German Borderlands importers encounter incompatible DLC

That royally sucks. I hope they get refunds.

They really should have seen that coming....

While I agree that this sucks for those people, as Space said, they should have seen this coming.

People importing to get better versions generally know better, and should understand that restrictions apply to specific versions.

However, I guess from the other point of view, if the disc they imported works on their box even with the region lock, they may have assumed the DLC was built for that regions copy.

Everyone! Join me. Become Fighters of the Nightman!

On a related note.

PS3 is better. You could just make a PSN account in that region. This proves that PSN is better than Xbox Live. Anyone who disagrees is just engaging in tom-foolery. Also if tmacairjordan87 (or whatever that dudes name is) replies I will donate 10 dollars to a charity of the first person to reply to his posts choice.

Also if tmac agrees to leave the site forever I will donate 1000 dollars to a charity determined by popular vote.

I've often wondered if this is a common thing. I used to import all my ps3 games for the US or Asian version, since they were cheaper than the NZ versions, but after reading a couple of cases where DLC isn't compatible (namely, Rock Band and Hot Shots Golf), I'd given up on it for any games where I thought I might want DLC for it.

One theory is that it's because the disc is NTSC, but the DLC is PAL?

Brainssssssssss..........

How is that a surprise? Every game on every console is DLC region-locked.
That's why I have to buy Rock Band tracks from the US PS Store on a UK console.

The game might not be region-coded but there are minor differences that make the DLC incompatible. Like... you know... the DLC for the English version being in English instead of German... so the German DLC that you are downloading from the German Marketplace will not work with the English version of the game that you own.

I'm not usually this bitchy but I'm debating writing a letter about this article to Chris Grant, Richard Mitchell and the ECA.

I'm not sure what exactly you're issue is but practically cheering that gamers who decided to take it upon themselves to circumvent their government's draconian views on censorship as having gotten their 'comeuppance' is an insensitive and inappropriate stance coming from someone who works in the industry.

Do you agree with games censorship? Why "don't (german importers) seem like the type of crowd you'd want to upset."? Are you saying that people who play 'killer games' are dangerous and violent? Or are you implying that someone who would go to lengths (like ordering online, oh noes) to import a game are somehow dangerous radicals?

Or maybe you didn't think about your remarks at all and just thought you were being clever?

I've read Joytiq for years now because it's articles have always been accurate and without speculation, or at least without speculation that was clearly marked as speculation. If I wanted denouncements of certain types of gamers I'd go and read Jim Sterling from Destructoid.

Congratulations on sullying what I've viewed as one of the last bastions of integrity within the games journalism community.

Sincerely,

Adam M O'Neill

[banned]

And that's why I waited. Didn't want to buy the game and then find out, that I was being screwed over DLC wise again.
This is actually worse than Gears or Crackdown, where you just don't get the DLC (not even the free packs) with a German live account or a German IP. So you'd have to make an American or whatever (just not German) account and tunnel all your 360s traffic through a foreign VPN just to get the DLC.
And now they actually take your money, but lock out the content? Oh come on.

And by the way: It's technically legal for people here to sell uncut versions of games that are otherwise not sold inside the country to people over 18. You just aren't allowed to advertise these games in the public. So if a gamer goes to a store, picks up a game from the shelf and asks for the uncut version of that game, some shops might sell it to him if he shows his ID.
This is like a giant middle finger in the face for people who import games just to have the full content for the full price (or actually cheaper since games in Germany are censored AND overpriced).

I think you need to read it again, the comparison wasn't made to region locking DLC. Why don't you find a bridge to hide under in the PS3 section, fanboy.

P.S. You're not cool enough to be referencing IASiP so you can add your handle to the list of things that offend me.

This artile does make german gamers look like idiots. Of course we didn’t import a foreign version downloaded german dlc and were surprised that this didn’t work. The article does make it look like that, but the version which doesn’t run with the german dlc is the “german” Pegi-version (german cover, german instruction manual, german menus), the one we can buy in our stores and the only version german videorentals have! So we were right to expect german dlc to work with that german version which is most common in germany!

well, is every DLC region locked...nnnnnope! If you downloaded dlc for Left 4 Dead in the past it worked with any version, same goes for Fallout 3 and I'm sure other games. So the notion that all DLC's are region locked is flat out wrong. Saying 'what did they expect' is easy to say, so is calling us 'violence-crazed' but I guess it is not a totally unusual thing when us German gamers don't support censorship and double standards. We paid for the game so we should be allowed to play a DLC that works. It's not like it's just a few Germans that bought the uncensored version. Gamers nowadays are pretty informed how and where to get uncensored version and of the many people I know, no one owns the censored version. If Gearbox doesn't want out money, they should have just said so. But ripping off people like that is just wrong.