Why a Europe only release?

[Doomdark]

Why are PC games not released worldwide simultaneously? This is a good question, but it is a phenomenon that we 'Euro-trash' are quite used to. The European release of American movies and games is more often delayed than not. This is very intentional, and is done for reasons unknown, but probably involves greater profits. The evil region system of DVD movies is a very telling example. Naturally, this kind of behaviour can only benefit the piratez.

So, instinctively I would say that it is about time that you Americans had some of your own medicine.

As for EU, I would guess that Paradox desires to do a 'trial' release in Scandinavia while they look for European and US distributors. I don't think that language translation accounts for the delay, since the Scandinavian release will likely be in English. Note that English is the language used in all of the screenshots.

/Doomie

 

[Doomdark]

I am sorry if I offended you.

You didn't.

I just wanted to get this off my chest since it has rankled me for a long time. The advent of the DVD revolution did not exactly make matters better. I don't know how familiar you are with the DVD region system, but the fact is that the vast majority of DVD movies are only released in the States and are not even playable in Europe. I get around it with a hardware hack in my DVD player and ordering my movies from the US. So the movie companies lose again.

As for games, I am not ashamed to say that I frequently pirate games I am interested in. Usually I later buy the ones I love, but if the release date in Scandinavia slips too far my interest in paying money for the game starts to fade. So the game companies lose again.

This is the the greatest danger with a delayed worldwide release of EU. A couple of days after the game goes gold, you can be certain it will appear in the warez groups on the IRC. I think Paradox are aware of this and will probably not wait too long with releasing the game in the rest of the world.

/Doomie