White House petition started to stop the use of region-locking in games

A petition to stop the use of region-locking in games, movies, software, and Internet traffic handling has showed up.

[jc48573]

why do they region lock games?

[Kalowest]

To stop the import of a certain games, from and to other regions to increase sales/profit. That's one of the reasons

[banjadude]

I read somewhere it also has to do with controlling release date schedules (for different markets).

[Newsman]

Region locking is essential for different ratings systems across different countries. Stupid petition with no thought or common sense .

[ManJello]

International ratings systems have been implemented across games for years. The PS3 does this and remains region-free without any problems.

[ShaunCameron]

What international rating system?

[ManJello]

@ShaunCameron

Ratings systems that aren't the ESRB. As in, places not within the USA. Like the rest of the world.

[Newsman]

Um no, there is esrb for the us, pegi, acb for the Aussies, bbfc and more. All different. There is no international rating system.

[ManJello]

That's exactly what I said. Take a harder look and you'll notice that "international ratings systems" is plural.

[KrisButtar]

universal rating system(if we don't have something like that already) is what we need, then we can do away with the region locking

[doctorstrange]

Buy a PS3

[BitbyDeath]

Why do they need a petition when PS3 is already doing it?

[BlackIceJoe]

I hope this petition gets the signatures it needs. It would be nice knowing if I go over seas for a job and find a game or movie I wanted I could buy it. Then use it in my DVD player or game system. There is lots of good movies that don't come to America so this would mean I don't have to buy a DVD player from that country. So that would be really nice.

[ThePsychoGamer]

But even if this pass, would it really have any substantial results? I mean it would only mean devices and media released in the US would have no regional restriction. The thing could easily be circumvented by directly region locking the games themselves in other regions. So that a game released in Europe would still wouldn't work on a US system.

[BlackIceJoe]

I am not sure if you ever bought a region free DVD player. If so you would know that if this got passed all game systems in the US could play games from any country. What I mean by that is with a region free DVD player. Is say you buy a movie from Europe it has a code that makes it only play in that regions DVD player. But if you put it in the region free DVD player it bypasses that code. So now you can watch it.

So if this got passed say US game systems would have to get a firmware update to allow region free gaming. So say I bought a game from Asia it would be in bedded with a code that only allows it to be played in the Asian markets video game system. But with this becoming a law when you put that same game into the US game system because of the firmware update it would play it.

Now you could try and play that same game in a console from Europe. But because it is region locked it would not work. So with this law when you put in the game it would read that it thinks it is in an Asian video game console. Because of the new firmware update it got.

So this would be huge not just for gaming but movies also. The only problem would be if you can't hook up your system to the Internet. So you would not be able to download the update. I know lots of older DVD players can't do that.

Sorry about the long post.

[Newsman]

Never gunna happen, so many poorly informed people here.

[Darukain]

Im pretty sure the government is in favour of region-locking, but lets just wait and see.

[bunfighterii]

PS3 games aren't region locked. I'm in Australia and I buy imported games all the time, mostly either US or Asian versions.