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(x-post from /r/SteamGameSwap) http://redd.it/2pj8zj

Seems like Valve took the effect of AllowCrossRegionTradingAndGifting=No and applied it to everything. Every gift from these regions is now restricted, regardless of publisher settings:

Russia/CIS
Southeast Asia
South America
Turkey
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Wow. Does that mean that even small indie games are now restricted? So if I wanted to buy something like Terraria that had no restrictions before, it will now only be possible to get it from "regular" sellers (not Russia, Brazil etc.)?

Everything, actually in steamdb still not applied I guess the store automatically put's a restriction to the gifts.

This, no doubt, kills game trading. This is sad news for lots of ppl, including dispenser staff. Still - dispenser have lots of other uses, like bitcoin trades and, of course, item-item trades.

Let's hope it's temporary and they will loose enough money during the holiday sale to reconsider it.
Publishers already had several options to disable cross-region trading, there is no need to force it by Valve...

I can agree that fall of russian ruble was an issue, at least at some degree. Because rub is basically half its value comparing to 1 year ago, publishers earn half of what they earned before. Pricing in that region was cheap before, but now its extremely cheap. Ruble is basically in same legue as 3rd world country currencies now. Stupid thing is they blocked indonesia and SA too.

From reddit:
"As most of you know, our developer tools suggest pricing based on market research and purchasing power parity. In the case of territories such as Russia, Brazil, and SE Asia, we suggested pricing that is lower than the direct USD conversion. This is based on our assessment of actual pricing of comparable products in that market. Recently Rubles have hit an all-time low which has been a concern of many game developers. We are still assessing the market to see if suggesting new prices in Russia is right for customers who live in that market. We do not think that pricing based on currency conversion only is the right way to approach the Russian market necessarily. What we are doing immediately in response to the Ruble drop is limiting trading and gifting from Russia to prevent people from taking advantage of the situation. We have been applying a gifting and trading lock of this type on all newly created packages on Steam since mid-2014. Today we have propped a change that will affect all packages on Steam which will not allow them to be unpacked to an account, if gifted or traded from a lower priced region to a higher priced region. This change is not retroactive and only affects new purchases. It also will not affect customers in that region from gifting a copy to other people in that same region. All customers will have proper warning when they are purchasing a gift prior to checkout in those regions as well. We will continue to assess the situation and make changes if necessary in the future. If you have any questions please feel free to write us via the contact form via the Steamworks Development site - Documentation & Help -> Contact Steam Publishing".


It is possbile that this rule gets reverted, but i doubt it will happen in foreseeable future.

Let's hope it's temporary and they will loose enough money during the holiday sale to reconsider it.
Publishers already had several options to disable cross-region trading, there is no need to force it by Valve...


Why are you so sure that they will lose tangible amount of income? It can cause lower amount of sales, but higher price will just align loses in amounts

Valve did some really big fault, they were earning lot of money by the help of traders ofc. now let's just wait I think that they'll change their mind soon ...