In the above web archive links for the ToS from September 2022 it wasn’t present, more interestingly there’s an August 2022 archive link that also doesn’t have it even tho the one reported by users down below does, so there’s an inconsistency in terms of what’s displayed in that section, the important thing to note here however is there was still an actual change which happened in the last week in that people are no longer able to buy from Turkey / Brazil without being residents from there, so being regionless doesn’t work anymore with those regions, and this all started happening last week.
Service Availability.
a. The Services, Third-Party Apps and Services, or material or products offered through the Services may be unavailable from time to time, may be offered on a limited basis, or may vary depending on your region or device. If you change the location associated with your Microsoft account, you may need to re-acquire the material or applications that were available to you and paid for in your previous region. You agree not to access or use material or Services which are illegal or not licensed for use in the country from which you access or use such material or Services, or to conceal or misrepresent your location or identity in order to access or use such material or Services.
They did this to stop people from wealthy countries doing regional abuse and getting games for much cheaper than they should (eg someone in the USA buying a game from Turkey / Argentina), the problem is these ToS suggest they’ll also affect people living in unsupported regions where the only option you have is to buy from other regions, this needs to become a known issue and we have to do something about it before it’s too late.
Even if you’re a “but im living in the USA idc” you should be concerned because this is one of the rare instances where a company will flat out take away your digital purchases and normalization happens through steps like these going by unnoticed.
We’ve seen several users who state they are experiencing issues seemingly related to this update over at r/XboxSupport, and we think it’s an important discussion to have. The more people that are informed as conversations around these changes inevitably pop up, the less confusion and misinformation.
With that said, discussion and anything related to circumventing these restrictions is prohibited in this community. This includes things like using a VPN - or switching your address to the moon.
It’s ok to talk about your personal situation. It’s not ok to discuss something that could put someone’s entire account at risk.
Thank you!
update = According to the ‘internet wayback machine’, no changes have been made to the TOS regarding this issue. Thanks to u/caubert for doing the research. As to the recent claims of issues regarding the policy, I would suggest waiting for an official update before running with speculation.
I just watched the video by “extas1s”, he tried 15 different digital stores to confirm and he found that this blockage only affects 3 stores…Argentina, Brazil and Turkey.
For every other region/store, it’s still working and fine.
If you change the location associated with your Microsoft account
Pretty sure this is specifically about your account settings. I had to do that once back during the 360 days and my whole account didn’t work for a week until the change took effect.
It’s not about the location of your console or the Xbox Store but your account is separately also tied to a country.
Hopefully it’s not retroactive cause I bought a few 360 games only available on the 360 store in the usa(or anywhere that isn’t Australia)due to all games requiring classification for release (don’t know if that’s still a thing but it was when the 360 was around)
I might be wrong, but what there doing is pretty much what steam has/does isn’t it or no? I don’t play pc but I hear steam is also strict on region stuff and keys things like that
This news caused quite a ruckus here in Costa Rica. Most people who use Xbox here have been buying games and/or Game Pass from Turkey after the Argentina well dried up a few months ago.
Now everyone’s panicking what about what to do since Costa Rica is unsupported and doesn’t have a store. Many are migrating to Colombia, others to Mexico.
A few are seriously considering jumping ship to Playstation but don’t want to pay the local currency equivalent to $70 for any AAA game so they’re torn
I personally have everthing (e-mail, Xbox account and consoles) set to the US region. If MS, prevents me from buying games (I can do without Game Pass), I guess I’ll have to switch to PS after 12 years of being on Xbox.
People living in countries without MS Store region (Serbia, Georgia) say hello and huge “thank you“ to Microsoft. It looks like I cannot even use the US region now because apparently we’re people of 2nd sort and don’t deserve to buy games even if we have money.
This is meant for region switching between supported countries. They arent going to say that you can put yourself in a different location if your actual location is unsupported.
I don’t know what their motivation to block an account of someone who is in an unsupported region would be as they are getting money. I would wait to get the pitchforks until we see this happening
I am in Serbia which is not supported country/region. Because of that I made Turkish account. Our salaries are even lower and we need regional prices as well. If they ban my account/make purchases illegal/ban my access to bought games and GamePass I will need to switch to PC because that is the only platform “supported” in my country (Sony is not supported here as well).
Many of us are currently worried and a lot of discussions are happening on forums. They may as well delete Xbox as a platform if they do this to us. There is already a joke that Xbox will be worth 20€ here after 30.09.2024.
