All I can is laugh at all of those who during the whole Epic Game Store debacle where it is Steam or nothing. Then things like this come out. Valve did not even bother because of such loyal supporters they have a ton of FU money. None of these curated store fronts should even exist. Game support forums is all they should be.

CrazY_Milojko:

There is also the other side of the story... My country (Serbia) is part of the East Europe, btw we are not the part of EU. Steam games should be cheaper for gamers here, I'll explain why, but sadly they're not. As far as I know we pay the same amount of money for games on Steam like someone who is living in Germany, Austria, France. I don't game for years, but have 3 kids-gamers and they are regularly buying games via Steam, that's why I know how pricey are games for average gamers in my country. Not everyone here can afford AAA games €50 or even more expencive. Average monthly salaries here are WAY, WAY LOWER compared to Germany and other Wester Europe countries that belongs to EU. It's not fair for gamers here to pay the same amount of money for games, same as someone who lives in some Western European country or in the US. Tbh it's not the problem for me and my kids but most people here earn on average around €400 to €500 per month (give it more or less it's the same situation in other ex-YU countries: Bosnia & Herzegovina, North Macedonia, Montenegro...), it's like a night and day comparison with someone who is living in the west and every month earns between €/$2000 - 4000. Just to add more oil on the fire: believe it or not fuel and food are even more expencive here compared to EU or US, and not just those two things... On the other side some software companies have different prices for their products depending on the world region. For example Kaspersky Lab for my country has Eastern Eureope Edition prices for Kaspersky Anti-Virus, Kaspersky Internet Security... and they are significantly lower when compared to EU or US prices. I know because I buy lot of these every year for home and office use. It was not always like this, they're lowered the price for our country and surrounding East European countries some 5, 6, 7 years ago, can't complain about that. My 2 cents...

If you would get cheaper games than rest of the continent, everyone would be ordering under a VPN server in your country, and first of them would be Germans with monthly salary of €4K. It doesn't matter what your income is, as long as you can buy something cheaper, you will do it no matter what. So that's why they divide world only to larger regions like US, EU, Asia...etc and not much deeper, yet the purchasing power definitely differs across regions. Other countries and continents just get attached to their closest parent region. And that's why Germany and you have the same price of €50 for one game, because you are in EU region. Kaspersky has definitely better approach but it is a russian corporation and they seem to not follow a typical euro-american business model ignoring purchasing power, yet such attitude is definitely not common in companies selling software. I assume that the original idea was picked up long ago to value intellectual things like software and multimedia same way as physical goods which reinforced the attitude to have a rigid pricing, then again, variable prices would definitely open potential for abuse by customers from high income countries and would require additional protective measures to be tied to users' accounts, all of which would be at the expense of a company that want to earn revenue from you, not give it away. Just to notice, EU gasoline is more expensive because of EU living off all the taxes and fees and duties tied to the fuels which they do not add to the cost of gas in the US, but actual price of a raw gasoline is mostly the same. Americans have cheaper gas, europeans have free education and free healthcare. I take the european model is better because education and healthcare are necessities you need and can't afford, games and gas are things that are expensive but you can absolutely do without if you can't afford them.

Geo-blocking will not end. Not with fine as small as this one. If I can buy game from over seas and save $30, then it is $30 company lost. With such difference, all it takes to recuperate valve's fine is 55k sales at full price which did happen thanks to geo-blocking.

This is a slap on the wrist, but make no mistake, the EC will go after them again if need be and the next fine isn't going to be this lenient. It's going to be billions. They've already done it before with other repeat offenders.

so the argument goes that this is nonsense because geoblocking allows lower prices in poorer markets, so its "justified", because otherwise "they would be forced to apply luxemburg prices everywhere" of course they will try and do just that, and fail; instead if they had a brain it would be romania prices everywhere, because brute-forcing every market to swallow luxemburg prices just means getting luxemburg profits from luxemburg alone, and 0 profits from almost everywhere else due to piracy so I hope the EU keeps fining their asses

Thank you shitty communist EU imbeciles. Now games in my country will increase in price because Valve will be forced by socialist-psychopaths to make it "equal" in whole EU. Equality for everyone, this was the same when my country was in USRR, the same becomes in EU. And fk! I remember those times, looks like history repeats. I envy USA, every state has more freedome and can set their taxes etc. how they want. If only EU would learn from USA.

