Five Studios + Valve Are Fined for Geo-Blocking Games

The internet might be big, but it's far from the open, free, and lawless digital wasteland that it's often depicted as. In reality, the internet is a fragmented place, with different regions and countries enjoying different sites, perks, and of course, prices. There are ways to get region-specific benefits and prices, specifically by using a VPN, but a lot of services (including Valve), actively ban people from trying to access different prices from differnet regions. This would be called a Geo-Block.

And as it turns out, Geo-Blocks are illegal in the EU, thanks to anti-trust laws, so the European Union has officially fined five different companies -- Bandai Namco, Capcom, Focus Home, Koch Media and ZeniMax (Bethesda) -- a combined €6.2 million for the practice. Valve, on the other hand, was charged a mere 1.6 million for failing to cooperate with the commission.
 

“More than 50% of all Europeans play video games. The videogame industry in Europe is thriving and it is now worth over € 17 billion. 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. Such practices deprive European consumers of the benefits of the EU Digital Single Market and of the opportunity to shop around for the most suitable offer in the EU”.

While this is something like a win for gamers, functionally, it's very doubtful things will change. It's possible that the different prices this companies set in different European countries don't rack in enough money to make it worth fines like this, but I doubt it: everything about a product is market-tested and reviewed endlessly, and the companies involved probably already decided that the legal violations was worth making sure every game is the prefect price for each region.

So really, this is just a case of studios getting fined and nothing changing. Yay.