While I don't exactly loathe the censorship called "low violence version" for some games steam sells (e.g. Fallout 3)
I do detest being forced to play games in a language different than the original one, which is usually English – especially since I often experience terrible mistranslations and not-so-great German speakers.
Portal, like most Valve games, I think, allows to set the language via properties -> language.
However, I recently bought Bioshock misreading the "only" in that shop message as "the German version is censored" and not as "this version is German only" since I don't have any language option. I already set Steam itself to English on installation, but to no avail.
Is it possible to play games in a language not made available via Steam?
Obviously I'm asking for legal ways and don't want to accidentally get a ban instead of a better speech…
Best Answer
The problem of region restriction and low violence content has already been discussed here. Basically those restrictions are applied based on who purchases the game, not who plays it. You need somebody in a non restricted area to gift that game to you. Alternatively, you could spend your holidays in one such country and purchase the game from there with a local payment method (apparently you can buy prepaid cards from gas stations, or at least that's what Redditors say to people who have no credit card; YMMV).