Redeeming is restricted if bought from another country

Your friend will have to refund the code thru his MS account unless it's a prepaid code from a store which case he will have to redeem it himself

Gifting via box has always been region locked they tell you this before you buy the code

Hello, I have a problem.. My cousin bought me a xbox key... More precise a xbox game pass subscription.. I tried to redeem it but it seems that if the subscription has been bought from a another country I can t redeem it... My question is.. Just why... Why did Microsoft did this.. Now he paid that money.. He threw them out the window.. Just because Microsoft did thid stupid thing... Why.. You do this just to make people give up on xbox?.. Because it's working... You re already surpassed my Playstation.. If you keep it up like this xbox will be history.. You make your customers waste money... Please Microsoft.. Do something.. Repair this useless,, rules,, that you made out of boreness.

Region restrictions on codes have pretty much ALWAYS been a thing. Even on PSN region codes are restricted so you would actually have the exact same problem on PSN if this happened. Playstation isnt immune from it either.

Because different pricing exists in different countries as well as different permission levels, game lineups, not to mention the fact that different copyright holders on games in different regions. For example Rockstar games are published by Capcom in Japan, and so Capcom is the one who needs to be paid. In addition international currency exchange fees are not factored in. If you wish to purchase things for people not in your country, I suggest you purchase them a Xbox gift card from their regional Amazon or other authorized retailer

This is the reality of international media. Lord of the Rings is owned by 3-4 companies in Europe alone, all of whom paid up front for that privilege to own, and profit from the movie in their territory.

Hello Dorian,

Any chance that this is a German copy of the game? Because from personal experience I know that some codes are restricted to countries.

If this is the case, you could try to redeem the codes online, but as a work around since you're now in the UK you can use a VPN connection to simulate you are in Germany and then login to xbox.com as regular and redeem the code. This might sound a bit strange
maybe, but this has solved the issue for me once when I bought an xbox live card on online that was restricted to the country it came from.

Hope this helps.

A family from one country moved to live from one country to another. bought Gold and he doesn’t accept a new country