries.
 
Glordit said:
If steam finds using a VPN or using bypassing methods to attain software, you. Will. Get. Banned.

People have attempted and successfully bought software via Steam's Russian store got caught and lost their accounts, when they asked Steam Support they simply emailed them a copy of the TOS highlighting the use of VPN/Back doors/purchases in non native countries.
Click to expand...

That was more to do with the special pricing they gave Russians than anything else. Steam and publishers where trying to drop piracy and dropped prices significantly in order to get people to buy legit copies.

Needless to say other people across the world wanted in on the deal. Here I can totally understand and support the move to ban abusers.
 
AlphaJohn said:
How is the FPB going to prove that I deliberately tried to bypass SA restrictions in a civil court to acquire said game. (Yes this is a civil matter not Criminal.)
Click to expand...

It's not the FPB you have to worry about, it's Valve. I don't think Valve has those region restrictions up just for the sake of it and I definitely don't think they're going to take kindly to the fact that you use a bypass on their store to buy games they can't sell you in your region, even though the method for bypassing it is a major security oversight on their part.

Those region restrictions on the Steam store are there for a reason. I think that if Valve wanted everyone to buy or be able to buy those games, they wouldn't restrict their sale in certain regions.

I don't know, maybe Steam doesn't care, but I don't want to risk losing my Steam account with almost 200 games on it.
 
I bought Castlevania through this method using my credit card. I wouldn't "recommend" anyone does this in case the Valve machine decides to lock your account. It seems that the locked account punishment means you cannot make further financial transactions with that account, access Steam community features, Steam Wallet contents, and inventory items. You will still have access to your activated games.

Here's the bit in the Steam EULA that might get you concerned:

You agree that you will not use IP proxying or other methods to disguise the place of your residence, whether to circumvent geographical restrictions on game content, to purchase at pricing not applicable to your geography, or for any other purpose. If you do this, we may terminate your access to your Account.
Click to expand...

I don't believe I am guilty of disguising the place of my residence (of course trying to convince the Valve corporate machine might be difficult).

When I bought Castlevania, the store throws up a message saying that my credit card country details do not match the store region, and it will re-calculate the correct prices (which didn't change because we pay in USD anyway).

After that, the transaction went through.

I did not use a VPN/proxy to obfuscate my IP address. The simple URL string change would be easily detectable as my IP address would show I'm connecting to the US webstore from South Africa.

According to web hearsay, Valve also validates your listed billing address against your IP address. This makes sense because they have to charge applicable taxes (and I don't think this bothers them in SA because they don't have a legal entity in this country - hence why we are still paying USD).

I looked around for info from others experiencing problems because of bypassing region restrictions, and it seems to centre around a lot of people buying lots of games cheaply from the Russian/Euro stores and gifting them to themselves and friends. Valve also doesn't like people doing a large amount of CC and PayPal chargebacks on their accounts, as this was apparently part of some scam in action. Apparently PayPal was being used a middle-man payment system to get games from cheaper regions, especially once Valve had flagged and blocked CCs being used for the abuse. All this activity was also taking place using VPN and not a simple URL string change.

As I mentioned, Valve also identified that my CC wasn't from the US when I paid, but let the transaction go through anyway. Obviously people do travel and access the web store while abroad, and they did have a system to check this since it flagged my actual residence location and recalculated the prices accordingly.

Maybe I took a risk here - guess I'll wait and see...

For a point of comparison, it would be interesting to try and buy a game through the UK store and see how the pricing is recalculated. Will we still pay in USD or GBP? Or, if a UK buyer tried to access the US store and if Valve kicks them back to UK pricing based on detecting their UK CC and residence details.

I hypothesise they are more concerned about people screwing them out of money than they are about "unrated" games being sold. I have activated many retail keys distributed for review purposes; for games not yet available in SA, or games not available on our store due to ratings. In general, it also seems that receiving game gifts and activating keys of region locked games goes down perfectly well. This all feeds my hypothesis that Valve doesn't really care unless you are actively and persistently scamming them out of money somehow.

I'm in contact with the FPB to try find out if they are behind the Castlevania game not being available. This would be similar to the Mark of the Ninja fiasco from a while back. Some of you may also recall that I was handing out Mark of the Ninja retail keys in a competition although the game wasn't rated for the SA store.

Strangely, I have noticed that sometimes these mysteriously absent games are available to us when they first launch. Castlevania was available for purchase when it launched on Steam (I know because I have been interested in the game since it was announced for PC). I was therefore surprised to see it unavailable when the special came around. IIRC this also happened with LA Noire and Mark of the Ninja.

Anyway, if my Steam account gets locked, you guys will be the first to know.
 
I think I'm with James on this one, I suspect most of the reports of people getting banned are when they have legitimately done dodgy crap which takes money out of Valve's pocket.
 
It would be nice to have clarity on the whole issue. I also really wanted to buy the new Castlevania game. :(

I might register a second Steam account and then just use that account to buy all these region restricted games. I don't think there's anything in the Steam rules about having two accounts.
 
In the 4 years of my Steam accounts existence, I have stayed in 3 countries, one of them with the worst restrictions ever, AU also lived in NZ and ZA. In fact my PayPal account that I use currently for Steam is set to my NZ address. Not only that but some of my games come from Steamgifts and other stores like Amazon that don't sell to SA.

If anyones account gets blocked because of regional issues, I would vote mine to be the 1st to go.
 
I've traded with many people from Russia and America (anything to save a buck :p), to the extent that would probably be classified as 'dodgy', and I've never received any grief from Steam.

I'm in the same boat as AlphaJohn, if they're going to start punishing people, I'd be one of the first to go. I've also used the method in this thread several times, and I've never had a problem with it. Seriously, if they were against it they could easily patch the 'exploit'. Now if you were buying from Russia with their discounted prices, then you might have a problem..."whistling:
 
What I don't get though, and I've probably mentioned this before, is that some of these games that are region locked are Steam-only games.
Prototype 2 is a good example. It is region locked, but when I bought the game on disc and installed it, it required that I activate it on Steam since it is a Steam-only game. So the game is now in my Steam Library, but I still cannot access the store or DLC page for the game. I've had a couple of games like this, but can't remember others now.

Maybe it might have something to do with publisher agreements. I know Gamersgate has an issue with regards to selling EA games in SA which is why there are little or no EA games listed if you access Gamersgate.com but if you access Gamersgate.co.uk, you can see them. Although, Prototype is published by Activision and almost all their games are available in SA, so not sure.
 
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