Valve and Five PC Games Publishers Fined $9.4M for Illegal Geo-Blocking (techcrunch.com) 98
A four-year antitrust investigation into PC games geo-blocking in the European Union by distribution platform Valve and five games publishers has led to fines totalling $9.4 million after the Commission confirmed today that the bloc's rules had been breached. From a report: The geo-blocking practices investigated since 2017 concerned around 100 PC video games of different genres, including sports, simulation and action games. In addition to Valve --which has been fined just over $1.94 million -- the five sanctioned games publishers are: Bandai Namco (fined $412k), Capcom ($479k), Focus Home ($3.39 million), Koch Media ($1.2 million) and ZeniMax ($1.94 million). The Commission said the fines were reduced by between 10% and 15% owing to cooperation from the companies, with the exception of Valve who it said chose not to cooperate (a "prohibition Decision" rather than a fine reduction was applied in its case). The antitrust investigation begun in February 2017, with a formal statement of objections issued just over two years later when the Commission accused the companies of "entering into bilateral agreements to prevent consumers from purchasing and using PC video games acquired elsewhere than in their country of residence" in contravention of EU rules.
Wait to go (Score:2)
Re: Wait to go (Score:2)
No! Zis iss EU! Reich of Germany! Ven pedesterian light red, you vait! Rregartless of der being a car for miles!
(Sadly, no such red light at the border to Poland, back then.)
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Meh, enjoy your Brexit...
Re: Wait to go (Score:3)
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Sadly, way less relevant than during Neelie Kroes' tenure in that office and in its immediate aftermath.
Those were the times when just the threat of action from EU got Steam to suddenly "voluntarily institute" return policies for games.
I Didn't Know They Still Made Geo's (Score:2)
Cool! Guess they are just blocked in the US.
Re: I Didn't Know They Still Made Geo's (Score:3)
Geo's what, though?
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> Geo's what, though?
The older version of Neo Geo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Just who the hell ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Seriously, all Valve has to do is to say that the owners of the distribution rights for certain games in various countries have elected not to release at this time. Perfectly legal.
Re:Just who the hell ... (Score:5, Informative)
Seriously, all Valve has to do is to say that the owners of the distribution rights for certain games in various countries have elected not to release at this time. Perfectly legal.
Not legal in Eu. That was the actual problem here. You cannot distribute in only one country, unless this falls under specific exemptions. The exemptions do not cover games and were mostly for sport and film content. They were also instituted upon UK and specifically Sky/Fox insistence. They have been reduced over time.
So the Eu is right and they enforced their law. Why on Earth did Valve decide not to cooperate beggars belief.
Re: Just who the hell ... (Score:3)
Lol. "mostly for sport and film content".
Way to be consistent and reasonable!
Either have no exceptions or don't have the rule.
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> Either have no exceptions or don't have the rule.
Try reading US tax code sometime.
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whatabotism
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Do you see anyone attempting to defend the US tax code?
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Lol. "mostly for sport and film content".
I'll have to remember this the next time someone claims that a vidya gaem is a 'sport'.
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It's not a sport unless you can die.
And no, diabetes and deep vein thrombosis don't count...
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the very odd thing is that much of the point of the EU is to create a common economy such that there should not be 'poorer' countries.
The fact they sell it at a lower price in one country shows they 'could' sell it at a lower price in others.
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Valve is an American company. Look no further. EU is a protectionist bloc, always has been. Going after your adversary's companies with regulatory agencies is a standard move, as is standing disingenuously afterwards and claiming this is merely standard law enforcement. China is notorious for this exact method.
If you DID look futher, you would see that reality isn't as simple as you want it to be. Together with Valve 5 video game publishers were fined:
- Bandai Namco (Japan)
- Capcom (Japan)
- Focus Home (EU)
- Koch Media (EU)
- ZeniMax (US)
So two Asian, to American and 2 European companies were fined. Totally one-sided and protectionist.
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Did Valve geoblock HL:Alyx in the EU when I wasn't looking?
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So the Eu is right and they enforced their law. Why on Earth did Valve decide not to cooperate beggars belief.
The problem isn't Valve, but the EU itself. Nations are sovereign entities, which means they have their very own laws and rights, and any other sovereign nation has to respect this. It is the principle we all have to obey to maintain world peace.
