
The EU is cracking down on sales practices that disadvantage customers, according to a report by BBC News. Six publishers have been fined €7.8 million (£6.9 million) for restricting cross-border sales, including Valve, Bandai Namco, Capcom, ZeniMax, Focus Home, and Koch Media.
The practice, known as "geo-blocking", means that games are region-locked, disallowing customers from buying cheaper versions intended for different countries. Some European countries have lower incomes than others, so generally those countries get cheaper prices. The countries in particular that Valve geo-blocked were the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
Five of the six are reported to have co-operated with the EU, leading to their fines being reduced, but according to the EU Competition Commission, Valve did no co-operate, and their fine was set at €1.6 million (£1.4 million) with no reduction. Valve plans to appeal the fine, and denies that they refused to co-operate.
Their spokesperson, Doug Lombardi, told the BBC that only 3% of all games using Steam had region locks, and that the EU's action would potentially cause publishers to "raise prices in less affluent regions" rather than allowing customers to buy games at cheaper prices.
The EU Competition Commissioner condemned the use of geo-blocking in a statement:
"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."
What are your thoughts on this situation? Do you think the EU's actions will benefit customers, or lead to higher prices in less affluent countries? Let us know in the comments.
[source bbc.com]
Comments (60)
If rules that make being part of the EU beneficial get ignored there’s no reason to be part of the EU. Good on them for fining them. Tho it’s so little it won’t make a difference.
When I came across the fact that I was unable to buy certain games on the PSN eshop, I also thought it should be criminal I guess it's only a problem when a big country can't get a game at a smaller country's price. not when a publisher decides to ignore a smaller country altogether.
Call me an idiot but I'll bite - what's the difference between what's being condemned here, and the region-locking of the Wii U and other consoles? Would that be condemned in the same way as these companies, or is it something completely different and I'm stupid?
Imagine than just one console generation ago, Nintendo was Geo-blocking too.
Good. They deserve to be fined as there’s no point in the EU being an economic union if trade is blocked between countries.
There was one tidbit I found interesting "Meanwhile, the five publishers formed deals with each other restricting cross-border sales of games, the EU found", that to me seems like it crosses into breaking competition law too.
@stinky_t it's because Europe is one region and these countries are in that region. Europe is one market and the companies didn't treat them like that.
@stinky_t Basically, you can't subdivide the European Union with region locking, that's what's illegal in this case. Anyone in the EU should have the same digital options.
@darkswabber Only 50% of Europe is in EU anyway.
19 of 38 countries.
I always thought that region-locking consoles was stupid, but restricting game sales like this is even dumber.
@Ventilator theres 27 countries in the EU and more than 38 countries in Europe
Thank goodness we left that terrible EU! 🇬🇧💪
@clvr A more accurate way of saying that would be New York games would not be allowed in Texas or any other combo of states since the US is the same region/market whilst Canada or Mexico are different markets to America.
@sandman89 You realize that means the UK now no longer has that kind of price protection as it's not part of the EU...
@Ventilator I know. But it would be useless if those countries don’t get benefits.
@clvr Pal and NTSC were also different television systems formats, so there were technically reasons behind that divide.
But yeah they are just saying within the EU you cant put up artificial barriers to buying digital games from another part of it.
They are free to prevent buying digitaly from US store in EU. (They frequently do by blocking cards you can use but theres ways arround it )
Absolutely in love with the choice of picture for this article
Enjoy publishers doing regional pricing even more then. Some games are gonna quadruple in price for some countries. It's happened before and will happen again. I think it was Octopath Traveller on PC that got hit with regional pricing and it 4 was times the price of a month of minimum wage in some countries.
So now we're going to have more expensive games and still no Disney+ in our "Eastern" European countries? Cool. I'd prefer it the other way round, though. Let companies adjust prices to local markets, but prevent geo-blocking countries from getting the same services as other "important" European countries like Germany or France.
That's good (I realize I am adding nothing to the conversation here)
@xmkbest And companies wonder why Eastern European countries pirate more.
@clvr
Your example is most certainly wrong.
There are no such laws applicable in NA.
This is a special case for "Europe" because of the EU.
Countries outside the EU, but in Europe can be region-locked.
BANDAI NAMCO doing this honestly kind of makes sense, but CAPCOM!? WOW!
@Roibeard64 @jamesthemagi @jump ah I see, I knew the reasons for differentiating between PAL and NTSC regions but I didn't know all the other stuff, as a European.
