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Sorry, I have to get this out of my system before I go and strangle someone somewhere in, I suppose, France. That's where Ubisoft, the European distributor of TES games, is based, right?

Now it appears Ubisoft has divided the world as they know it into regions as best as they could do it, and named one re-distributing company for every region.

All right, it's a monopoly but it couldn't be that bad, could it? Oh, just read on!

I live in Estonia. A former Soviet republic/occupied territory, a Member State of the European Union since 2004, cleared to become a Schengen state by New Year. We speak our own language similar to Finnish and are not afraid of English either. At least anyone interested in computer games knows enough English to manage all right in their favorite games -- whether they speak Estonian, Russian (major minority language) or anything else. Until now, we've mostly gotten the UK versions of software unless it's been translated into Estonian.

Ubisoft, in their great wisdom, has decreed Estonia -- along with Latvia and Lithuania, other former Soviet occupied-territory republics turned into successful EU Members -- a part of the Russian region. We'll have to wait until the Moscow Monopoly translates Oblivion GOTY into Russian, and then we're going to have an excellent language choice between Russian and Russian w/Russian subtitles. Praise the Lord! Praise the Great Party Leader! Now, I do speak Russian but, alas, my computer does not. Installing a Cyrillic-fonts game on a Latin-codepages computer is an exciting exercise if you're a true masochist. I've been there -- several times -- but I haven't managed to make any of the games work yet.

Well, let's suppose I could coax and patch and bypass the All-Russian GOTY into some semblance of playability. Um, Oblivion might even be fun in Russian! But what if I download any of the English mods? I foresee dark screens filled with gibberish and a dark future involving an Oblivion DVD and a sledgehammer with the Windows re-installer running in the background.

Yes, I could arrange a trip to UK and buy my Oblivion GOTY. I'm quite certain even a trip to nearby Finland or Sweden might help. (The Amazon UK is still convinced we're the Evil Soviets out to steal their brilliant engineering secrets, so no software deliveries to Estonia, Member State of whatever.) I could, uhm, do the unmentionable. However, I honestly WANT to give fair money to the people who made these wonderful games. And I can't understand why I'd have to travel anywhere except to the nearest supermarket to pick up a playable copy of a mass-market game. And it's not just about Oblivion -- it's about any game distributed by Ubisoft at the moment or in the future.

I'm saving my four-letter-words (plus my Russian three-letter-words) for the time my case fails in the European Court of Human Rights. And I am too suing Ubisoft over this, and -- as a former translator of EU laws and regulations -- I'm suing them good and then some, and -- as a professional writer -- I'm suing them screaming to get public attention all the way, and -- as I have some local tech, business, or gaming journalist friends -- we're suing them big time, hopefully getting support from other affected EU Member States.

And after that we're suing Amazon UK and Amazon DE. Because the French Amazon site somehow seems to manage selling software to us suspicious post-Soviets. That is, if we have a credit card and understand enough French (as a solution to buying games, it's about as comfortable and practical as getting your dental exam done through your rectum).

And I'm removing my sig right now, because this time I'm serious. Really, REALLY serious.

Thank you for listening. If you ever meet someone from Ubisoft, please tell them they could be described by a Russian three-letter word. I wish them acne and warts, several STDs, permanent hailstorms with scary lightning, belated onslaughts of Y2K bugs, armies of toads in their living room, and their in-laws moving in with them. I almost wish them to install a Russian-only game on their computers!

If you can't purchase it where you are located, why not try E-Bay or some online store where they do sell the GoY Edition of Oblivion. But I understand your rant and hope that all those terrible omens you placed on them come to pass.

or get someone from the states to mail it to you...

Either way, there are many ways to still get Oblivion, even if your town doesn't sell it.

Yes, there are many ways to get Oblivion but why should I go to all the trouble, or ask some friend living abroad to go to all the trouble, just to get a playable game not likely to mess up my computer?

What if I were a 14-yr-old with my brand new PS3, no working knowledge of Russian, and no Internet connection?

Few Estonian teenagers actually lack a chance to connect to the 'net (WTF, we Estonians can vote for our Parliament by putting our ID cards in the slot of a cheap USB reader and pointing our browsers to the right site, the same we would do for our everyday banking transactions!) but lots of them lack any appreciation for the Russian language. They might, however, hsave no friends in any sensible country, resulting in not knowing and thus not playing any Ubisoft-distributed games or, if they're on the PC and generally on the smart side, not paying for their games. And both of these possibilities are a shame.

There's also a tidbit I picked up while translating EU law: any goods and services should be freely traded between Member States. Everything obstructing such trade is in direct violation of the sacrosanct EU Agreement. And the first purpose of EU is making competition easier for EU-based businesses -- like the company who used to sell UK versions of games here, we're trying to get them to sue Ubisoft, too -- and harder on every entity outside the European Economic Community, meaning, among others, any business based in Moscow.

And well, there's the fact that Ubisoft just reinvented the Soviet Union. Now we're not going to join it again without a struggle. And we're never going to like it even if we lose. May their backsides burn with boils!

Ganna, it sounds like you need to talk to whoever is in charge of commerce for your country. It's a civics problem before it's a software distribution problem.

If you were a 14 year old with a brand new PS3, no working knowledge of Russian, and no Internet connection, your rant would be a lot shorter!

Best of luck.

Why not try www.cdon.com. They ship to all EU countries, and the shipping cost is never more than 3.95 euros.