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Earlier today, the European Commission issued a statement claiming that Valve and five other publishers may have collaborated to violate EU rules on international competition. Companies are accused of blocking the activation of Steam Keys purchased from other countries, even if the buying and activating locations are both members of the EU.
The companies named include Bandai Namco, Capcom, Focus Home (and their interactive branch), Koch Media (including Deep Silver) and ZeniMax (Bethesda). Until now, only Valve has responded (complete statement here on SteamDB), and their argument seems to be summarized as follows: "Yes, we did, no, this law does not apply to us and it was not serious anyway. & # 39 ;.
It should be noted that the statement of objections is only the preliminary conclusions of the European Commission and that there is still no criminal sanction. In the event of an antitrust violation, the commission is able to compel the culprits to pay a fine of up to 10% of their annual turnover. Since Valve is one of the named parties, it could be a very large number of people. So I'm not surprised to see them try to clear the charges immediately. It's quite unusual to see how they chose to do it. Valve's statement takes a long time to get to the bottom of things, but eventually they say:
"Region locks only applied to a small number of game titles." Only about 3% of all games using Steam (and none of the Valve-specific games) at the time were subject to lockdowns of disputed regions in the EEA. Valve believes that extending the EC's liability to a platform provider in these circumstances is not supported by applicable law. "
I am not quite sure what they think they are discussing here. 3% of all games on Steam are not a small number, considering the number of games sold in the store. The fact that so many people have violated European Union law is rather significant, at least in my opinion. I admit that I am not a lawyer, but saying that only three things you have committed can be a crime is not the best argument in your favor. Following admission with the belief that it does not apply anyway is even stranger.
Nevertheless, Valve says to recognize and consider having solved the problem in 2015, by "disabling region locks in the EEA from 2015", unless these region locks are needed for local legal requirements (such German content laws) or geographical boundaries. where the Steam partner is allowed to distribute a game. " So they lifted the area restrictions except in cases where they did not do it. Although I can see the argument of restricting activation in Germany because of local legislation, the licensing argument by region is a bit more fragile.
Valve ends up further defending the foreclosure regions, claiming that "eliminating region locks will also mean that publishers will likely increase prices in less wealthy regions to avoid price arbitrage". Again, I am not a lawyer, but that does not seem to me to be the biggest argument when you are accused of breaking the EU laws. It's more like playing with a host of publisher actors and maybe nervous retailers (again, related to publishers) who might be scared by the possibility of regulation and law enforcement that elevates the prices. I look forward to hearing what the European Commission has to say in response. As far as my position is concerned, I think that the position of RPS No Oceans sums up the situation quite well.
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