Valve fails to get out of paying its EU geo-blocking fine
Valve fails to get out of paying its EU geo-blocking fine
www.engadget.com
Valve fails to get out of paying its EU geo-blocking fine
Valve fails to get out of paying its EU geo-blocking fine::Valve has failed to convince a court that it didn't infringe EU law by geo-blocking activation keys, according to a new ruling.
Good, a well deserved fine for shitty price fixing actions.
Localised pricing is good though? Is it really fair ask someone in India to pay the same price as an American? If you can't geo block keys, you can't stop people taking advantage by using a VPN to buy games from whatever country got the lowest price. The result will just be publishers keeping the high price for every country, screwing poorer regions over.
Also, what they did wouldn't really qualify as price fixing.
Did you read the article? This isn’t comparable to your India vs America example, it’s specific to prices only within the EU where the EU has digital market rules that specifically prohibit this.
What Valve did does sound like price-fixing too according to your linked definition of “an agreement among competitors to [fix] price levels”:
“Valve and five publishers (Bandai Namco, Capcom, Focus Home, Koch Media and ZeniMax) agreed to use geo-blocking so that activation keys sold in some countries … would not work in other member states. That would prevent someone … buying a cheaper key … where prices are lower.”
Having lower prices for poorer regions isn't price fixing. The real issue is that it's hard as fuck to find a way to have localized pricing when every bordering country, richer or poorer, uses the same currency.
Now let's see Australian consumers get fair pricing from Valve. We get royally screwed.