As I said, I wasn't sure, so thanks for the explanation 😃
I think geo-blocking makes sense, this publishers have taken into consideration that certain countries have far lower income so they matched their video games price offers to fit with their economy, having that available to all countries would cause the publishers to loose a lot of money cause people would exploit that system by simply lying about their regional location just to get the game cheaper, so that is why geo-locking was necessary in order to keep that balance. Now that that is no longer allowed, all lower income countries will start having a price inflation on their video games which in the long term they are the only ones getting punished since this won't affect the rest of Europe that have normal prices.
It will be interesting to see what actually comes out of this. Without geo-blocking it's possible that the publishers will raise their prices in the lower income countries, which would be bad... On the other hand, it's not like they currently lower the prices out of the goodness of their heart. If the prices are too high then nobody in that region will buy the games at all. Making some money is better than making none. So it probably still makes sense to keep the lower prices there. If some enterprising people from other countries jump the border to get a good deal, they'd still hardly be the majority. Not like VPNs aren't a thing anyway, if people are really determined.
@jump I think they were being sarcastic at least I hope so.
@sandman89 Hopefully you're being sarcastic.
The reason this practice is rarely seen in the USA is because the economy is roughly the same across all states. The only thing this ruling will do in the EU is drive the price up in countries that can’t afford the games. It will be rare that a publisher will lower the price to match the poorer economy unless it is viable they can make just as much money. How is that EU working if you have such a disparity?
@JohnBlackstar I’m pretty sure it’s not to the same degree, but the cost of living in say California or New York is much greater then a lot of other states. Although I’m sure not to the extent of country to country in the EU
It’s always good to see big companies take accountability.
@sandman89
Wasn’t the EU better for Britain?
If they sold things for what they were worth (production cost plus reasonable level of profit), instead of pushing prices up way past that, to a point they think people are only just willing or able to pay, there wouldn't be this problem. This is especially true for digital games.
@RandomAfricanGamer @jump we can make our own laws. Not being sarcastic
@sandman89 The UK has always been able to make its own laws. However there is an irony to the Uk now having to follow EU rules & laws still to continue it’s no quota & no tariff trade with the EU as part of the deal but as the UK is no longer apart of the EU it now doesn’t any say in those EU rules & law making process so the UK cant now change, debate or object to them which is opposite of the sovereignty which was promised with Brexit.
@Moistnado Video game prices like any other product in a free market (not unbalanced by a monopoly) are set at what people will generally pay for them. If enough people stopped buying games at those prices, then the prices would fall, but that's not happening. (While the United States does have a recommended retail price to generally keep the prices even between stores, retailers could still legally drop the price if they got desperate enough, and eventually the recommended price itself would fall.) Why should producers and developers be restricted from making as much profit as they reasonably can just because they can manage higher profit margins than in many other industries?
As for digital prices, they have to be set even with physical prices despite the lower overhead, or else not enough people would buy the physical versions to keep that part of the industry afloat. If I could always buy digital copies of video games cheaper than the physical versions, then I'd certainly switch to always buying digital up until the cost of the extra external storage I'd potentially need exceeded the money I was saving on the digital discounts.
@jump I know what you are saying but give it time it’s early days. I honestly think the EU might collapse but we’ll see
@sandman89 I've got no idea what you're on about.
The EU has been around since the 50s and has firmly established itself and it's influence with nothing to suggest it's about to collapse.
The UK initiated article 50/Brexit 4 years ago, it's only early days as it took 4 years for the leave campaigners and government to figure what leaving actually meant. lol
@jump I think you’ll find the remainers held the job up.
@sandman89 Nope, it was largely because "Brexit" as a concept wasn't defined at all when the referendum took place so when the reality of Brexit came in of either Hard Brexit or Brexit with a Deal (and what exactly that Deal should be) their votes got split between them despite being for Brexit. It was inevitable since both the real and (the court proven) propaganda promises of it are at odds which each other making a successful Brexit to all literally impossible. The last minute deal put together by Boris Johnson (who promised it would be an "oven ready" deal lol) was voted through as there was no time to renegotiate to avoid a no deal scenario and was actually a worse deal than the one proposed by Theresa May. You are also ignoring that article 50 was triggered before negotiations had even started which literally put the UK's workload behind before it even started which isn't really clever since the EU as the larger economic power had the advantage when making the deal.
In any case none of that really changes that the UK is literally worse off now than before.
@BulbasaurusRex point is that many people are not willing to buy these games at this price. Also, iti isn't a "free market" geo-blocking is a crime! If they want to sell things for less, then let everyone buy for less. It's illegal not to, and rightly so. As for digital sales, if people stopped buying physical, because digital was less than half the price- so what? I thought you liked free markets?
@stinky_t I Think that has more to do with display formats.
