* Regarding OP's example, I wonder if the problem is unclear documentation. The documentation for the geofencing might not have been clear exactly who they were

* Regarding OP's example, I wonder if the problem is unclear documentation. The documentation for the geofencing might not have been clear exactly who they were restricting the software to: whether it was to people within the US or people living in the US. Without physically traveling to another country and signing up with a foreign account with a foreign address with a foreign phone account, the devs might never realize that there's an issue accessing the system. * It's sometimes the case that geofencing is applied for major contractual or legal reasons that cannot be bypassed. > A service might be restricted to X state because there are stupid laws that govern it. For instance, many sports betting sites are really careful about geographical checks because they don't want to run afoul of complicated state laws so they check if you're physically in X area for each action. > A video service might be restricted to Y country because there's no way to get the rights to play some video content in Y country, so doing that is necessary to avoid running afoul of Hollywood. * A lot of App review spam or fraudulent credit card checks come from overseas, so there might be an arguably semi-valid reason to restrict people from using a service that is useless unless you're physically there.