Dragon Age: Inquisition is my most anticipated game of 2014. My all-time favourite games include many Bioware titles and Dragon Age is no exception.

I have also decided Inquisition to be the final game I will be buying by evading region locks.

For the past few years, I have been buying physical games from Russia and having their CD keys emailed to me. Russian versions are region-locked and have to be activated from a Russian IP address. Valve and EA have stated that they are not okay with it and will ban you if you get caught. I have been rolling the dice, because prices are notably cheaper (¹⁄₃ of Finnish prices) and VPN setup is not hard.

Though I have taken precautions every time I have bought a game from Russia. For example, once I log in from Russia and activate the game, I will log off for at least a day. This is because if I get banned, I can appeal it by saying that I have visited Russia physically. My alibi consists of buying and activating the game on a trip I took to watch an ice-hockey match. Unless the customer support checks the owners of the IP addresses, my account should be fine. Traveling between Finland and Russia during a single day is possible and many do it just for the hockey.

After pre-downloading Dragon Age I noticed that people were playing the game on Twitch. I found out that in Korea you could play the game a week before Europe, so I established Korean connection and joined the fun a week earlier.

If you are a student and buy a lot of games, I think exploiting globalisation is fine. For people who only buy a game or two in a year and have the purchasing power, I think its not. Do not get me wrong, I do understand EA’s and Valve’s stand! It just that when the other choice is pirating, I think paying what you can is humble.

My choice to start paying the full price for games is not because I am afraid of losing my growing game library. It is because I play fewer games and I am able to save money to pay the righteous price when the release comes.