Any law the EU then makes that somehow takes interest over what other sovereign nations do outside the EU is in conflict with the principle of sovereignty. Such laws are equivalent to trade embargo and sanctions. The law of the EU in this case is so twisted that the
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Sweet you just said there's no such thing as a sovereign nation if a trade agreement exists. Congratulations there's no sovereign nations left in the world.
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No, not what I said, just what you want to interpret out of stupidity. That's on you.
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Any law the EU then makes that somehow takes interest over what other sovereign nations do outside the EU is in conflict with the principle of sovereignty. Such laws are equivalent to trade embargo and sanctions. The law of the EU in this case is so twisted that they made it appear as if it was only of internal concern. It isn't, because it involves what happens in other nations.
All the countries in question are inside the EU, so I'm not sure what you're talking about.
Bullshit (Score:2)
The EU is enforcing these laws in Europe.
What you are proposing is actually what you accuse them off, expecting US laws to apply to products sold in Europe. If you want to trade in another country, then you obey its laws. That is sovereignty.
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I wasn't making a proposal. I'm saying that the law is a twisted form of greed, like throwing a general trade fee on goods whenever Europe doesn't get something first, or just when some nation within the EU itself doesn't get it. It's the strategy of a greedy, spoiled child.
On a free market can companies roll out a product how, when and where they want, and in their own time frame. It's simply their loss when they don't sell it everywhere and as a result have a lower revenue. People can vote on this with th
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One of the main goals of the EU is "ever closer union". They are intending to make the EU a sovereign nation, with its members just being states under a central government. Similar to how the USA or USSR was modelled.
This was one of the key driving points behind the UK leaving.
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The curb of freedom will be felt most by those corporations who now have to delay releases due to localisation since it has so many different languages in the EU. These can now no longer roll-out products nation by nation, but are forced to do it all at once. It's over-regulation to me and could mean localisation might no longer happen for a few products, because the delay ends being a cost factor.
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They don't need to offer localisation (many don't, and many people still run things in english even when localised versions exist)...
They could still add localisation later, with the original language version available first.
People move around, just because you live in a german speaking country doesn't mean german is your first language - you might prefer french but the french version is only sold in france.
Localisation has long been a false excuse for delayed product releases, american products were often
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games are not allowed to have MLB like blackouts (Score:2)
games are not allowed to have MLB like blackouts in the EU.
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The issue at hand here is that Valve wouldn't let EU residents play their games if they went around the geoblock and purchased through eg. US debit/gift cards. So you can go on Amazon US, buy a gift card for Steam, buy the game through a proxy, but it'd still be blocked in the EU.
This is indeed very similar to DVD/Blu-Ray, most games and other streaming services that have geographic codes. The EU somehow has regulation that forbids you from using region coding if you let the consumer buy the media outside t
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PDO for food is not just about quality, but also preservation of tradition and culture which is very important to many people, especially those involved in traditional businesses. It's simply a case of "You cannot call this product by this name unless it is made in this region via this method". Similar rules exist all over the world, something you yourself would know if you actually read the article you copypasted your examples from. Being fond of cheese myself I'd be pissed if I bought some Camembert and i
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And what if it wasn't a *crappy* knock-off, but a superior one? I'm not sure about competition amongst the cheeses; but in actual blind taste-tests California wines have been beating French ones for decades now:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
So, that Bordeaux or Champagne you may be all hot and bothered over because it's *genuine* could be, and likely is, actually *inferior* to the cab/merlot blend and "sparkling wines" you hate on. (If you were a wine snob and not a cheese snob anyway.)
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Except of course that the reputation has nothing to do with the location for the majority of people who consume the product and everything to do with the fact that they name became synonymous with the product in the question because they were at the top of the game for a long time. See Google, Kleenex et al. Ask any 100 people off the street if Champagne and Sparkling Wine are the same product and it's even odds whether they get the question correct. If the location the product was produced in were actually
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These are certainly all kinds of government regulations, but they aren't comparable in this case. You may as well have said that it's really ri
Re:Just who the hell ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: Just who the hell ... (Score:2)
"While I applaud this sort of action in general, it is very, very deceitful of the EU to implement this sort of regulation while maintain their own regulation that "region codes" their own products"
No, it is not.
