Updated 21/01/2021: Valve responded to the European Commission’s demands, saying they did not agree with the Commission’s findings and the fine they had issued. Read their full statement below. Original story from 20/01/2021.
Valve and a handful of game publishers have found themselves in hot water with the European Commission for the geo-blocking of Steam keys in certain regions of Europe. The owners of Steam, together with Bandai Namco, Capcom, Focus Home, Koch Media and ZeniMax (Bethesda’s parent company), were jointly fined € 7.8 million (approximately £ 6.9 million) for ‘infringement of the EU antitrust rules’.
“Valve and its publishers have restricted the cross-border sales of certain computer video games based on the geographical location of users within the European Economic Area (‘EEA’), and applied the so-called ‘geo-blocking’ practices,” the European Commission said.
An investigation into Valve and the five publishers found that they had agreements between 2010 and 2015 to block certain steam keys so that they could not be activated outside the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. not.
Geo-blocking is usually done so that games can be sold cheaper in low-income countries. However, people in higher-income countries have often found ways to circumvent local prices in the past. It is clear that publishers are not a fan of this, because it means that the people fetch the lower prices.
Valve did not co-operate with the investigation and was fined € 1,624,000 (approximately £ 1.4 million). The publishers did cooperate and their fines were slightly reduced. Nevertheless, SnowRunner and Greedfall publisher Focus Home manage to collect a fine of € 2,888,000 (approximately £ 2.6 million).
An outline of the fines.
“Today’s sanctions against the ‘geo-blocking’ practices of Valve and five PC video game publishers serve as a reminder that EU competition law prohibits cross-border contracts,” the executive vice president said. of the Commission, Margrethe Vestage, said.
“Such practices deprive European consumers of the benefits of the EU’s digital market and the opportunity to search for the most suitable offer in the EU.”
This is naughty because the European Union’s digital internal market is designed so that everyone living in the EU can buy and use things in all other EU countries.
Nor can it be the end of it, as the Commission says: “any person or company affected by anti-competitive conduct as described in this case may bring the matter before the courts of the Member States and seek damages.”
Update: Last night, Valve issued a statement to Eurogamer claiming that they did cooperate in the investigation and did not agree with the fine they received:
During the seven-year investigation, Valve cooperated extensively with the European Commission (“EC”) and provided evidence and information as requested. However, Valve did not want to admit that it violated the law, as demanded by the EC. Valve does not agree with the EC findings and the fine levied against Valve.
‘EC charges are not related to the sale of computer games on Steam – Valve’s computer game service. Instead, the EC claims that Valve made geo-blocking possible by providing steam activation keys and – at the request of the publishers – locking the keys in certain areas (“regional locks”) within the EEA. Such keys allow a customer to activate and play a game on Steam if the user purchased it from a third-party seller. Valve offers Steam Activation Keys for free and receives no share of the purchase price when a game is sold by third-party retailers (such as a retailer or other online store).
‘The regional locks only apply to a small number of game titles. About 3% of all games using Steam at the time (and none of Valve’s own games) were subject to the disputed regional locks in the EEA at the time. Valve is of the opinion that the EC’s liability to a platform provider in these circumstances is not supported by the applicable legislation. Due to EC concerns, Valve nevertheless eliminated regional locks within the EEA in 2015, unless the regional locks were necessary for local legal requirements (such as German content laws) or geographical restrictions on where the Steam partner was licensed to distribute. a game. Eliminating regional locks can also lead to publishers raising prices in less affluent regions to avoid price arbitrage. There is no cost involved in sending activation keys from one country to another, and the activation key is all that a user needs to activate and play a computer game. ”