@jump you must be one of those remoaners 😆
@sandman89 Nah, just an observant pointing out how ironically the biggest hurdle to Brexit was the Brexiteers themselves who couldn't agree on what Brexit actually is which ultimately delivered a compromised deal that means the UK has to follow rules it has given up making.
@jump nah I don’t agree. I’m confident we are now better off.
@sandman89 care to expand on how you disagree?
You don't really seem able to articulate why Brexit is good beyond emojis which when boiling down something this complex and far reaching seems unmindful to the situation.
@jump nah I’m not one for arguing online I’ve got better things to do. Sorry. Milking cows at the moment...
@sandman89 milking cows because Brexit is gonna raise the price of milk... ;p
@jump it’s actually ok at the moment and store cattle are also a good trade. Everyone keeps saying sheep prices are going to plummet though but we’ll see 😊
Ok super, now let me buy Japanese things without having to hop through several loops to do so
@jump have you heard the news? France couldn’t even develop a COVID vaccine. I think Britain will be just fine lass.
@sandman89 I thought you didn't argue over the internet. Or is it you couldn't think of anything to say at the time so you spent a week working on something? ;p
It's a strange connection to make as a single French Institute doesn't really equate to the whole of the EU or represents the advantages of being in the EU, it's like saying a single chip shop in Brixton is all of the UK. Whilst we are on the topic the UK's main vaccine is in trouble as it's being manufactured in Belgium and now faces issues being imported into the country since it's leaving the EU and into a third country which is something that wouldn't happen if the UK was in the EU and therefore not a third country. ;P
No but France is a huge part of the eu one of the big players. And why do you think it’s struggling to get into the uk? Because Europe is upset we ordered first so they are making life as difficult as possible for us in the uk. While we are talking about France I’m disappointed in what I’ve been hearing about the leaders recently they spoke about doing away with the English language in Europe! What about the Irish 🤷🏻♂️ I think macron has forgotten there wouldn’t be a France without Britain’s help in ww1 and ww2. Just to be clear I’ve no issues with any European country it’s just the union was and is not working. The vaccine is a prime example. They are having a nightmare and blaming us for it. So why do you defend it? Are you British? Can’t be.
@sandman89 the way you keep going on about France reminds me of a bunny boiler who Facebook stalks their ex, I don’t think you’re over the split yet ;p
The EU allows free trade with its members, the UK aren’t members now so it’s no longer free. ;p
I’m not sure why you’re bringing up wars fought a century ago, times have changed and people moved on, nor does it mean anything to the EU today. Although it’s worth remembering the EU came from WW2 to ensure the economic conditions that led to it wouldn’t happen again and peace be kept across the nations. Deliberately taking away advantages of economic growth and security like that seems silly to me but if a British emoji means more to you than that then please carry on.
@jump your a lost cause
@sandman89 maybe I am but at least I’m not ignorant. ;p
It’s kinda sad you are not able to actually explain any benefits of Brexit but feel the need to post anti-EU propaganda. With you appearing to only have a shallow understanding of the issues involved I’m surprised you’re that motivated.
I look forward to you tagging me again next week when you post something stupid like “French cornershop closes down shop, proof EU is bad” , not that you argue over the internet of course ;p
@jump pretty ignorant to me. Very narrow minded
@jump it just gets better 😆 yes thank god we left! Corrupt dictatorship EU.
@sandman89 What are you on about. Have you been Facebook stalking France again? Flag emoji
@jump you’re not getting the vaccine. Ok we’ll let you have the vaccine 😆 bs.
@sandman89 I don't think you actually understand what's going on. The EU have not said either of those things and are giving it's member states the abilty to block imports into the UK. Flag emoji
You're still missing the point I made days ago that if the UK was in the EU then this can't happen and is only because of Brexit it can happen. The EU are looking after themselves, the only difference now is that as UK is not with the EU so they have no issue taking advantage of the UK with it's influence and power. Every electorate want their goverment to look out for them and they UK people would be moaning if it was vice versa. Imagine if the UK was apart of the EU and could use that to help the UK instead like this. Flag emoji
I look forward to you spamming me again in a few days with more tabloid headlines rubbish, but can you actually read the whole article rather than the headline this time. Flag emoji
@jump damn you really are brainwashed. Bless you. 🙈
@sandman89 Nope, I'm just not stupid unlike someone who spends a week or two thinking of things to write only for it to be a sloppy single sentence. I suggest you actually read up on the EU's work and history so you might able to better "argue" your point. Ramblings of WW2 filled with emojis when trying to discuss economics and politics whilst ignoring the real pros vs cons because you can't engage in the subject matter just enforces the stereotype of ignorant poor people voting themselves into being poor still. Flag emoiji
Tap here to load 60 comments
Leave A Comment
Hold on there, you need to login to post a comment...