You gotta love worldwide equality when it comes to digital distribution of games. First off, Sony (as you might be aware from my, oh, constant rantings) are all too happy to screw Europeans over when it comes to PlayStation Store content, and now it seems that Valve is gleefully joining in.
Hit the jump for more on this, and why thousands of PC gamers are trying to do something about it.
Apparently, Valve isn’t very good at organizing deals with the international arms of American (and other) publishers and there are plenty of people who’re a bit peeved with this apparently laziness. At least 7,220 people, to be exact. They’re all part of a Steam Community group called Rest of the World and they sound like the sort of group I’d love to be part of if there was an equivalent with an aim of picketing Sony. Rest of the World say that their members (and international gamers as a whole) are already having to accept higher prices than in the US and receive less localized content in return. Their intention is to show Valve that they really want to buy these games if they were available in their regions at a similar price to that charged in America.
Their cause is admirable and their actions are too, but the problem is that nobody wants to listen to them. I got in touch with the group and they directed me towards some of the responses they had received from various videogame publishers when asked why localized content wasn’t available in their region.
You can read these over on page two.
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Interesting. I’d heard of one or two games that were only available in the US on Steam but wasn’t aware that the problem was widespread enough to create a protest group. Never had any problems personally and always been happy with the prices on Steam.
Do you know if there’s a list anywhere of the games those of us outside of the US are missing out on? Doesn’t seem to be all that much information on the groups page and I’m curious to see the extent of this.
Nobody wants to try probably cause they don’t think that they’ll make much of a profit there. Eventually someone will step up to the plate make a lot of money then everyone will copy them saying that they’ve heard the pleas of there fans. I really hope that they start sooner then later though.
USA! USA! USA!
steam is available i the u.k I have purchased all the hl games from them waht the hell you talking about?
@bullcrap: yup, but there are plenty of games that only America is getting, that nowhere else is. If you actually tried reading the entirety of the article you might realise this.
I think the one uberdumbass company is Ubisoft (concidering the crap they do, Im not stunned)
where I’m from we have over 80 games less than in the US
Joining a group like that is not going to make any changes. Now if each of those 7,000 members wrote a letter (NOT an email) to those companies, you might see some better responses and it being taken slightly more seriously.