You know what I learned this Black Friday (my first whilst being in the US)? Steam, Valve’s highly praised digital distribution platform, hates foreigners.
I have a UK steam account with several games on. This account is linked to my UK PayPal account which I have used every time I’ve bought a game via Steam. Upon loading the Steam application I downloaded and installed whilst in the UK, it displayed the US store. Oooh, Black Friday deals! Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic for $2.49? Yes please!
“Your billing address doesn’t look like it matches up with your current country”
No Steam, no it doesn’t. But it’s very common, at least for somebody like me who travels a fair amount, not to actually be physically in the UK. Being outside my billing country doesn’t invalidate my PayPal, or in fact any international payment option that you claim to accept. It’s what the word “international” means.
You know my account is UK, you chose to show me the US store then gave me the middle finger when I try to buy anything! That’s quite a dick move if I’m being honest. Worse, a dick move that could be really easy to avoid. Here is some pseudocode to help you out;
showStore.country = customer.country;
beADick = false;
Anyway, being the resourceful little sausage I am I found that if you add ?cc=uk to the end of the URL it takes you to the UK store. Fantastic. If it’s a game licensing issue then being on the UK store with a UK account that’s been used in the UK will surely work. Unless it won’t. In which case you would greeted with a very helpful “unexpected error”. Unexpected for Steam maybe.
All of this means that for the next few months that I’m not in Old Blighty, I am banned from buying games from Steam, even the UK store (though I can still play all the games already bought). Why? The only reason I can think is that I’m in a minority and who wants to put effort into helping all their customers?
For what it’s worth I did file an official Steam support request, but they’ll probably just throw it into the harbour. Bunch of xenophobes.
iTunes
I hope you’re just being “negative” as a schtick here, and aren’t actually serious…
Hell, if you’d asked earlier I’m sure someone on the community couldv’e gifted it to you.
Hell, I’d've gifted it to you and I’ve been a member of this forum for what, 2 months?
Steam has always hated foreigners. Heck not that long ago everything was still sold in dollars.
Not that buying games on the cheap when the dollar was weak wasn’t good, but still =P
Steam only hates foreigners in other countries.
You know what else? The euro tax is in full force – the Valve pack costs 60 pounds for Brits but 90 euro for us mainlanders. Meh.
I thought it was great just because I could download L4D2 from an English server just by changing the billing address to United Kingdom. And it was a third the price of the Australian version
I thinkl this is just par for the couse regarding international, global gaming. It’s a pain in the arse to migrate a Gamertag between countries, this doesn’t really surprise me.
You see wardrox, what steam is doing is trying to detract fraud. Fraud is when someone gains money by claiming things about themselves that are untrue, and it usually screws other people over.
@Hawkeyed One
Exactly. I mean, how often is someone in a different country temporarily and tries to buy something on Steam? Not saying it doesn’t suck, but I could see any online transaction company at least flagging it.
Have Steam responded to your complaint yet? Considering how much is tied to the account I would hope they’re willing to migrate it if need be, although it is only temporary.
Plus something else that was pointed out to me, is this could also be enforcing regional release dates for games. Not sure if you can bypas that on Steam, or if it’s even an issue, but it still seems reasonable to me.
Reminds me of that time the EA UK store fucked up and accidentally gave an awesome deal with some games, but only for Europeans. Would’ve loved to get in on that deal, but somebody was being rather xenophobic to us across the pond. :P
I just experienced the same thing, I am in germany right now but have a luxembourgish visa and I can’t buy anything on steam when I’m outside of germany ¬_¬