3 ms·
> even though it's obvious why they do it It's still not that obvious to me. The publishers should be in the business of maximizing their profits by selling as
by DVassallo 14y ago
> even though it's obvious why they do it
It's still not that obvious to me. The publishers should be in the business of maximizing their profits by selling as many copies as they can; I want to give them my money for a copy; I'm also ready to pay for the international bandwidth to have the digital bits distributed to my location (Ireland);... and yet they force the distributors to kick me out of the shop.
What are the publishers gaining by refusing international sales at a price which they are in control of setting?
It becomes even more odd that I'm normally able to buy the CD versions without any restrictions... The thing is, I wouldn't know where to stick these CD nowadays.
- Paul_S 14y agoThey sign a deal with the owner of the rights to the product which might be exclusive to a region. This is a leftover from the the days of yore. The owner for example might want to sell direct in his country, but is happy to let some other distributor sell things in another country but without cannibalising his sales so they put a restriction on where he can sell the item. All of which makes no sense on the Internet. But we've only had the Internet for what? Two decades? I guess it'll take a few more for them to accept it. Or maybe they will succeed and recreate the borders from the real world on the Internet.
- tomflack 14y agoThat doesn't make sense when the product isn't offered at all outside of a certain region. No local distributor makes money by not selling something.