The European Commission has announced in a press release that it is fining Valve and five other publishers for “geo-blocking” PC games, preventing their sales across borders in the EU. Valve has already said it plans to appeal the decision, and has now issued a much longer statement outlining its position on the EC’s findings.
The fine concerns Steam activation keys provided to developers – not games sold directly on Steam. “Valve offers free Steam activation keys to developers,” a company representative tells us, and those keys are often sold through a third-party retailer. Valve says that “about only 3% of all games using Steam (and none of Valve’s own games) were subject to the disputed region locks in the EEA at the time.”
The company adds that it “considers that extending the liability of the EC to a platform provider in these circumstances is not supported by applicable law.” However, Valve also says it already stopped locking games in the EEA in 2015, except where it is required by law to ban the sale of certain games in specific regions.
You can read Valve’s answer in full below.
Valve’s statement:
During the seven-year investigation, Valve worked closely with the European Commission (“EC”) and provided evidence and information as requested. However, Valve declined to admit that it was breaking the law, as the EC demanded. Valve disagrees with the EC’s findings and the fine imposed on Valve.
The cost of the EC does not cover the sale of PC games on Steam’s PC gaming service – Valve. Instead, the EC claims that Valve has enabled geo-blocking by providing Steam activation keys and – at the request of the publishers – locking those keys to certain territories (“region locks”) within the EEA. Such keys allow a customer to activate and play a game on Steam once the user has purchased it from a third-party reseller. Valve offers free Steam activation keys and does not receive a portion of the purchase price when a game is sold by third-party resellers (such as a retailer or other online store).
The region locks only apply to a small number of game titles. About 3% of all games using Steam (and none of Valve’s own games) were covered by disputed region slots in the EEA at the time. Valve believes that the EC’s extension of liability to a platform provider in these circumstances is not supported by applicable law. Nonetheless, due to concerns from the EC, Valve actually disabled region locks within the EEA as of 2015, unless those region locks were necessary due to local legal requirements (such as German content laws) or geographic limits on where the Steam partner is licensed to distribute a game. Removing region locks can also cause publishers to raise prices in less prosperous regions to avoid price arbitrage. There is no charge for sending activation keys from one country to another, and the activation key is all a user needs to activate and play a PC game.