European Union Fines Valve and 5 Publishers Rp132 Billion For Geo-Blocking Practices

GAMEFINITY.ID, Jakarta – The European Commission has fined Valve and five Steam game publishers in the amount of EUR 7.8 million or around Rp. 132 billion for being considered to have carried out anti-consumer geo-blocking practices. Geo-blocking is the practice of restricting access to content or products based on the country in which a person is located.

For example, consumers in Country B cannot activate games purchased in Country A via Steam. This is due to passive restrictions on cross-border sales based on the location of the consumer. Geo-blocking itself is a system implemented on Steam, where games sold on Steam have different prices in each country. With this blocking, users also cannot change their country to buy games at low prices.

In this case, Valve and 5 other publishers namely Bandai Namco, Capcom, Focus Home Interactive, Koch Media and ZeniMax Media were found to have prevented consumers from activating and playing around 100 PC games based on their geographic location. The European Commission believes that Valve should give all users the freedom to choose any country in Europe.

“Today’s sanctions against the geo-blocking practices of Valve and five PC video game publishers serve as a reminder that under European Union competition law, companies are prohibited from contractually restricting cross-border sales,” said the European Commission’s executive vice president, Margrethe Vestager.

In his statement, such practices are considered to have made European consumers lose the benefits of the European Union (EU) Digital Single Market. Nor can consumers take advantage of the opportunity to shop for the most suitable deals in the EU.

The European Commission said fines handed out to publishers had been reduced because the company was cooperative in its investigation. It was different with Valve, who was judged to be uncooperative and as a result was fined more than 1.6 million EUR or around IDR 27 billion. In a statement issued to Eurogamer, a spokesperson for Valve denied the claims and said they would appeal the decision.

“During the seven years of investigations Valve has cooperated fully, providing the Commission with all the evidence and information requested. We disagree with these findings, and plan to appeal the decision.”

Bandai Namco, Focus Home, Koch Media and ZeniMax received a 10 percent reduction in fines for being cooperative. The fines they received were 340 thousand EUR (Namco), 2.88 million EUR (Focus Home), 977 thousand EUR (Koch Media), and 1.67 million EUR (Zeni Max). Capcom received a 15 percent reduction in fines with a fine of 396 thousand EUR.