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Charter update about buying out of region keys for games

  • 10-12-2014 2:48pm
    #1
    Moderators, Computer Games Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators, Help & Feedback Category Moderators Posts: 24,950 CMod ✭✭✭✭


    After a deal of internal discussion among the games mods and office staff, we've reached the conclusion that we will not allow discussion about how to buy game keys from overseas markets, if it involves doing something deceptive or unintended by the seller to buy those keys. An example would be the use of a VPN to fake your IP or geo location to get a cheap key from an overseas/out of region market that weren't meant for the local market.

    It's fine though if someone is just selling them direct to the world however. The issue arises when it becomes necessary to perform a deceptive act or to bypass legitimate seller restrictions to obtain them.

    This is something of a pro-active policy by boards.ie. Acts such as this are a very grey area in many cases. While things such as copyright controls and DRM are legally backed up and recognised, buying an out of region key isn't. Some countries do enforce it and the ability of retailers to forcibly separate markets. You can read one large example of this here:

    http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/11/how-an-ebay-bookseller-defeated-a-publishing-giant-at-the-supreme-court/

    To a degree this is also about protecting boards.ie users. While some retailers, Valve for example, often do ban accounts that do this, others, such as EA, ban it in their EULA, but don't actively enforce it. But they may start doing so in future and without notice.

    And for clarification, this is only for purchasing, not activation of keys.

    I doubt this will have much impact on the BF players, but we do have to be consistent across the games forums.


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