It's been two years since Steam implemented protections against customers spoofing their location to buy games from other countries' storefronts, as gamers tried to use currency conversions in order to get games for far cheaper than they normally would be in their home region. It's also been almost two years since the European Commission filed charges against Valve for doing so, as according to them, it prevented members of the European Union from being able to freely shop for the best available prices within any country inside the EU. Now, as result of that, the EU has hit them, along with five other video game publishers with major fines over "geo-blocking" customers. Valve, ZeniMax, Focus Home Interactive, Capcom, Koch Media, and Bandai Namco have been fined to the tune of € 7.8 million total. Valve, as they refused to cooperate with the Commission, was fined €1.6 million, while the other publishers had their fees decreased somewhat, as they worked alongside the Commission during the investigation. European publisher Focus Home was fined €2.9 million, ZeniMax--parent company of Bethesda--was fined $1.6 million, Koch was fined €1 million, while Capcom and Bandai Namco weren't fined as much, at €396,000 and €340,000 respectively.

Executive Vice-President Margrethe Vestager, in charge of competition policy, said: “More than 50% of all Europeans play video games. The videogame industry in Europe is thriving and it is now worth over € 17 billion. Today's sanctions against the “geo-blocking” practices of Valve and five PC video game publishers serve as a reminder that under EU competition law, companies are prohibited from contractually restricting cross-border sales. Such practices deprive European consumers of the benefits of the EU Digital Single Market and of the opportunity to shop around for the most suitable offer in the EU”.

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[MetoMeto]

netflix doesnt block vpn, if you use vpn to spoof a country you can see that country stuff just fine.

I mean blocking content in regions, not the vpn thing.

 

[WhiteMaze]

This is a pretty big double edged sword that the EU is throwing around. While I'm in general not in favor of region blocking (fucking Nintendo not letting me play JP games on my US console), regional pricing is generally a consumer friendly move. The standard of living and wages are (probably) vastly different across the EU, and all that this is going to do is have valve say "fuck it, you're all paying $60 for the game now", because that's what the majority of their consumers are already purchasing in wealthier places (France and Germany, maybe). Now places with a lower standard of living are going to have their prices raised.

This is much easier to imagine when you compare the standards of living in the west vs a country like India, where $60 is estimated to be roughly $1260 USD equivalent. You think anybody in India is going to be buying games at such an absurd rate? The answer is no, so they geo-lock the software and sell it for cheaper instead, where they might actually be able to make legitimate sales instead of no sales at all.

I wholeheartedly disagree.

First and foremost geo locking, if anything, is anti-consumer. Not pro consumer.

I come from Portugal. A very small and poor country compared to the likes of the US / France / Germany.

We pay MORE than the USA for any given game (60€ vs 60$). There is no adjustment for being a poorer or richer country. And honestly that doesn't make any sense. Developers are there to make money as a business, not make charity to third world countries and sell their work for $1 where it sells for $60 somewhere else.