You can sell products in those styles in the EU all you want, but if you want to use a "protected appellation" to describe them, they have to be made in that region.
That is basically trademark law, what we are discussing is based on copyright law. Totally different kind of IP.
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Wrong, in the EU you cannot sell "Gorgonzola Style cheese" if it has the name Gorgonzola in it, it has to be made with approval from whatever government entity in that region. You can indeed make a cheese according to the Gorgonzola style, but you cannot have the name Gorgonzola anywhere on the label unless you pay the protection group in the Gorgonzola region which requires you to make the cheese in their area of influence.
And it isn't trademark law, Gorgonzola isn't a trademark, it's a protection racket.
A
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You don't understand how EU regulation about food products works. You can make cheese similar to Parmiagiano-Reggiano anywhere and sell it. You just can't call it Parmiagiano-Reggiano. It is not that dissimilar to trademarks to be honest.
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I do understand. It's not trademark, it's a regional protection racket. You generally have to pay into a government agency which inspect your product to be able to use the label. You cannot just live in the region and make your own, you have to comply with very strict local regulations to make that particular product, which generally requires payments.
This is very similar to this situation. The people purchased a game with a US-only label on it, then expected Valve to generate them a version with a EU label
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"region codes" their own products
Those are trademarks, not restrictions. You can make any cheese/drink and sell it anywhere as long as it follows sanitation and related laws, so there's no impediment. What you cannot do is label it with a trademark you don't have the rights to. It'd be the same as me trying to sell a Linux box with Wine preinstalled then placing a label on it deceptively saying "Microsoft(R) Windows(TM) 10Z", and on a footnote, at font size 2, add "Fully compatible with most Microsoft Windows 10-ready apps!"
Re: Just who the hell ... (Score:1)
Geoblocking US purchased games/vouchers/gift cards from EU customers is probably fine by EU rules.
It's when game bought in one place inside EU is geoblocked from another place inside EU that the problems start.
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I believe you are allowed to buy Gorgonzola in one country, take it to another country, and eat it. So no this is not the same at all.
The closest I could imagine might be a law that says if you claim a certain city is shown in your game, you must actually show that city and not some other city in China built to look like it.
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The basic idea is that if you can buy something, you can use it, nobody can add random rules to block you from using what you have if it was working fine.
If you have a US DVD and a US player, you can still see it in EU, nobody can break the DVD or player just because you moved to EU.
Either Valve block EU people from buying games in the USA (always hard), or let EU people play their games, even if from other countries (and probably, vice-versa, play in the USA games from the EU).
Probably Valve will allow tha
Nonsense (Score:2)
PDO are essentially trade marks. They do not prevent you make an identical product, they prevent your passing that your product off as the original if it is not the specific source.
Not legal in EU. (Score:2)
The whole of the EU is legally a single market [wikipedia.org]. Legally it is just like the whole of the US is a single market. Imagine buying a game in one state and it won't work in another. That is the situation and it is illegal.
Geoblocking is bullshit (Score:2)
I understand that for many products, the local market may have different price expectations; Back around 2005, I would assume a $25 DVD player would be a piece of crap while in Japan that price point (after currency conversion) was seen as reasonable. I also get that in many instances, a given company may find a particular market to not be worth the effort and may just license their product or IP to a 3rd party, and that the Geoblocking is meant to both protect that agreement and to protect the original m
what about in game music we don't have rights for (Score:3)
what about in game music we don't have rights for it in X market so we can't sell the game in X market.
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Such licence deals are incompatible with EU rules.
Say you licence music for use in France only. Someone buys the game and plays it in Germany. Too bad, you can't stop them, and using technical means to do so is illegal.
Similarly if someone buys a Netflix or satellite TV subscription and then goes to another country for a while then you can't block them from continuing to use it and getting the same TV shows they were getting at home.
It's due to the Four Freedoms of the Common Market: Freedom of movement of
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There are exceptions to those things actually. Movies are one, and music if I remember correctly is another.
It's why Netflix Finland is garbage tier in terms of available content, unlike say Netflix Germany.
These exemptions are for specific fields of culture where local culture is awarded special protections, which is why it's indeed mostly awarded to more traditional things. Video games are not in this category.
