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Steam has begun to display region restriction and language info for some games, as seen in the picture. Does the abscence of such a notice indicate that the game on offer is completely region free and not in any way different from releases in other regions (except for those that are region restricted)?

enter image description here

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Related: Some games may have region locked versions in some regions but a general 'for everyone else' version. What happens in this case if you happen to be in the 'everyone else' category? – Matthew Scharley Jul 3 '12 at 1:41

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This is what Steam support had to say on the matter. Hopefully it is true.

Region restrictions will be noted on the store page of the product. If there are none listed, then there are no region restrictions for the game.

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It looks like people have been buying games in other countries, and then playing them locally on Steam. It's not hard to do, a simple VPN from the UK to the US, and I can buy my games in USD, and have access to the US inventory, then play them in the UK.

From this post and it's comments I'm guessing people were using similar ideas to VPN into Russia, get cheap games, and then play them in their native country/language.

Long story short, this looks/feels/smells like game manufacturers and Steam trying to make sure people pay full price for games. (no judgement, just stating they're trying to maximize revenues)

I would imagine in most cases the games are the same, though in certain locations (Germany) I would guess that the content might be edited based on Germany's watchdog restrictions. This might also be to broaden the market into countries that have more restrictive content managed systems.

All best guess, and IMHO, hope that helps!

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You might want to edit your answer to avoid sounding like the Publishers and Steam getting full price for a game is a bad thing. Games sold in Russia are cheaper for a reason, because the at the normal price, they wouldn't sell a single copy. – Ramhound Jul 5 '12 at 14:46
@Ramhound - I'm not saying anything like that. Have added the caveat, but was simply stating that looks like what's going on, whether good or bad. – MaddHacker Jul 5 '12 at 16:10

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