Valve was fined €1.6 million ($1.7 million) for obstructing the sale of certain PC video games outside Europe. However, the company pleaded not guilty.
Wait, outside Europe?
Some countries make it illegal to buy certain video games. If Valve can’t geoblock sale of them outside Europe, how are they supposed to conform with both sets of laws?
I remember that the EU didn’t want country-specific pricing inside the EU, and had some case over that. That I get, because I can see the EU having an interest in not wanting it creating problems for mobility around the EU. But I hadn’t heard about the EU going after vendors for not selling things outside Europe.
Okay this article is shittily worded and the Bloomberg article it links to is paywalled so I found this which goes into much greater detail.
TLDR: Valve and five other publisher’s were blocking activation of keys sold to people/distributors from distributors/vendors who purchased them from cheaper regions.
Ah yes, that thing my brother likes to do where he VPNs into another country and then buys them at the greatly reduced local prices.
Guess they were attempting to crack down on purchase frauds and legitimate buyers got burned too?
It was punishing the consumer rather than the distributors abusing the regional pricing.
Yes, but it was the part they have control over. The alternative is not having regional pricing allowing lower income countries to buy games at all.
1.6 million € for valve is like making me pay 0.01€ for something
I don’t understand. Can you convert these to Freedom Units, please?
Roughly 1/3 monetary ounces
is that 1/3 monetary ounces or 1/3 fluid monetary ounces?
Is this going to impact their ability to offer region-specific pricing?
Ya I am not following what was the actual issue here.
Suppose you are an European citizen and you live in Egypt. Valve used to block you from purchasing a game available in Europe. Despite the fact that you are European and your store settings were set to Europe. That’s geogblocking. Now valve is not allowed to do that according to EU law. They still deny access and discriminate based on geography with plenty of excuses. But they can’t use the IP geolocation anymore. Mind you, they still claimed not guilty despite the fact they were caught red handed and dragged the whole thing up to appeals. Despite the fact they still pretty much still do it for certain games from time to time.
Suppose you are an European citizen and you live in Egypt.
I don’t think that is correct. The investigation began in 2015 by Margrethe Vestager. The focus is within the EU. Valve cannot prevent geo-blocking between EU countries. They’re free to use IP geo-blocking, but users within the EU must be given the ability to switch to different EU stores. I.e. a Dane must be allowed to log into the Hungary store and purchase games at the local price. This has implications for keys as well, as a Dane must not be prevented from redeeming a Hungarian key, for example.
You’re correct, I expanded with real details and a source in another comment.
I don’t get their angle here tho… Wouldn’t EG copy be cheaper?
I used Egypt just as an example, the countries actually involved are Latvia and other EU countries. This is a really old case, it used to be the case that the steam store wouldn’t even open if your were not from the US. There’s a complex web of financial trade agreements and red tape behind making a global digital store with regional pricing available. There’s also a lot of shenanigans that go on to avoid abuse of regional pricing. Steam limits changing your store region to once every 6 months, for example. Which makes it impossible to exploit the regional pricing model. This case is precisely because Steam and the 5 stooges (Bandai Namco, Capcom, Focus Home, Koch Media and ZeniMax) didn’t want to let EU citizens from one country buy a cheaper version of the same game in another EU country. I think the most egregious thing is that Valve claimed not guilty, not by saying they didn’t do it, but that they did it and they were in their right to do so. The EU said, it’s not abusing the store, EU citizens are in their right to use whatever store from any other EU country under the single digital market law.
Unlike the EU, the rest of the world is still geoblocked, and discriminated by Steam. For instance, I can’t buy Elden Ring, I can’t even see their store webpage at all. Regional pricing is a good thing to make games affordable for different markets with different purchase and income levels (fuck Epic store), but it should be based on currency and payment method, not geographical location. This along with Nintendo’s regional blocking and the bullshit that Hollywood does wolrdwide are just anti-consumer manipulation.
Cheaper, or banned entirely by the Egyptian government. Valve is sort of in a tough spot here. The EU will fine them, but so will every authoritarian regime that bans anyone in the country from downloading banned items.
Within the EU, kind of. This doesn’t prevent Steam from offering different prices by region, but they must allow users to log into different regions to make purchases at the localised prices. In practise, like all other products and services in the EU, prices will harmonise. In other words, they’ll rise in some countries, and drop in others. There are a litany of benefits for the EU single market, so this law will not change. Valve must adapt.
I hope thats a per day thing…
AFAIK they already stopped doing this years ago. It’s just the case ending only now.
I guess this is also why regional prices went up.
Ah.