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The point is if your are German and you visit Finland you can still watch your Netflix content.
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It's a bit more complicated. Some people CHOOSE not to do business in the EU to avoid their taxes and regulations. There are also other issues with copyrights, patenting, that would make it extremely difficult to release something in the EU which could be perfectly legal elsewhere in the world.
This effectively fines people for choosing not to do certain business in the EU.
Re: Geoblocking is bullshit (Score:2)
"This effectively fines people for choosing not to do certain business in the EU."
No, it does not. It fines certain people for choosing not to do business in certain parts of the EU. That is fundamentally different from what you claimed.
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No, this fines people for trying to do business in the poor parts of the EU.
Steam is perfectly allowed to open up shop in Germany, and only Germany, but they cannot region block games bought in Germany from working in Poland.
Steam has to raise their prices to eat the cost of VPN users and key resellers, or just sell the game at full cost and lose all their customers in Eastern Europe.
I think Valve can just start banning VPNs. Because they are allowed to sell it for different prices. And they can just disall
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Than your better off releasing the damn thing globally at a consistent price so that every legit sale will give you the same profit.
Not at all. Every country has its taxes, its infrastructure costs (you must have servers, bandwidth, etc. which are not the same for every country). Even the economy of scale is different in every country.
Valve knows very well that it can't charge 60 USD for a AAA game in very impoverished countries. If faced with too options: a) charge 60 USD, sell X copies and have a profit of Y or b) charge 45 USD sell X' copies and have a profit 3Y, which option does capitalism teach us to be the most appropriate? N
Re: Geoblocking is bullshit (Score:2)
"Geoblocking is indeed necessary to have a fair economy"
You have to have an unfair market in order to have a fair market? Tell us another one.
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Re: Geoblocking is bullshit (Score:2)
That is not what I said. I said geoblocking is unfair. They can set different prices for different regions, but they don't get to complain when someone purchases a good or service in one location and chooses to use it in another. If they don't like the democratization of trade they should move to another planet. On this one, we are trying to get our shit together and bring equality to the masses, and they are fighting against our efforts.
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Not at all. Every country has its taxes, its infrastructure costs
That should be paid by the purchaser at the point of sale (the location of the purchaser). If it's a product that is difficult or impossible to detect when passing through your customs, then you need to find some other way to finance your government. Or you could build a wall [wordpress.com] around your country.
Re: Geoblocking is bullshit (Score:2)
Uuum, I distinctly remember 30EUR Chinese DVD players being vastly superior to 500EUR Sony ones, because they played *all* the content. DivX, XviD, VCD, MP3s, you name it. While the "reputable" ones only played what the Content Mafia wanted.
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No this is purely about ripping off certain buyers by setting the price too high *AND* too low at the same time and trying to force people to buy the one that matches their cashflow.
They realize they can't sell in dirt cheap 3rd world countries if we can simply buy it from there and after shipping it still pay less.
So they do anyways and try to "region code" to keep the rich people from buying the cheap 3rd world copy.
There are a few zeros missing (Score:2)
Especially in the fine for Valve. But I guess those can be arranged if Valve continues to break the law.
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Fines in the EU generally match the severity of the offence and any re-offence. I.e. If Valve do the same thing again then the fines would be much larger. But to be honest, geoblocking is a very minor issue, and one that wasn't even addressed by the EU legislative until *during* this investigation. Ultimately these companies were fined for minor collusion that fractured the EU market, not for breaking any specific EU / national law at the time.
Slap on the wrist (Score:1)
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$9.4 million between all of those companies is chump change. A reasonably successful single game alone will bring in around $10 million a year.
To a big company, it may be "chump change". To a smaller company, cancelling out all revenue for a year is likely to bankrupt them.
Re: Slap on the wrist (Score:1)
Well guess what the fine size for an individual would to to that individual...
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It's still a million you'd prefer to have. More importantly, since you were already slapped with a fine for it, continuing that behaviour into the future is now a different game with different penalties.
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Correct!
