Valve and five game publishers fined millions for geoblocking Steam games in EU

Valve and five PC video game publishers have been fined a total of 7.8 million euros (approximately $ 9.5 million) by the European Commission for restricting cross-border game sales in the Economic Area European. The Commission said companies geo-blocked around 100 PC video games, preventing them from being activated and played outside certain EU countries. This violated the EU’s Digital Single Market rules which prohibit such kind of barriers.

The European Commission said the geoblock was aimed at preventing the activation of games outside of Czechia, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Geoblocking prevents players living in EU countries with higher average incomes from being able to save money by buying them in EU states where they are cheaper and then activating them 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 are a reminder that under EU competition law, companies are prohibited from contractually restricting cross-border sales ”, said the head of competition policy at the European Commission. “Such practices deprive European consumers of the benefits of the EU’s digital single market and the ability to shop around for the most suitable offer in the EU.”

Five publishers were fined in total. Focus Home was fined nearly 2.9 million euros (approx. $ 3.5 million), ZeniMax over 1.6 million euros (approx. $ 2 million), Koch Media nearly € 1 million (approximately $ 1.2 million), Capcom € 396,000 (approximately $ 480,000) and Bandai Namco € 340,000 (approximately $ 410,000). As each of these companies cooperated in the investigation, their fines were reduced from 10 to 15 per cent. Valve, however, chose not to cooperate and was fined more than 1.6 million euros (approximately $ 1.9 million).

The European Commission opened its formal investigation into the geoblocking practice in 2017 and formally asked Valve to stop the practice in 2019. Valve has previously argued that only a small number of games use activation keys locked by region, and argued he should not be responsible for region locks requested by editors. He said he ended the practice in 2015, with a few exceptions.