If you were planning on importing a boxed PC copy of Deus Ex Human Revolution to save some money you’re out of luck. In the EU you can’t import a UK copy for example as the game requires Steam to play and for region authentication.

Other digital retailers apart from Steam won’t be region locked, so if you’re going to do some shopping around for the cheapest copy of the PC version you will have to either look at stores in your country or other digital stores apart from Steam and forget about importing it. For the console versions there are no special region locks apart from what you’re used to for the games on whatever platform you usually play on.

I was hoping region locking would never come to PC games as it drove me crazy on the PS2 since many games were never released in the EU that came out in the US. But now with virtual borders coming up that block videos on youtube for certain regions and some MMORPGs also blocking access outside of Asia it seems we’ll have to live with these borders for some time.

Deus Ex Human Revolution is coming out next week and is looking like it could be one of the best games of the year. Too bad they decided to make it less convenient for consumers to buy their game this way. Seems to be a new trend for big publishers to screw over the consumer in different ways with every guaranteed hit game they have in production with Battlefield 3 requiring Origin and now Human Revolution locking you out from buying the game from any store you want.

Source: Rock Paper Shotgun