Steam key geo-blocking infringed EU competition law, court finds
Valve has failed to convince the European Union's Court of Justice that it did not infringe EU law by geo-blocking activation keys on Steam.
Five other video game publishers were also found to have breached anti-competitive practices: Bandai Namco, Capcom, Focus Home, Koch Media and ZeniMax.
As a reminder, the European Commission announced plans back in 2017 to investigate Valve and the aforementioned PC game publishers over suspected anti-competitive practices.
As we previously reported, the Commission had suspicions that agreements between Valve and the publishers broke EU competition rules by restricting retail prices or excluding customers from certain offers because of their nationality or location.
The Commission aimed to find out whether the agreements between Valve and the publishers required the use of activation keys for the purpose of geo-blocking — preventing consumers from using digital content because of a their location or country of residence.
Now, a new ruling from has concluded Valve and the five publishers had indeed infringed EU law, after Valve tried to convince it otherwise.
Valve tried to state it had not infringed the law by arguing that publishers had the right to charge different prices for their games in different countries. However, the court has dismissed this.
«In agreeing bilaterally to that geo-blocking, the operator of the Steam platform, Valve and five PC video games publishers unlawfully restricted cross-border sales of certain PC video games that are compatible with that platform,» the court said. This instance of geo-blocking was then «used to eliminate parallel imports of those video games and protect the high royalty amounts collected by the publishers, or the margins earned
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