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Borderlands 2 download version region locked in much of Eastern Europe

Borderlands_2_Region_Locked

With the Borderlands 2 release taking place across this week, it’s not just the date that’s different depending on where exactly you live on our great big spinning ball of a world. People who have bought the game on Steam in Russia, along with a range of other Eastern European countries, have found that their game has an odd little suffix at the end of it when they went to preload it on Steam. Instead of just being ‘Borderlands 2’, they’ve got ‘Borderlands 2 RU’.

Reddit user K900_ thought this was a little odd and did some digging, only to find in the Steam CDR that ‘Borderlands 2 RU’ is a completely separate version of the game, and one that, after some confirmation by Gearbox, won’t be able to play with anyone who doesn’t have a ‘Borderlands 2 RU’ version of the game.

The only response from 2K so far has been in reply to a support ticket, where they stated: “All users with a Russian IP address that are attempting to purchase and play the game will be restricted to the RU version of the game. This version of the game will only be compatible with other RU versions of the game, meaning you will only be able to play online with other Russian IP players. We deeply apologize for any and all inconvenience this issue may cause.”

This isn’t the first game to go to such lengths; Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3 both went for region locking, and Battlefield 3 is language locked. For a little while it even looked like Deus Ex: Human Revolution was going to follow suit until there was enough of an uproar that Square Enix backed down.

We’ve reached out to 2K for comment. If you do live in any of the countries mentioned, you can buy Borderlands 2 in local stores, where it’s apparently region-free.