Topic: Region Lock

We know that it is up to the developers to region lock their software.
In that case let's assume that some producers decide not to region lock their games.

How do we know which games are region locked and which not?

I actually thought it was Nintendo that decided the games should be region locked wasn't it?, to help deal with regional ratings/clasifications and piracy or something.

The system itself is region locked.

There's a lot of reasons why region locking is being done. Mainly the different rating systems, financial reasons, piracy, blah blah blah.

So no, it's not up to the developers. And yes, region locking is dumb and an ancient system in a global economy, but so the broadcasting rights for movies/shows being confined to each country instead of there being just a global broadcasting rights system.

They still have importers so I see no point besides piracy to regionally locking games.

No, it isn't. The region-locking is in the software. Although of course whether it is up to the publisher as to whether to region lock their game is another story entirely.
Suffice it to say that if a game were released that did not use the region lock then, assuming the publisher did not say as much, people would have to find out through trial and error.

I'm not sure how it would work, but at a guess it'd be similar to the DS - in that case, games which had a product code starting in NTR (e.g. NTR-XXXX-USA etc.) were not region locked, while those which were region locked (only applicable for the DSi) started with TWL (i.e. TWL-XXXX-USA).

even the DS devkit had the option to region lock. nobody did afaik.

The serial code sounds like the most probable way to figure out. Had never noticed this.