Let’s have a big hand for Naughty Dog! Upon hearing all of us Europeans bitching and whining at SCEA’s PlayStation Store version of Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune for not working on our PS3s, they did not sit idly by while we suffered, oh no. First we were assured by line producer Sam Thompson that the move wasn’t deliberate – Sony hadn’t started region-locking its demos – and that it was just a minor bug to be ironed out. Then Co-President Christophe Balestra immediately dropped everything and went to solve the problem.

“We absolutely did not plan the demo to be region locked. As soon as we figured out the problem existed, Sam Thompson called me and I jumped into my car, drove to the office and fixed it right away,” writes Balestra on the PlayStation Blog.

How nice is that? Naughty Dog didn’t actually have to do anything, no matter how loudly we grumbled. This demo was only intended for the North American store – Europe is getting its own official one later this month. The lesson learned is that a huge number of people from outside North America are creating fake PSN accounts for the sole purpose of acquiring SCEA exclusives and early releases.

That puts Sony into an interesting position – over the course of the Uncharted demo outcry, there’s been close to an official acceptance of the use of fake PSN accounts. That’s not necessarily a problem; it certainly doesn’t hurt anyone, and if the demo isn’t in your native language, you already know that isn’t the best example of the final product so that shouldn't affect your buying decision either.

However, there are different PlayStation Store regions for a reason (presumably), and although there’s currently little reason to strictly enforce regional restrictions or check the veracity of people’s account details (via IP addresses, for example), I wonder how long this honeymoon period is going to last. Surely SCEE is a bit concerned about having its release schedule undermined by SCEA PSN releases? More importantly, if Sony should decide to expand the PlayStation Store, as it has often hinted at, into a means of selling digital music and movie downloads, then that’s going to run into a load of licensing issues if other regions have access. Yes, you need a credit card from the country if you want to actually buy anything, but Microsoft has already had to improve its region restrictions on Xbox Live when it started distributing free shows.

If that’s the case, then a crackdown will come sooner or later, but given the obvious popularity and appeal of everyone having access to demos and trailers at the same time as other regions, we still want to know why we can’t just have a special international section on the ordinary PlayStation Store. The prospect of having to navigate a few menus in a foreign language doesn’t make an early glimpse of a game any less appealing.

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Uncharted Demo lands in North American PlayStation Store, but won’t work in other regions – is Sony region-locking demos now?
Naughty Dog eager to bring Jak and Daxter back on PS3 – do we really need more endless sequels?

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