Hello there, I’d like to know whether any of you had a similar “issue.”
So I normally live in country A, and now I’m in country B (for just a few months). I changed my country in Steam from A to B (I thought it was what I should be doing), but my payments are refused because my PayPal and credit card are still in country A (biling address and actual bank account; I don’t have a bank account in country B because it’s not necessary for a few months).
Will I get in trouble for using a VPN to change my country back to A (knowing that relatively, prices are higher in A than in B) and then be able to purchase stuff from the Steam Store?
Thanks a lot.
Edit : I could buy stuff normally in B before changing the country in Steam (kept country A in settings), and I basically fucked up by changing it because it was unnecessary and I didn’t think it would pose a problem with PayPal and an international credit card.
Depends on the country. I travel a lot between Croatia and Bosnia & Herzegovina, but I was able to buy games with PayPal even when I was in B&H and my address on PayPal is in Croatia. And there were no price changes even though each country has it’s own currency, and I buy in Euro (€).
Why would you need to use a VPN to change your country back to A? You should be able to do it in the settings regardless of where you’re actually connecting from. And then you can continue to purchase stuff normally like you did before you changed your settings to B.
In case that doesn’t work, you can try buying Steam wallet cards at your current location in country B and use those for the duration of your stay. If wallet cards aren’t available there, you can ask someone from back home to buy a card and send you the code. All Steam wallet codes will activate anywhere in the world and correctly convert to your wallet currency using Valve’s exchange rates.
The thing is you didn’t change your country in the Steam preferences
Before changing my country from A to B in Steam, I could buy normally as if I was in A. But since changing to B, I can’t purchase anymore, and I simply would like to change back to A using a VPN (and as I said, it’s a bit more expensive in A so I wouldn’t be exploiting anything).
For the first point, actually you can’t change back unless Steam detects an IP address from country A, and even if I could, I found out that I will still need to wait 2 weeks.
For the second point, that is the solution I’m going for; I’m just waiting for an answer from a couple of friends so that I can get wallet codes.
Yea I was aware of the 2 week restriction but I wasn’t sure if it would apply in your case since you hadn’t made a purchase in your new country yet.
I would suggest waiting it out for 2 weeks and then trying to change back to country A without a VPN. I still feel like that should work.
In case it doesn’t, there should be no harm at all in connecting to a VPN just to change back to your old country. Make sure you do not make any purchases while you are connected to the VPN. After you have changed your country you should be able to purchase normally. If you are only in country B for a short duration of time (a few weeks), the safest option is to wait until you get home to change your country.