“In order to conform to changes in Belgian law, purchases of gems, the Ultimate Edition, and the Ultimate Edition upgrade have been disabled for residents of Belgium. We are continuing to investigate more flexible solutions. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause our players.”
It remains unclear why the company waited so long to alert Belgian players that they’d be affected by the changes. MMO players will recall that Belgium is one of the countries cracking down on lockboxes, threatening multiple AAA game studios with legal action if they do not comply with their gambling laws, including Valve and Blizzard, which made changes to their games to make lockboxes unbuyable in the affected regions. ArenaNet was not among the list of companies threatened.
Until those “more flexible solutions” arrive, Belgian players will want to take a look at the original Reddit threads for workarounds of their own, assuming they aren’t among the lucky folks claiming they are able to redeem their codes once again.