Simply remember the Microsoft, where it was fined about the IE browser bundle with windows and to force MS to give user the browser choice... the first fine was some money, but nothing too high from MS perspective (280M€). Later MS kept doing the same, reporting that user could install their own browser, but the IE bundle continued and so, for most people, it was still the only browser available, so EU give a new huge fine ( 1.68B€), something that warned MS that repeating fines do increas
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It's not just the money, it also forces them into action as it has been successfully ruled that they broke the law. Repeat offenders are often treated more harshly or put under further scrutiny to give their balls a tighter squeeze.
Instead of "illegal" (Score:1)
We should try to make geo-blocking impossible. Then we don't have to waste time arguing about it.
Re: Instead of "illegal" (Score:2)
Afaik, right now, is is based solely on which IPv4 blocks are under the control of whom, and on any payment or contact details you gave them. Which already is a trainwreck, since it is very often wrong.
They've always been organized crime. (Score:1)
Geoblocking is the least of your problems, when their entire 'business' model is literally almost-enslaving creative people for services, like design, paying them for it, once, with previously stolen money, and then making up a drug-fueled construct of madness to steal money from everyone for all eternity (the Mickey Mouse unit of time) with artificial scarcity over an imaginary monopoly over ideas, that is literally incompatible with causality, and with racketeering and corporate terrorism on top ... while
Have to agree with Steam (Score:1)
As long as downloadable games are covered under justified geoblocking by EU rules it's bizarre to go after them for making contracts with publishers to do it.
Why did they not fine FAPL in the Karen Murphy case? This is capricious application of the law, purely because FAPL was an EU company and Steam isn't.
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if you see above [slashdot.org], you had two Asian, 2 American and 2 European companies fined... not a decision to protect EU companies, but in both cases the same rule applies: if you buy something in another EU country, you are totally free to use it another EU country, you have freedom of movement for people, goods and services. What worked in the past, with each country being a "island", in the united EU times may not work anymore, the internal market is the same, no matter what EU country you are.
Finally, the FAPL
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But the court explicitly ruled "I believe justice would be achieved by the grant of a declaration that the relevant obligations in the agreements in issue constituted a restriction on competition prohibited by Article 81 EC". Which is now Article 101.
So these antitrust investigators were presented a case on a silver platter, with a ready made declaration by the ECJ, but they refused to take up for ... reasons ...
NICE !! (Score:3)
Now all the have to do is apply the same rule to the DVD blue-ray consortium.
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They do, but since they shipping of a DVD costs money and is easy to tax, it is not as profitable.
This will be only worse (Score:2)
Now poor countries will see the same high price as western regions.
There can be a simpler solution: language locking (Score:2)
I understand the need to reduce prices for some countries. If the game costs a month's wage, yes, sure people will pirate it. So selling it for 1/10th of the price in that country is better than having rampant piracy, ... which will also leak to other countries too. But now EU says you cannot do that.
However there is a simpler solution. If say, you give a discount to Russian users, then sell the game in Russian language only. There would be almost no secondary market in EU or US (except for Russian expats,
Re: There can be a simpler solution: language lock (Score:3, Interesting)
A game sold in Russia can be geoblocked from working in EU, and the EU won't care. The 30% native Russian speakers in Latvia might be annoyed that the same game in Latvia in Russian could cost twice as much as in Russia, but it would still be okay by EU rules.
I understand what you mean though, and I think you could actually charge different price for different language versions of the same game. At least I would think it's allowed, since Microsoft Windows has different price depending on the languag
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I bet this would be legal, but would not work for games. I do not think any games have the same amount of language variations as windows does, by a long shot. From what I have seen the biggest AAA games come with like 12 at most. And many gamers in every country do not like dubbing any more than the snootiest weeb.
Good - now go for media distribution (Score:1)
But in "today's interconnected world" there is no reason for geo-blocking content - except where local censorship laws or findings should be adhered to e.g. something has been classed as objectionable content, a term used here by the Office of Film and Literature Classification (yes, this actually includes video games - the OFLC banned from sale "Postal 2" in 2004. I read the writeu
Up next, paid access to specific servers (Score:2)
The simplest alternative to geo-blocking is simply sell access to individual gaming servers separately. Multi-player games require servers, and single player games could also be made to require server communication. Then it's simple, if you buy server access on country X, you can take it to country Y, but you'll still only be allowed to connect to country X servers, with it's associated ping time limitations and of course players playing in that time zone. So games may become cheap and same price everywhere