CrazyTB's blog

Have you ever played BioShock? I've played its demo on Steam. It's great! It's so beautiful, the graphics are really impressive and pushed my video card to the limit. The game will also scare you a few times. It got some pretty good reviews at Metacritic.

I liked the demo. It was not exactly the kind of game that I would choose, but I really enjoyed the demo, and I would like to play the full version and see the whole story.

But, you know what? I can't. And you know why? Because the companies don't want me to play.

If I try to access the BioShock page at Steam, I get a red fat error: This item is currently unavailable in your region

Have you ever played Far Cry? It is yet another highly acclaimed game. I've read a bit about it on the Internet, and have also seen some screenshots, but I've never played it. I would like to, if you asked me.

But, you know what? I can't. Those companies don't want me to get Far Cry on Steam. Not just that, they don't even want to let me see the trailer on Steam! And Far Cry 2 is going to be released in 2 days. Guess what? I can't get it on Steam either. All items related to Far Cry on steam throw this message in my face: This item is currently unavailable in your region

I really don't understand what's going on with these companies. These are hugely successful games, I bet many people here would buy them, but they don't want to sell us!

And this is not exclusive to Steam. I've read that Nintendo also restricts WiiWare games to some regions, even though people want to buy such games.

Let me try to understand... There are people wanting to buy something... Companies get revenue from selling things... Companies would get money if people buy things from them... But companies don't want people buying things?

Ok, I give up, I failed to understand. It doesn't make much sense to me.

This makes me remember about Free Software (free as freedom, not as free beer). The freedom 0 is the ability to run the program for any purpose. This means that nobody should be restricted from running the program for whatever reason. This means that no free program would ever be restricted by region.

I'm not sure how well Free Software would work for these huge and expensive game productions, but I feel that I'm being more respected by Free Software, as they won't exclude me just because I smell, because I'm ugly, or because I live somewhere else.

Being it free software or not, programs and games are products, and they must respect the users (which are their consumers). Users/consumers don't like DRM software, nor DRM music, nor DRM video. People don't want to be restricted about the number of times or computers allowed to install software/games. People don't want to get anti-piracy marketing bullshit. When will companies learn? And, what's more difficult to understand: companies are made by people!

But I digress. As I was saying... There is demand, there are people wanting to buy; but there are companies that don't want to sell to those people. It really makes no sense to me.

Bottom note: Of course, Steam is not the only way to buy games. I could check a local retailer and buy the game from them. Unfortunately, the prices here seem to be more than twice the price I would pay on Steam.

Update on 2008-11-05: Now Ubisoft Expands Steam Catalog Into South and Central America. That means that now I have access to Far Cry and many others. I still miss demos for most games, as I don't want to buy something that I might not like. Also, I still miss BioShock.