Pretty much this!

You knew this had to be coming. The only way to properly push regional pricing requires this. When you want to properly gouge each and every region for as many pennies as possible, you can't let people buy cheap codes from one region and sell them in a more perceived prosperous region.

If Steam can't handle the realities of a global market, they shouldn't be operating globally.

Yes, but people acted like I was some conspiracy nut when I said Valve was on this road.

Everything is wrong with this. I'm not sure you fully understand the concept behind regional pricing. This is not about which country can produce the cheaper goods. The difference in prices is not due to the fact that Russian traders can produce a game copy cheaper than other countries do. The only reason these countries have cheaper games is so they're affordable in relation to their GDP per capita (also due to differences in taxes). Why would they be entitled to make a profit from this? People who used to buy from these countries weren't simply looking for the cheapest products in a fair way, they were just exploiting a weak system and evading taxes.

From your links:

The doctrine was first recognized by the Supreme Court of the United States in 1908
The U.S. Copyright Office stated that "[t]he tangible nature of a copy is a defining element of the first-sale doctrine and critical to its rationale."
In the case UsedSoft v Oracle (2012), the European Court of Justice ruled that the sale of a software product, either through a physical support or download, constituted a transfer of ownership in EU law, thus the first sale doctrine applies; the ruling thereby breaks the "licensed, not sold" legal theory, but leaves open numerous questions.

So yeah, it was an area as gray as "manufacturing copies" last century and it was further, ahem, desaturated this century. You're breaking a license agreement, you think the license agreement is illegal and you don't have to follow it, yarr matey.

Bootleggers are fucking hypocrites.

So, to be sure I understood correctly - this means now even people from EU and US can't trade anymore because of price differences, but it would still be possible to gift games from EU or Austria to Germany, if they have the same pricing? And how will it affect keys from Humble bundles or ShinyLoot?

That is nonsense and would pretty much lead to the death of all industry.

E.g. Your company spends years and millions of dollars to develop a new product. On day one of its launch, your competitor buys a copy, tears it down and reverse-engineers it, and within a month is selling the same product for half the price. It can afford to do so because it's not had to spend years and millions of dollars to develop the product in the first place. Your competitor's sales vastly exceed yours - because everyone buys their product at half the price. Your company goes bust.

Given that scenario, why would anyone ever waste money on developing any new product?

The European court just clarified, that the first-sale doctrine also applies to digital distribution, which wasn't a thing in 1908. Beside that the first-sale doctrine is quite simple:

As IP holder once you sold and transferred a legal copy for the first time, your control over THAT copy is completely gone. Just as with any other physical good. Any further restrictions on IP are applied by general copyright law, which doesn't specifiy any region restrictions (such laws would be a violation of WTO regulations). Actually, by buying games as a consumer I do not even have any "license agreements" (you know, what "agree" means?). And this is not changed by made-up "by doing this or that, you agree to this or that" statements written somewhere, because that's not how contract law works.

Either I agree to a contract explictly by submitting a statement of intention to the other party, or there is no agreement at all. And an agreement isn't required for just using a game or reselling it, as long as the copy was acquired legally (we're not talking about counterfeits here.)

On top of that as a consumer I'm protected by EU consumer law, which doesn't even allow me to agree to unfair conditions, usually found in US "EULA" documents. So even if I pretend doing it, these unfair conditions are automatically void with EU jurisdiction.

Just like libraries killed the book industry!

...Oh, wait, no they didn't, your argument is merely a baseless assumption that doesn't hold up when confronted with reality.

As a software developer, I'm completely OK with the first sales doctrine as long as any people buying second hand copies are ok with not receiving support and/or upgrades/patches without having to pay me an additional sum of money.

It's either that, or the most draconian DRM possible to ensure that once one of my products has been re-sold the original buyer won't have access to it anymore.

They're not legally binding here in the states either. They, of course, don't want people to know this, but the fact is they have no legal power.

Of course, this works both ways. You have no control over your sold copies and the owner of these copies can't claim additional services from the IP holder. The European court comes in, once a IP holder removes paid features from the product sold to the first owner or completely prevents the second owner from rightfully using it. This is a different case: Reselling used games while keeping an additional copy is already illegal by general copyright law. No EULA required, no DRM or anything.

Valve knows they can pull crap like this and get away with it because they have a partial monopoly.

It's similar to Windows 8/8.1 with the Metro interface and forced default integration with Microsoft's cloud service in 8.1 (you can disable it after install/upgrade to 8.1, but you have to register for the cloud service even if you have no plans on using it)

Did people hate Windows 8/8.1? Absolutely. It was actually damaging laptop/desktop manufacturers because people wanted Windows 7 and Microsoft refused to budge. Instead, the price of Windows 8/8.1 was discounted.

Here's the problem. For laptop/desktop OS choices, it's mostly Windows, Mac, or Linux. If you move away from Windows, you can pay extra for a Mac, or you can get Linux and put up with its myriad technical issues, inconsistencies, and lack of support.

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What Valve is doing is no different in practice. They know they have a partial monopoly on PC games on the scale that Microsoft has a partial monopoly on laptop/desktop OS. Plus, the Steam Winter Sale is currently on right now, so they know that the vast majority of people will have no willpower to punish them with a boycott (and miss out on the sales)
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Is it Valve's fault they have a partial monopoly? No. They only have partial monopoly power because so many people supported them.
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I know it's generally considered bad form to advertise your own topics in other peoples' topics on forums, but I thought this one that I made yesterday is so relevant to the discussion.
Should video gamers unionize against publishers and developers who damage the video game industry with practices that are abusive against the consumer?

I don't know about others, but myself, i never thought that Valve couldn't get any lower. Valve has the potential to reach minus infinite, the lowliest of the low. Just give the guys some time... They won't disappoint. Are going to deliver for sure.

If this trend continues, in 1-2 years, EA Origin might actually be better than Steam.