The European Commission has issued a whopping €7.8 million fine to Valve and five other video game companies for breaching antitrust rules.
The Commission issued the fines for breaching what is described as “geo-blocking” practices, in accordance with European law.
The following explanation of the violations is given on the European Commission’s official site:
“Valve and the publishers restricted cross-border sales of certain PC video games on the basis of the geographical location of users within the European Economic Area (‘EEA’), entering into, the so-called ‘geo-blocking’ practices. The fines for the publishers, totalling over €6 million, were reduced due to the companies’ cooperation with the Commission. Valve chose not to cooperate with the Commission and was fined over €1.6 million.”
Bandai Namco, Capcom, Focus Home, Koch Media and ZeniMax are the other publishers in question. They have all managed to get reduced fines due to their co-operation.
It sounds like Valve, however, decided to be less than helpful. This lead to the company receiving a fine of over €1.6 million alone (Gabe’s going to have to get his wallet out).
So, what exactly is “geo-blocking”? How’d these companies end up in such hot European water? Well, in this instance, each publisher requested that their games use geographical Steam keys, which can only be activated in certain regions.
Region locking is nothing new, with the practice stretching back as far as the 16-bit era. The issue here though is the fact keys were set up to only work in specific sectors of the EU – something that contradicts the EU’s single market. This is also elaborated upon by the European Commission:
“The geo-blocking practices concerned around 100 PC video games of different genres, including sports, simulation and action games. They prevented consumers from activating and playing PC video games sold by the publishers’ distributors either on physical media, such as DVDs, or through downloads. These business practices therefore denied European consumers the benefits of the EU’s Digital Single Market to shop around between Member States to find the most suitable offer.”
In response to the allegations, Valve issued a lengthy statement. The company explained its reasons for geo-blocking, as well as why they think they didn’t breach EU law (Via PCGamesN):
“Valve believes that the EC’s extension of liability to a platform provider in these circumstances is not supported by applicable law. Nonetheless, because of the EC’s concerns, Valve actually turned off region locks within the EEA starting in 2015, unless those region locks were necessary for local legal requirements (such as German content laws) or geographic limits on where the Steam partner is licensed to distribute a game.”
Ultimately, it seems like the other publishers involved have admitted they’re at fault, something which granted them a 15% reduction to their fines.
What’s your opinion on the European Commission’s hefty fine for Valve and others?
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