Bad news for all Steam users. The digital games distributor has decided to put a region lock on its games.

The worst part is this update was just rolled out in time of the holiday season when people are all looking for discounts and ways to save money.

This means that if you bought a game from one territory, it can no longer be played in another.

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It works similarly to DVD region locking. Steam's system, however, is said to be a lot more effective and efficient seeing that it's only been rolled out. Thus, there's no crack available yet.

The company hasn't issued an official statement yet as to why it decided to make this move.

If you take the time to study markets nowadays, however, you'll probably come to the conclusion this region locking decision is possibly because of the instability some currencies such as the Russian ruble are experiencing.

The other possible reason is because the game distributor has noticed it's losing a lot of money when consumers buy games from other territories at lower prices and then play the games in their own hometowns where the games are worth more.

Video game blog Kotaku said those who first noticed that buying games from a certain territory and making use of it in another is no longer possible are the firm's consumers and developers themselves.

They found out that gifting in Russia has been restricted outside of its regions. This was soon followed by more discoveries and it became apparent that South America, Southeast Asia, as well as Turkey have also seen region locking.

Tagssteam, Steam Games, Steam News, Steam Latest News, Steam Update, Steam Latest Update, Steam Game Locking, Steam Game Region Locking, Steam Region Locking, Steam New Policy