The European Commission asks Valve to stop geo-blocking games within the EU

The European Commission (EC) has been interested in how PC video games are bought and sold in the EU Member States, and it does not like what it has seen. Publishing today an official Valve Statement of Grievance, of which the Steam online portal is the world's largest PC game store, and five game publishers – Bandai Namco, Capcom, Focus Home, Koch Media and ZeniMax – the Commission takes the lead. believe that they have all committed antitrust violations by imposing geographical restrictions on the games they sell.

Valve and the five publishers are accused of geolocation of Steam activation keys for games sold primarily in Eastern Europe (Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia and, in some cases, Romania, according to the EC), against the EU's main objective of creating a digital single market. This geoblocking has the effect of preventing nationals of richer countries, such as the United Kingdom or Germany, from buying games in EU countries offering cheaper prices and then replicating them in their country of origin.

The purpose of the practice in question is logical, and it's something that Spotify, for example, has also done in the past: you charge less for a product in a country where the average consumer's income is lower and you prevent people from richer countries exploiting this with digital goods and subscriptions by requiring, for example, a local credit card for payment.

The new EU rules implemented in December 2018 specifically prohibit what the EC calls unjustified geoblocking, and the current expression of dissatisfaction underscores this position. The conflict here is between companies trying to adapt their country-by-country sales strategy and the EU's efforts to create a market that, like the US, maintains a single base price in all states. .

Today's Statement of Objections marks the beginning of the EC investigations. It will now be up to Valve and the other game publishers to respond, either by changing their practices to bring them into line with EU regulations or, more likely, by presenting their counterarguments. If things go wrong, failure to comply with the EC decision can result in fines of up to 10% of a company's overall annual income.