More affordable gaming can only be a good thing.By Wesley Yin-Poole Published 02/02/2017
The European Commission has announced plans to investigate Valve and five PC game publishers over suspected anti-competitive practices.
The Commission wants to work out whether the companies are in breach of EU antitrust rules by preventing consumers from enjoying cross-border choice.
The suspicion is that agreements between Valve and the publishers break EU competition rules by unfairly restricting retail prices or by excluding customers from certain offers because of their nationality or location.
Digging into the detail of the investigation, the Commission is looking at bilateral agreements between Valve and five publishers: Bandai Namco, Capcom, Focus Home, Koch Media and Zenimax.
The investigation concerns geo-blocking practices, where companies prevent consumers from using digital content, in this case PC video games, because of the consumer's location or country of residence.
The Commission wants to find out whether the agreements between Valve and the publishers require the use of activation keys for the purpose of geo-blocking.
Say, for example, you receive an error message from Steam when trying to activate a game with a region ID different to that of your local account. According to the European Commission, that's in breach of its antitrust rules.
Here's the EU Commission:
In particular, an "activation key" can grant access to a purchased game only to consumers in a particular EU Member State (for example the Czech Republic or Poland).
This may amount to a breach of EU competition rules by reducing cross-border competition as a result of restricting so-called "parallel trade" within the Single Market and preventing consumers from buying cheaper games that may be available in other Member States.
The Commission has just opened formal proceedings, and it noted there's no legal deadline for bringing the investigation to an end, so it could go on for quite a while, depending on the complexity of the case and the cooperation of the companies involved.
If it rules Valve and the publishers are in breach of its rules, the EU Commission could open the door to gamers legally buying games in another EU country's online store at potentially cheaper prices.
In terms of its impact on UK users of Steam, in a pre-Brexit world we fall under the EU antitrust rules, but in a post-Brexit world, we may not benefit from the Commission's ruling, whatever it may be.
Candy Arse can't disagree with this.
Nintendo should be the only company to get away with high prices since their games don't suck like the average pc game with bugs that wreck your computer and come with viruses and spy on you as if you are some criminal by default.
Have fun trying to move this to the conspiracy thread. It's about Valve ripping everyone off and it's games related. It's a conspiracy as well as games related so I can post to any of the two threads. Dumb Valve nuthugger...
No wonder europeans have to pirate games so much. The originals are too expensive thanks to Valve keeping prices too high for poor people to afford them. (also why witcher 3 devlopers needed to make the game for console to make a profit in order to survive. PC gamers are cannibalising the game industry imo)
PC gamers:
-entitled brats that want everything for free
-hack games so they can put nude mods in everything destroying the esports scene
-trying to import stupid shit into console scene like having to download 400 patches to your game before you even have a chance to play.
Argh they need their own forum. I don't want to be around them as society thinks I am a criminal like them just being associated with them in the same place.
"aahhh so you like pc games do you? I bet you download your games from Steam the service that valve supports?"
"uh yeah. Steam is cool"
"My father worked for Valve and they were caught ripping off customers by overcharging for games. He killed himself once everyone found out he is a criminal. Don't tell in public you like steam, it will get you bashed up by europeans"
Best to place these pc guys in freemasons imo. But the site admin won't listen to my suggestions as usual. Candy must have something to blackmail him with. Still can't figure out how he hasn't been banned. (talking about nintendo roms on pc which discourages people to buy HD remaster of Zelda games. That's illegal stuff in public forum. How does he do that?)