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Originally Posted by Keroko
We know the legal implications of this are fairly minor, as there are as many region-free games out there as there are region-locked. Not to mention the PC platform, which does not even have this limitation on games to begin with (unless it's Nexon). So yeah, I'm having trouble believing the potential lawsuits or banning of games is the reason for region locks still existing.
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Some PC games, a popular one being SC2, is "region locked". There are some technical restrictions on the PC. I believe Steam sells games at different prices around the world and they used to be "region locked" (I believe they might have changed this).
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Particularly that last example you mentioned is a personal pet-peeve of mine. A surprising number of the Tales games have been released in NA have either very late or even never been released in Europe, despite many players being very willing to buy them. The game is already English, so translation is not an issue. What is the issue though? The region lock.
The only way for us to play the game? Either modify our consoles to play games of all regions (illegal) or pirate the game itself (also illegal). And before you say "just wait patiently" I will remind you that communication regarding release dates is... non-existant. So we're never even sure if we'll be getting the game at all.
So let me recapture that: The only way for us Europeans to play Tales games within a reasonable amount of time (and by reasonable I mean 'within a month at most' not the nine months they made us wait for Vesperia or the 5 years we had to wait for Abyss) or in the case of Legendia at all, we have to pirate.
We have to pirate to play a game we would love to buy legally, import costs be damned. We have to pirate it because old publishing restrictions that were created by technology restrictions. Companies are losing money they could have made if only they didn't put a region lock on their games. And we know these games are okay, because it's a Tales game. All Tales games follow similar patterns and none of them have different ratings anywhere.
So why?
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Unfortunately, that is one of the major downside about region locking. I am not sure about what happened to the Tales franchise in Europe. If there is money to be made but the company is too lazy/deem is too risky/believe is not financially logical then they might just be stupid (or overly careful and conservative).
Europe is often a victim because not every country has a high number of English speakers and all the various trade laws, legal issues, etc can be a pain (NA release only have to deal with US and Canada).
Developer D1 entrusts Publisher P1 for game distribution in the Asian regions.
License agreement for the entire franchise is sold to Publisher P2 for Europe (that includes future games in the series) for 10 years.
P2 is unsatisfied with the sales of product. Decides to keep license but does not release future products.
Because of the licensing agreement, the game would be region locked so P1's sales would not be affect by the agreement with P2 directly (because P1 might sell the game for $10 more than P2 due to aggressive promotion and game distribution/packaging).
I do not think region lock is not the only thing (and tbh, is not a factor) preventing developers in doing world wide releases.
(I would have added more details but I got dinner waiting)