Just a quick note to say that I was mildly surprised to see TERA show up on Steam today.
I’d written it off three years ago when they decided to enforce a broad swathe of region-locking that essentially eliminated continents from playing their game.
A policy like that gave the impression that their decision-makers were either racist xenophobes or just failed geography in high school.
A little idle surfing in the Steam discussion thread today, and it appears that some marginal improvement has been made in the intervening years.
Russia has been removed from the support FAQ, although Asia, Africa and the Middle East are still listed.
Then as an additional qualifier, another link leads to a page of specific countries that are allowed access:
The following regions and countries are able to access the En Masse North American Servers: North America, South America, Europe, Russia, Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia, Micronesia, Melanesia, Polynesia, Northern Mariana Islands, Malta, Netherland Antilles, Israel, Cyprus, Turkey, and Georgia.
Gotta give credit where it’s due, they managed to make specific exceptions for South America, Oceania, a couple of Asian countries, one Middle-Eastern country, and several transcontinental countries.
Well, it’s not an A+ in geography or the complete lack of any region-block whatsoever, but at least it’s not a failing grade anymore.
And maybe, just maybe, I might actually get around to giving their game a try now (assuming it works in Steam and doesn’t mysteriously disappear from sight in a couple days’ time because “oops, we didn’t actually mean to unlock it in your region, our improved cultural understanding was really a bug… all Asians are hackers and gold farmers, after all…”)
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NBI Random Topic Prompts!
- Your thoughts on region-locking games
- Argue the opposite position of your opinion on region-locking (because why not, it intellectually stretches a person to do that.)
- Your in-game encounters with folks from different countries, good or bad (any cultural tendencies that you’ve noticed?)
Why I Game 