Valve and five PC video game publishers have been fined € 7.8 million (approximately $ 9.5 million) for restricting cross-border gaming sales in the European Economic Area. The Commission said the companies had blocked about 100 computer video games, preventing them from being activated and played outside certain EU countries. It has violated EU rules for the digital single market, which prohibit such barriers.
According to the European Commission, the geo-blocking was to prevent games from being activated outside the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Geo-blocking prevents gamers living in EU countries with higher average incomes from saving money to buy it in EU countries where they are cheaper and then activating it on Steam. Activation keys were geo-blocked between 2010 and 2015, the European Commission said.
“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 companies from contractually restricting cross-border sales,” the head of the European Commission competition policy said. “Such practices deprive European consumers of the benefits of the EU digital market and the opportunity to seek the most suitable offer in the EU.”
In all, five publishers were fined. Focus Home was fined almost € 2.9 million (about $ 3.5 million), ZeniMax more than € 1.6 million (about $ 2 million), Koch Media almost € 1 million (about $ 1.2 million) , Capcom € 396,000 (about $ 480,000), and Bandai Namco € 340,000 (about $ 410,000). Because each of these companies cooperated in the investigation, their fines were reduced by between 10 and 15 percent. However, Valve chose not to cooperate and was fined more than € 1.6 million (approximately $ 1.9 million).
The European Commission opened its formal investigation into the practice of geo-blocking in 2017 and formally asked Valve to discontinue the practice in 2019. Valve has previously argued that only a small number of games use region-locked activation keys, arguing that they should not be liable for regional locks requested by publishers. It is said to have ended the practice in 2015, with limited exceptions.