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Valve and Game Publishers Face EU Probe For Geo-Blocking; ASUS Faces Probe For Online Price-Fixing (betanews.com)
Valve, the company behind games distribution platform Steam, is being investigated by EU antitrust regulators. Agreements in place between Valve and five game publishers that implement geo-blocking in titles could breach European competition rules. From a BetaNews report: Valve, alongside Bandai Namco, Capcom, Focus Home, Koch Media and ZeniMax, is under investigation to determine whether the practice of restricting access to games and prices based on location is legal. At the same time the European Commission is launching an investigation into ASUS, Denon & Marantz, Philips and Pioneer for price manipulation. The investigation into the four electronics manufacturers centers around the fact that the companies restricted the ability of online retailers to set their own pricing for goods.
Steam is working around issues where they sell games for next to nothing in dirt poor countries because some money is better than no money. Their troubles are reseller sites buying thousands of copies in Russia or whatever and reselling them to the west. Still half price for the westerner, shady middle man gets 14$ total profit and steam gets a buck instead of 60.
They give no shits about censorship outside of what they legally need to comply with.
From TFA:
Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said: "E-commerce should give consumers a wider choice of goods and services, as well as the opportunity to make purchases across borders. The three investigations we have opened today focus on practices where we suspect companies are trying to deny these benefits for consumers."
So the MPAA, Amazon, Netflix, Hulu, et al. can geoblock, but video game publishers/distributors can't?
I suppose that makes sense. Or something.
No they are also targeting that, and have been for a long time. They are extending the fight against geoblocking to not just include movies, but also include games. Does that make more sense to you?