Do you think it's safe to buy a Thailand copy of Half-life 2

[Skoorb]

I am too cheap to pay full retail for HL2. My limit is about $40 incl shipping. I see a bunch of people selling thailand versions. Needless to say I will only deal with somebody within the US, but my question is are there any problems with these? I presume that they are fully legit games, with a proper cd key, printed by a licensed distributor for valve, etc., but intended for Thailand sale. Is there a chance that Valve will not allow such games' keys to work in the future on their servers or anything?

[Capmaster]

Be careful. A lot of illegal software is being circulated in Thailand, Singapore, etc. About the only reason I can think of that a "Thailand" version would be any cheaper than a version sold anywhere else is because it was illegally copied.

You might end up with one of those that won't work properly, and then good luck getting your money back

[VCDHunter]

The cheapest I've seen so far is £23.99 on CD Wow. If you're that hard up wait for it to come out on Platinum (Cheap). I personally never buy software from abroad.

[Skoorb]

Thx! I just noticed that amazon has the collector's edition for $49.99 with free shipping. Not bad

[shoozleboy]

In the industry that I work in - consumer electronics distribution and logistics - we run across a large number of phony dealers and retailers... by far, the majority of them are in Singapore, Hong Kong, China, Phillipines, and Thailand....

We actually have an entire division of our company that deals with nothing but the legal/security aspect of our industry and they usually say one thing about being a US citizen and purchasing mail order or internet deals from these places - "RUN!"

Seriously, they deal with crooks on a daily basis that operate from those countries - I'm not saying that everyone from those countries are crooks, there are probably just as many crooks in the US, but being that a lot of the electronics and software items that are manufactured today are from that area of the world, it is easier for them to counterfeit items and sell them on the "grey market".

Best advice when buying from there over the internet - buyer beware.