What are the benefits of region locking? Why do devs do it?

What are the benefits of region locking? Why do devs do it?

Does anyone still do it? PS4 is region free, right? And the Switch will also be?

So that people don't get into a multiplayer interaction and have huge latency.

technically none of them are, they leave it up to the publisher to decide instead of enforcing it like before

and there's sometimes that 1 publisher that goes "fuck you, region locking it"

no idea for switch though

To avoid importing and boost local license and product sales, also protect Japan inflated prices by avoiding Japanese players reverse importing foreign editions

"A regional lockout may be enforced for several reasons, such as to stagger the release of a certain product, to hinder grey market imports by enforcing price discrimination, or to prevent users from accessing certain content in their territory because of legal reasons (either due to censorship laws, or because a distributor does not have the rights to certain intellectual property outside of their specified region)."

So, there's no benefit of this to the consumer. I can see licensing issues being a thing with music rights and licensed properties, but it's just as easy for various censorship issues to come along with this as well.

The truly determined people will find a way to play region locked content regardless, so it's pretty much pointless in the end.

Raiden 3 on PS2 was such a case for this. I think maybe the Raiden collection on 360 too.

Are you retarded? You can easily have region-specific multiplayer (as an option OR forced) without region locking.

Do you mean the store region locking or multiplayer region locking?
There are no benefits to the latter whatsoever.
The former is used to prevent burgers getting cheap games at third world country prices. Although it's still stupid it won't let you buy an overpriced game if it's unavailable in the third world region otherwise.

region locking as in only releasing games to certain countries is unjustifiable
region locking as in restricting online play to people from your own country should be a requirement, or at they very least a player-enabled option

>or to prevent users from accessing certain content in their territory because of legal reasons

So Americans can't see boobs.

Who the fuck invented the phrase "reverse importing"? It makes no sense, you are using it the with the exact same meaning as the regular word "importing". The reverse of importing is exporting.
>protect Japan inflated prices by avoiding Japanese players importing foreign editions

There, I fixed it for you.

Companies love globalism cause it lets them use cheap labor and reap massive profits, but they hate it when it benefits the consumer. This lets them circumvent this issue.

So Americans can't play video games based on their favorite anime or manga series.

It sounds like good place to ask.
Let's consider game X, released for PS Vita. It was released at date 1 in japan, date 2 in US and date 3 in EU. However, games on Vita can be bought digitally, which makes me wonder: if I go to PS shop on date 1, will I be able buy at least some version of game X?
More generally, whenever game is released on latest sony platforms, is it available all around globe? PS shop have many regions and this kinda confuses me on what and when I can buy.

>Playing games in languages you don't even understand

Why do people do this?

Using visual clues and shit allows people to understand what game wants from them even without reading through walls of Haжмитe Кнoпкy Икc чтoбы 飛ぶ ですよ. But it's kinda hard to actually do game like that, so enjoy reading weird characters all over the place instead of two-pic self-explanatory tutorial.

>languages you don't even understand
Maybe you should stop being a dumb unilingual scum then.

reverse importing was coined by Sup Forums

>anime comes out in japan
>60 bucks for 2-3 episodes
>a year later anime shows up in the west
>20-40 bucks for a whole season or two

some japanese do prefer cheaper sentai/funimation discs, and they can't do away with japanese audio without alienating half of the customers who don't want the cringeworthy dub

HOLY SHIT IMAGINE IF VALVE REGIONLOCKED RUSSIA OUT OF ALL GAMES

STEAM WOULD BE FUN AGAIN

They did it a while ago, idiot.
You can't redeem cyka keys outside of CIS anymore.