European Commission Investigating Valve Over Steam’s Geo-Blocking

There is a good reason why region-locking games/consoles is starting to become a thing of the past. Even Nintendo who has been known to region-lock their consoles and games have done away with that practice with the upcoming Switch console. However on the PC front, it seems that Valve has found themselves under investigation for geo-blocking on the Steam store.

The company is currently under investigation by the European Commission over potential anti-competitive practices on Steam for the EU region in the form of geo-blocking, which is almost like region-locking where a customer from one region might not be able to purchase a game from Steam due to their location (this is similar to how sometimes you come across videos on YouTube that you cannot watch due to your location).

In a statement made by the European Commission, “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’s Margrethe Vestager, the commissioner in charge of competition policy adds, “E-commerce should give consumers a wider choice of goods and services, as well as the opportunity to make purchases across borders. The three investigations we have opened today focus on practices where we suspect companies are trying to deny these benefits for consumers.”

Tyler Lee
Categories: Gaming, General
Tags: Legal, Steam (Valve), Valve