As far as I can tell you cannot buy Thief as a gift in RU or CIS stores. You can buy the Splinter Cell though.
But the big question is, does that also make them region locked? As I know that some games are indeed RU/CIS tagged, but do not have a region lock. Which in practice makes them ROW.
Blacklist works fine worldwide but Theif is not guaranteed because it is not released yet and Steam locked games like Borderlands 2 and XCOM: EU before
Have you tried it? @_@ Didn't know it was possible to remove the tag, actually I thought steam had fixed the bug that allow people to bypass the lock.
Tbh mostly the region locks arent that much of a problem as they mostly are purchase locks. Meaning after they trade it to someone, the guy can just play it.. same will be the case with AC4 black list etc. for example
Completely agree. Which is why I told all 40+ customers up front. 95% were fine with it.
I would rather people not be concerned after the transaction as taken place. :)
Thankfully at the moment most if not all untagged copies from other regions work just fine. But valve really does need to sort it out asap.
Depends.. it might not be honest, but being at the recieving end is legit.. being at the russian side however isnt.
ALSO ive tested this, experimented this and did everything i could but i found out.. gifts seem to be ALWAYS ROW (only if they would buy it, its regionlocked for themselfs), so unless they give you a retail key.. you kinda are fine (the seller can still get in trouble though.. but meh... steam isnt that fast with banning people that boost the economy a bit and make sure even greedy people play games connected to steam :P
It's game dependent honestly. Nothing to do with being gifted or not. Again, thankfully most games with tag 'issues' are not region locked atm. If titles are only purchase restricted (which most are) its fine. However if they are play restricted that's another story entirely. :P
edit: know you mentioned this but figured I would reiterate.
Assassins Creed 4 is another culprit. Standard is tagged but Deluxe is not.
US obviously receives the 'gold' edition instead so it's a little easier to tell. But regardless it needs a fix.
It seems that Ubisoft games on Steam have many troubles. I remember Blacklist Deluxe and Standard Pre-orders were not tagged Pre-order and there no easy way to know wheich copies are pre-orders and which are not.
Both the US and Brazil have Gold Edition so it is a good thing to sell Gold Edition ROW as they are truely ROW.
I want the game myself and still debating whether I should get the Deluxe from Russia and lose the extra Season Pass and other contents or wait to see how Valve would fix that and risk losing the region free Russian Deluxe :(
Yeah. Was pretty much in the same boat myself. :|
Decided to jump on the deluxe as it wasn't that much more expensive. Hopefully will be able to sort out a cheap season pass at a later date. In all honesty I barely touched the dlc from ac3 so when I thought about it a little more I wasn't too bothered.
I've seen some people offering Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell Blacklist and Thief/Thief: Master Thief Edition for cheap claiming they are ROW gifts based on the fact they are not RU+CIS tagged and despite they are indeed untagged which indicates they are ROW.... They are actually RU+CIS and the only way to know that, is when you add the game to library
I've checked these gifts' SubID and it is NOT KNOWN