Open Letter to Gearbox Software

Hopefully, this doesn’t fall on entirely deaf ears…

Good Evening Gearbox crew,
I am writing in concerns to a recent purchase my brother and I made with Borderlands 2. We teamed up and prepurchased the Steam Four-pack with two other friends. I am an English teacher in Japan currently. I was a bit disturbed to find out that Borderlands is getting released in Japan on October 26th, despite most the advertisements for the game that I’ve seen say that the game will release internationally on September 21st. I understand that Borderlands 2 in Japan is a new market and there may be more needed adjustments to the game code for it like language-related things, but I don’t need any of that. I just want to play the English version of the game with my brother in America as soon as it gets released. I know this may come off as a little lame, but my brother and I have really been looking forward to playing this game together since we would consistently play Borderlands CoOp split-screen whenever we had the chance during my college breaks. Also, playing games online with my family has been a great remedy for homesickness (while also quirky, my family has a tendency to come range of my brother’s laptop mic and talk directly to me while in gameplay).
All I’m asking is if there is any possible way that I can get around the October 26th release date and play the game when it gets released in America on September 19th? We bought the American version of the game and if I had bought/preordered the physical copy of the game, I could have legally brought it with me to Japan, so why should the digital distribution of the game be any different? (albeit, there is some flaw with this idea). Please, any advice or suggestions you can offer would be greatly appreciated. Please don’t tell me I have to wait over a month to play the game with my brother and the rest of my Internet friends online. Thank you.

Using Steam in Japan

My Steam purchasing process:
“Ooo, I want that.” -> Add to cart -> Purchase for Myself -> Steam:Unknown Error!
(Gah! Bullshit, Steam, you know…)
Exit Steam -> Sign into VPN (Are my torrents closed? Crap…) ->Restart Steam -> Open Cart -> Purchase for myself -> Steam purchase: Success.
I hate Steam while I’m in Japan…

So to say the least, I’ve been having difficulties with buying things on Steam.  Luckily, I still have access to my VPN from when I was a student, but who knows how long until that gets shut off.  For those Steam-heads that don’t have a VPN like me, the best way to get around this is to use the web browser and make sure you browse to http://store.steampowered.com/?cc=us and make your purchase.  This was the best answer I could get from Steam Support.

In a world of digital distribution that is permanently tied to one account, why should region-locking even matter.  To some extent, I can understand why region-locking works for physical media, but games on Steam are intangible (Intangir, what have you!)!  It’s not like I can buy a bunch of English copies of the game and sell them to other people in Japan (while I could gift them to other people for an outside/under-the-table agreed priced, such a deal would put both accounts at risk of being terminated by Steam’s TOS).

Bah, Steam, get it together!  Especially since I want to give you my money!

Game Save Darwinism

So I have this tradition whenever I buy a used game (particularly a cart game with limited saves). When ever the game has all the saves used up, I respectively only overwrite the lowest level/time so as to respect the hard work that the previous owner out into the game. Weird, I know, but that is my way of the gamer ninja.

Kitakata City Hall likes FF?

About 99% certain I heard this playing in my City Hall’s waiting area while registering for my Alien Registration card.  Also, caught some Catherine music mixed in there too.  😀

Final Fantasy 6 Overworld Remix – YouTube.

EA’s Origin is getting desperate…

Rock, Paper, Shotgun is reporting that EA UK is giving away free copies of Burnout Paradise through EA’s Origin client.  With as many people that dislike Origin in The States, EA’s marketing in the UK must be doing really terrible if they haven’t even offered a US equivalent yet.

Burnout Paradise For No-Pennies | Rock, Paper, Shotgun.

PETA Calls Out Nintendo For Fur-Wearing Mario

Personally, I think this is a little silly since I kinda envision it as Mario magically turning into a Racoon or Tanooki, not skinning one to use for its ‘magical’ powers.  I guess PETA will do whatever they want to get people on their side.  I couldn’t bring myself to beat this game.

PETA Calls Out Nintendo For Fur-Wearing Mario.

Update:  Kotaku is reporting that PETA released a statement yesterday apologizing and saying that this was just a tongue-in-cheek joke in order to bring light to the great problem of the fur industry.  Ha!  That’ll teach them to try discrediting Mario!  lol.