DVD/ BluRay Regions exist for a reason. How do some players get away with being "region free"? It must be legal cus i just bought one?

A lot of things that aren't legal are nevertheless readily available.

Be careful throwing around the term "legal". If I buy a UK box set from ebay for a UK release that is not yet sold in the US, I am violating the 'desire' and 'intent' of the company that owns the copyright. This does not make it illegal.

BluRay players are made with region-codes that are variable. This way the same hardware can be sold world-wide, but they can program different region codes for different countries.

To sell a BluRay player the manufacturer must purchase a license from Sony for the hardware to decode the copy protection. Somewhere buried in that contract requires the company to support the Region codes.

The 'dodge' is that the hardware manufacturer leaks how to change the region code in the hardware to "0" which will play all disks.

Did you have to do any special setup to make the player region free? You/someone can make this change because you/someone do not have a contract with Sony.

See how it works?

From my understanding, region codes are largely a marketing & piracy strategy. While these commercial standards are big deals for media producers it is not law. The licensing arrangements the manufacturers face in making region free units,are opaque to me, but the resulting players have a transparent advantage to consumers, and usually come at a premium dollar.