Valve and Five PC Games Publishers Fined $9.4M for Illegal Geo-Blocking

A four-year antitrust investigation into PC games geo-blocking in the European Union by distribution platform Valve and five games publishers has led to fines totalling $9.4 million after the Commission confirmed today that the bloc's rules had been breached. From a report: The geo-blocking practices investigated since 2017 concerned around 100 PC video games of different genres, including sports, simulation and action games. In addition to Valve --which has been fined just over $1.94 million -- the five sanctioned games publishers are: Bandai Namco (fined $412k), Capcom ($479k), Focus Home ($3.39 million), Koch Media ($1.2 million) and ZeniMax ($1.94 million). The Commission said the fines were reduced by between 10% and 15% owing to cooperation from the companies, with the exception of Valve who it said chose not to cooperate (a "prohibition Decision" rather than a fine reduction was applied in its case). The antitrust investigation begun in February 2017, with a formal statement of objections issued just over two years later when the Commission accused the companies of "entering into bilateral agreements to prevent consumers from purchasing and using PC video games acquired elsewhere than in their country of residence" in contravention of EU rules.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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