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General discussionEU charges Valve + 5 big publishers for geoblocking(34 posts)(34 posts)
(34 posts)
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Posted April 08, 2019
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Huinehtar: I believe it isn't about rising prices in countries where prices were low, but it's the other way around, why should people be restrained from buying from those countries.
Because publishers don't want people from rich countries paying poor country prices. So they'll just make the poor country prices the same as the rich country prices.
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toxicTom: True. So "One World One Price" will have to come back for EU countries. I just fear the "One Price" will be the highest asked in any EU country.
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immi101: no.
regional prices are still allowed. But when you, as a German, buy a game while being in Hungary (for a lower price), you should still be able to use that game when being back in Germany.
Afaik GOG doesn't do any geoblocking of that sort, so I don't really see this changing anything here.
But when you, as a German, have never been to Hungary so you go on g2a and buy for a fraction of the German price a key originally purchased at the Hungarian price, then what?
Post edited April 08, 2019 by kalirion
Posted April 08, 2019
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Korotan: Just for clarification. You mean the british colony with the cangoroos and not the land of Mozart, Falco and Sebastion Kurz?
As other users have guessed, yes I mean that southern land where everything alive and most things dead are actively trying to kill you. When it regards a "need" for censorship their politicians are notorious for having their collective heads almost as deep inside their rectal orifices as the german politicians.
Post edited April 09, 2019 by joppo
Posted April 08, 2019
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teceem: I still wouldn't consider blocking certain keys because of regional pricing as "geoblocking". They're not blocking the purchase of the game based on region, just some keys for that game.

Blocking certain games in specific countries (because of censorship) IS geoblocking. GOG does it as well - but in this case the EU should be looking at the (EU) countries in question - online game stores are just abiding to local laws.
It's true that they don't keep you from buying, but they're keeping you from using a product purchased elsewhere within Europe and it is not to comply to a local censorship law. The EU free-trade law is pretty clear about it. They can't do that.

The censorship geoblocking like Gog does is indeed legal as you said and even somewhat necessary to sell in censored markets (although I read germans claiming that it needs a better implementation, but that is a subject for another thread).
Posted September 25, 2019
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Pheace: Valve responded to this earlier today:

Earlier today, the European Commission ("EC") sent Statements of Objections ("SO") to Valve and five publishers in an investigation that it started in 2013. The EC alleges that the five publishers entered into agreements with their distributors that included geo-blocking provisions for PC games sold by the distributors, and that separately Valve entered into agreements with the same publishers that prevented consumers in the European Economic Area ("EEA") from purchasing PC games because of their location.

However, the EC's charges do not relate to the sale of PC games on Steam - Valve's PC gaming service. Instead the EC alleges that Valve enabled geo-blocking by providing Steam activation keys and - upon the publishers' request - locking those keys to particular territories ("region locks") within the EEA. Such keys allow a customer to activate and play a game on Steam when the user has purchased it from a third-party reseller. Valve provides Steam activation keys free of charge and does not receive any share of the purchase price when a game is sold by third-party resellers (such as a retailer or other online store).

The region locks only applied to a small number of game titles. Approximately just 3% of all games using Steam (and none of Valve's own games) at the time were subject to the contested region locks in the EEA. Valve believes that the EC's extension of liability to a platform provider in these circumstances is not supported by applicable law. Nonetheless, because of the EC's concerns, Valve actually turned off region locks within the EEA starting in 2015, unless those region locks were necessary for local legal requirements (such as German content laws) or geographic limits on where the Steam partner is licensed to distribute a game. The elimination of region locks will also mean that publishers will likely raise prices in less affluent regions to avoid price arbitrage. There are no costs involved in sending activation keys from one country to another and the activation key is all a user needs to activate and play a PC game.
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Pheace:
My friends and I always get our hands on our favorite games which are released in the regions other than ours. We do this by using VPN. The added advantage is that via VPN matchmaking time is less, avoid ISP throttling, avoid ISP tracking, we can play in any region we want even if the game is region locked. We travel frequently and have to use Public wifi which everyone knows is the place where cybercriminals are lurking with encrypted VPN we can easily use Public Wifi while remaining secure, there are countries where we can't access our favorite content online then we use VPN. All of our friends and I are using PureVPN and till now its working great!!
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Community
General discussionEU charges Valve + 5 big publishers for geoblocking(34 posts)(34 posts)
(34 posts)