Steam and Korea - Well, That Sucks.

Xhaztol

Alright, sort of a strange situation.

A good friend of mine has left for Korea to teach English so he can pay off his student loans. A group of us (old WoW guild friends) wantt o start playing some Team Fortress 2 about once a week, so we were like "Oh hay guy, it's Steam, just register and download it, that way you won't have to ship for the software!" Great idea, downloadable games, right?

Well, he resides in Florida in the US, so that's where his debit card is tied and issued from. Upon trying to purchase TF2 off Steam while being Korea, he's being denied. Now, I don't know if anyone has encountered anything similar to this, but it kinda sucks he can't make use of such a wonderful system as downloading a game he's willing to pay for.

If there's no other work-around, would logging onto his Steam account from here in California (from my computer) and using his credit card to buy it from here in the States work? If it went through here in California, would he be able to log back in over seas and download the game fine? We don't want to risk trying that if it's just not going to work.

Anyway, hoping someone out there might have encountered something similar.

Thanks a bunch in advance.

SoaL

If you want to check if it will work, get him to log onto one you or your friends' accounts and see if he can download them from there.

Xhaztol

This may be a noob question, and I definitely have NOT researched it, which I should have, but if I own TF2, I can download it to any computer I log onto under my account?

FanciestWalnut

You could have just named this thread "Korea - Well, That Sucks" also I don't know why everything is caps.

Rook

Can't you just buy things on steam using Paypal these days? Might work, certainly worth trying I think.

tofu

Xhaztol wrote: »

Alright, sort of a strange situation.

A good friend of mine has left for Korea to teach English so he can pay off his student loans. A group of us (old WoW guild friends) wantt o start playing some Team Fortress 2 about once a week, so we were like "Oh hay guy, it's Steam, just register and download it, that way you won't have to ship for the software!" Great idea, downloadable games, right?

Well, he resides in Florida in the US, so that's where his debit card is tied and issued from. Upon trying to purchase TF2 off Steam while being Korea, he's being denied. Now, I don't know if anyone has encountered anything similar to this, but it kinda sucks he can't make use of such a wonderful system as downloading a game he's willing to pay for.

If there's no other work-around, would logging onto his Steam account from here in California (from my computer) and using his credit card to buy it from here in the States work? If it went through here in California, would he be able to log back in over seas and download the game fine? We don't want to risk trying that if it's just not going to work.

Anyway, hoping someone out there might have encountered something similar.

Thanks a bunch in advance.

If using his credit card in CA doesn't work you could always buy the games yourself and gift them to his account (I'm pretty sure you can gift every game on Steam now) and have him reimburse you later.

harvest

Yeah just have him log into your account and see if he can download and run TF2. If it works, have someone in the US log in his account and pay for the game.

Malkor

Rook wrote: »

Can't you just buy things on steam using Paypal these days? Might work, certainly worth trying I think.

Yeah, that's probably his best bet.

wunderbar

Malkor wrote: »

Rook wrote: »

Can't you just buy things on steam using Paypal these days? Might work, certainly worth trying I think.

Yeah, that's probably his best bet.

no, gifting or getting someone else to buy the game in the US would be the best bet.

Ethereal Illusion

Hm, I've purchased my games in the states(Florida) and used them overseas(Israel) just fine. So it should work, unless the system has changed in the past 2 years or Korea is just unfriendly with steam. Best of luck!

RainbowDespair

I ran into the same problem when I was in Taiwan. Physical copies of games worked fine, but trying to buy anything directly online and I'd get a credit card doesn't match your physical location error.

Meiz

I think that's awesome. Less chances for identity theft.

Serious_Scrub

I'm not sure about purchasing, but I have managed to download my steam copy of half life 1 successfully in mainland china a year and a half ago

Graben

Same thing happened to me in Japan. I just had my mother in America log into steam using my account and credit card and she could buy it no problem. Then 1 minute later I could download it in Japan.

langfor6

wunderbar wrote: »

Malkor wrote: »

Rook wrote: »

Can't you just buy things on steam using Paypal these days? Might work, certainly worth trying I think.

Yeah, that's probably his best bet.

no, gifting or getting someone else to buy the game in the US would be the best bet.

I live in Korea, and I was gifted copies of Half-Life 2 and Episode One by a fellow forum member here. I didn't have any problems.

Cronus

Steam just opened a new support center with supposedly service that both doesn't suck and is answers quickly. I haven't tried it and can't vouch for it, but it's worth a shot.

http://support.steampowered.com/

UltimaGecko

My account works in different countries, I don't know why it wouldn't work. Germany and Portugal aren't quite Korea, though.

Marlor

UltimaGecko wrote: »

My account works in different countries, I don't know why it wouldn't work. Germany and Portugal aren't quite Korea, though.

My Australian account worked fine in the Netherlands when I was there. I'm pretty sure I bought a game or two while I was over there, and certainly had no hassle playing them. However, that was more than 18 months ago.

So, it sounds like it's a fairly new policy, and it is probably designed to stop credit card fraud. I can't imagine there being any problems if the OP logs in and buys the game for him, then he downloads it over there.

krapst78

Logging in, downloading and playing games using Steam work just fine in Korea. The only problem is trying to purchase games using a credit card that doesn't match your physical country. When you purchase games over Steam while logged in from Korea, you cannot uncheck the option to use a credit card that does not match your location, otherwise a message appears prompting you to recheck that box.

If your friend has a Korean issued credit card, then he can purchase the games using that card. When I was originally living in the States I had to use my US issued credit card to purchase my Steam games. Since, moving to Korea, I've been able to purchase Bioshock, Cod4, The Orange Box, etc... using my Korean credit card without any problems. Once you login to your Steam account, you can freely download and play any of the games you have previously purchased, regardless of where you purchased it from.

The easiest way to get your friend access to Team Fortress 2 if he doesn't have a Korean credit card is to login his account from somewhere in the States and purchase the game with a US credit card. Then have him login to his account from Korea and that game will then appear in his "My Games" tab.

MegaDoomer

i live in korea and buy games from steam all the time...

just change your country on the credit card screen to Korea instead of USA....

keep the address exactly the same except for the country and it will work

UberEv

Graben wrote: »

Same thing happened to me in Japan. I just had my mother in America log into steam using my account and credit card and she could buy it no problem. Then 1 minute later I could download it in Japan.

Exactly what I did for TF2 when it was released. Hi5 for living the home country life in Japan!

pirate bob

I had this problem too back when I lived in Korea. I emailed Steam support about it and they set me up for it. The credit processor does some IP checks on location, but they overrode it for me, was able to use Steam no problem.