Valve, Bandai Namco, Capcom, Focus Home, Koch Media and ZeniMax have received a 7.8-million-euro ($9.45 million) EU antitrust fine on Wednesday for blocking cross-border sales in Europe.
Valve who would not admit wrong doing have received the largest fine of 1.66 million euros while the others saw a reduction of 10-15% for admitting wrongdoing.
The penalty followed a four-year investigation, as part of the European Commission’s crackdown on cross-border curbs on online trade in the bloc. The Commission, the EU executive, said the companies’ practices prevented European consumers from shopping around in a European market worth more than 17 billion euros.
Today’s sanctions against the ‘geo-blocking’ practices of Valve and five PC video game publishers serve as a reminder that under EU competition law, companies are prohibited from contractually restricting cross-border sales
Commissioner Margrethe Vestager
The competition enforcer said that the companies bilaterally agreed to geo-block certain PC video games from outside a specific territory, affecting some 100 video games.
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