Recently a Brazilian gamer contacted us over Steam saying that they have a lot of problems with Steam in Brazil.

First of all, the retail game distribution sucks over there, it sucks so much that they can’t even buy games like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (or other Steam registerable games) in stores, they are forced to buy them on Steam which is obviously overpriced as usual. Games from Rockstar Games aren’t mostly available on Steam (only the last one – Episodes from Liberty City).

Secondly, Brazil has very loose laws when it comes to DRMs but unfortunately the developers/publishers don’t give a fuck about their regional rights and they force them to install SecuROMs and other bullshit DRMs anyway – even on Steam (well, Steam is a DRM on it’s own to be honest…).

Moreover, they are even fucked with Games for Windows Live because when they actually try to activate their game in Brazil they lose it.

We do realize that this isn’t mostly Steam/Valve’s fault but the publishers but seriously this can’t be that way. The publishers need to realize that people hate DRMs, in fact this is the main reason why people crack games and “steal” them because they don’t have “X activation times left” or DVD needed in the drive all the time.

This is just a simple rage post and ignore it if you want, but if your country has similar problems feel free to contact us and maybe we will figure something out soon and let them all know what we think.