Bedlam has broken out in Germany for Steam users, and after much upset, it has become clear why.
Germany recently changed its rules on age restriction to keep younger Steam users safe from age-inappropriate content. Still, it has also meant that any unreleased game on users’ wishlists that hasn’t received an age rating no longer appears in wishlists, which is pretty much all games for most people.
Read on to discover more about this issue and whether a VPN can help you get over this problem.
What is Steam?
Steam is a platform for selling video games. Imagine an online store like Amazon, but you download instead of purchasing physical copies of games, and you’ll have a good idea of what it’s all about.
Steam is the most popular gaming platform and has existed since 2003. Users enjoy its user-friendly practices, such as being able to return any game within 2 weeks and 2 hours of play.
What are Steam wishlists?
Steam wishlists list games you are interested in and want to buy. You may not be able to buy them yet because they are currently unreleased, or you may be waiting to purchase them in one of Steam’s famous sales.
Wishlists are helpful for game developers, the teams that make games, because they help Steam decide how high on the list to put new games when released. If an unreleased game is on more people’s wishlists, it gets higher up the list of newly released games, and more people see it, making it more likely to sell more copies.
For these reasons, wishlists are essential to gamers and game development.
Why is Germany being affected by age restriction rule changes?
Many German Steam users have noticed problems with their wishlists in recent weeks. Some users have found that items on their Steam wishlists are not showing up correctly or are disappearing altogether.
This issue started around October 15, 2024, when Steam updated its platform. The problem worsened around October 20, 2024, when the Steam store began showing incorrect prices or content for German users, making it difficult to find and purchase the games they wanted.
The issue is mainly caused by bugs from updates or changes made by Steam to their system, affecting the German Steam store’s wishlist feature.
Can a VPN help solve the wishlist problem for German Steam users?
At first glance, it might seem like a VPN (Virtual Private Network) such as UrbanVPN might help solve this problem by letting users pretend they are in a different country. With a VPN, you can change your IP address to make it look like you are accessing Steam from where the wishlist works appropriately.
When using a VPN on Steam, if you connect to a server in the United States, you should be able to access the Steam store as if you were in the U.S., even in the UK. This should help you view and manage your wishlist as usual, but it is not a permanent fix.
However, reality is different from the theory of how VPNs usually work. A VPN does not help because Steam knows where users initially registered their accounts and locks this information into them.
IP address makes no difference to the country registered for each Steam user, so a VPN does not help with this problem, but it can still help you maintain security while gaming online.
Other Steam users affected by the German age restriction rule change
Other countries have also been affected by similar problems. Users in Austria and Switzerland have reported issues with Steam wishlists, starting around the same time as Germany’s problems.
But why? The issue is believed to be connected to specific updates made for these regions, and users from these countries have found it harder to manage their wishlists or see accurate game pricing. Steam has not yet fixed the issue for all affected countries, and it may take some time before everything works correctly again.
Conclusion
Let’s sum up all this chaos into something more structured. Steam’s history of consumer-friendly practices should give us hope that things will return to normal for Germany and the rest of the world.
Every developer must now verify their age rating with Steam, which is a process that is well underway, as they don’t want a delay in people buying their games. Once this process is complete it should be business as usual for Steam wishlists.
For now, keep gaming and wishlisting new titles. And don’t forget to cross your fingers that the issue doesn’t affect your country next.
