European Union

Publishers fined $9.5M for geo-blocking Steam games in the EU

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The EU has fined Valve and five publishers $9.5 million for geo-blocking PC games on Steam within Europe. According to Kotaku: Geo-blocking breaches EU antitrust rules, and so the five publishers cited—Bandai Namco, Capcom, Focus Home, Koch Media and ZeniMax (Bethesda)—were fined around €6.2 million. As the owners and operators of Steam, Valve—who “chose not … Read more

Steam users have the right to resell their games, French court rules

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A French court has ruled that Steam must allow users to re-sell their digital games. French consumer group UFC-Que Choisir brought the lawsuit back in 2015. According to French video game website Numerama, the court found that Valve’s blocking of the reselling of games runs contrary to European Union law. As Polygon explains: The court rejected … Read more