Valve sued by the European Union over Steam "geo-blocking"

Valve was sued for €1.6 million after the European Commission discovered a geo-blocking scheme run through Steam.

Valve is joined by five other publishers, Bandai Namco (Dark Souls, Tekken), Capcom (Monster Hunter, Street Fighter), Focus Home (A Plague Tale: Innocence, Vampyr), Koch Media (Metro Last Light, Dead Island), and ZeniMax (The Elder Scrolls, Doom).

Unlike Valve, however, these publishers have chosen to cooperate with the European Commission on this matter.

Steam makes content available and prices it by region, but is that a bad thing?

The biggest problem for Steam here isn’t that it uses geographic location to tailor its store and prices, it’s that it does so within an area that was specifically established to share economic power.

Price differences will still exist within the Common Market, but this is usually the result of transportation costs or high demand areas, and not because of explicit business practices and geographic restrictions.

But the specific issue here has less to do with pricing and more with the availability of specific products through Steam. According to the European Commission, publishers asked Valve to create Steam keys for their games which could only be activated within a specific region of the European Common Market.

This practice meant that the Steam keys in question could provide a product to some members of the European Common Market, while denying or restricting access to others. That seems to go directly against what the Common Market was established to do in the first place.

“The Commission found that by bilaterally agreeing to geo-block certain PC video games from outside a specific territory, Valve and each publisher partitioned the EEA market in violation of EU antitrust rules.” - The European Commission

Antitrust fights are almost always an uphill battle

Given the complexity of these legal filings, the European Commission has gone to great lengths to explain their ruling, even creating a useful graphic outlining exactly what they found happened.

Antitrust lawsuits are difficult to pursue because they usually require attacking a corporate entity that has excess resources, specifically because of their shady business practices.

As a result, any attempt to hold them accountable for their business practices usually results in them using said resources to defend their actions.

If successful, this can create a snowball effect where companies find that it is more profitable to conduct business illegally and use the money gained to fight the law.

Fortunately for the European consumer, the European Commission has been able to conduct their investigation and at least hold these companies somewhat accountable.

These companies have been fined the following amount:

• Bandai Namco - €340,000
• Capcom - €396,000
• Focus Home - €2,888,000
• Koch Media - €977,000
• ZeniMax - €1,664,000
• Valve - €1,624,000