European Commission: intra-EU geo-blocking on Steam is against the law

According to the European Commission, Valve and five game publishers are acting in violation of European law. The parties offer game activation codes cheaper in some EU countries, but consumers from other countries cannot use those codes.

This practice goes against the spirit of the market, the European Commission writes. The accusation is that Valve has made agreements with five game publishers to use geographically blocked activation codes. As a result, games can only be activated in the country where they were purchased.

These are activation codes for games sold on third-party websites. Some of these codes can only be used in certain countries. According to the Commission, Valve has collaborated with Bandai Namco, Capcom, Focus Home, Koch Media and Zenimax on this.

In addition, according to the Commission, those five publishers have imposed contractual export restrictions on other distributors. According to these restrictions, the distributors were not allowed to export the games outside the specified countries. In this way, the customer cannot buy the physical version of a game via, for example, a Polish webshop. These commercial practices would have prevented consumers from purchasing certain physical and digital games.

The Commission’s preliminary view is that consumers are disadvantaged by these commercial practices and that the practices are contrary to the European single digital market. The accused parties will now have the opportunity to respond, after which the European Commission will give a final judgment and measures may be taken. The Commission may fine the parties up to 10% of their worldwide annual turnover.

Two years ago, the European Commission launched an investigation into the practices.