EspHack:

so the argument goes that this is nonsense because geoblocking allows lower prices in poorer markets, so its "justified", because otherwise "they would be forced to apply luxemburg prices everywhere" of course they will try and do just that, and fail; instead if they had a brain it would be romania prices everywhere, because brute-forcing every market to swallow luxemburg prices just means getting luxemburg profits from luxemburg alone, and 0 profits from almost everywhere else due to piracy so I hope the EU keeps fining their asses

On other hand, dude (EU) fining them is not any better. Companies want as big piece of the pie as they can get from each region. EU fining those globally operating companies gets money from all gamers across the world. In other words, EU wants to suck finance from all other regions too. And what good does it do for gamers? We'll never see single Euro from this fine even if we live in EU. Then again, we have free market even if EU hates free market. We have options and ability to make choices, even when EU claims that we have no choice and no ability to make own decisions. If I do not like price of game on steam, I'll go elsewhere. If I can't get game in price I like, I have option to not buy it. And sure, I do not like prices in here for most of games, so I stopped buying as often. And I have tons of games I did not even start and many which I play and can continue playing for tens of thousands of hours. While one should evade politics here as much as possible, this very thread is about politics. EU while based on capitalism, pushes heavily for democratic socialism. And all those anti-free market fines are just surface expression. EU is not doing its citizens any services. Quite contrary, they systematically destroy self sufficiency of any country as much as they can, so each country depends on trade with other countries. They use our own money against us. And this is no different. Fines for doing "damage" to gamers will not be used to repair "damage" done to EU gamers.

Weekend:

worst case? piracy will go up.

Piracy is not a so big problem if editor/distributor do it right... Compulsive pirate user would never buy a software anyway even at 1 euro, so you should consider them as "bothering" and not as a "lost of gain". If they do it wrong then some marginal % of consumer will go to piracy of course, but most will abandon the editor or talk bad about it (more bad for them. exemple: EA or UBI). Steam still do that if it was the only one and above any law... On the distance i think it's wrong.

Biały Wilk:

Thank you shitty communist EU imbeciles. Now games in my country will increase in price because Valve will be forced by socialist-psychopaths to make it "equal" in whole EU. Equality for everyone, this was the same when my country was in USRR, the same becomes in EU. And fk! I remember those times, looks like history repeats. I envy USA, every state has more freedome and can set their taxes etc. how they want. If only EU would learn from USA.

I don't think USA is an exemple or maybe a counter-exemple at this moment, also EU is not socialist or communist at all, it's just an heavy useless technocracy... On other hand it remind me also when i was east side too.

Biały Wilk:

Thank you shitty communist EU imbeciles. Now games in my country will increase in price because Valve will be forced by socialist-psychopaths to make it "equal" in whole EU. Equality for everyone, this was the same when my country was in USRR, the same becomes in EU. And fk! I remember those times, looks like history repeats. I envy USA, every state has more freedome and can set their taxes etc. how they want. If only EU would learn from USA.

In US region if game costs $50, it costs like that in every state, and poorer states have to earn harder that $50 than richer states. The US has income inequality too.

Raserian:

In US region if game costs $50, it costs like that in every state, and poorer states have to earn harder that $50 than richer states. The US has income inequality too.

There is income inequality in any country. We with less than 11M people have many sub regions and very different income for same job. Very different housing prices. It is natural. There will always be edge of: "Not buying for this price." Question is in who can tell seller at what price he can sell? Nobody in free market. When I sell, and give you discount (for whatever reason) and someone else does not get it... Do I have right to control final sale price or not? Can I give discounts? Anything goes in free market. But apply EU rules to everything and you are going into far left political spectrum. And economy lessons did teach anyone who was able to learn that political systems and economical are often not well separated. And when political systems tend to meddle with economical, left/mid/right tend to do it in very different ways. And it has very different consequences. [youtube=a0D1RAY5NZ8] Finding entire documentary may be hard, but if you are interested in economy theories and real implications. It may be worth the effort.

Biały Wilk:

Thank you shitty communist EU imbeciles. Now games in my country will increase in price because Valve will be forced by socialist-psychopaths to make it "equal" in whole EU. Equality for everyone, this was the same when my country was in USRR, the same becomes in EU. And fk! I remember those times, looks like history repeats. I envy USA, every state has more freedome and can set their taxes etc. how they want. If only EU would learn from USA.

Thing is, Valve hasn't been geo blocking since 2015 or so. According to Valve, the few games that make use of geo blocking don't even use Valve to enforce it, seems most of them are just doing it cause of country content restriction, Germany as example. Not sure if the case even comes down to price differences, more like some people just seem fast to jump the gun.

Richard Nutman:

Yeah I think this fine is silly. It's stupid to have a single price between countries of vastly different prosperity levels.

From trade and sales perspective, EU is one "country".

This is EU: when they decide new taxes for the people these are immediately enforced with much enthusiasm but when they decide a fine for a very big company it is too little too late. The income differences between countries is not the main problem: even in one country you have regions with more prosperity, development and income than others - so these inequalities are extended at the global level - but the centralized decision IS: it should be a federation of states like USA - it is a proven working model while the EU model struggles every time when there are some problems because of the lefty - tree hugger - idealists from Bruxelles. Anyway the fine amount is "huge" - pocket money for these companies.

Good

barbacot:

because of the lefty - tree hugger - idealists from Bruxelles

Vestager, lefty? Valve has responded to this btw.

VALVE’S STATEMENT: During the seven year investigation, Valve cooperated extensively with the European Commission (“EC”), providing evidence and information as requested. However, Valve declined to admit that it broke the law, as the EC demanded. Valve disagrees with the EC findings and the fine levied against Valve. The EC’s charges do not relate to the sale of PC games on Steam – Valve’s PC gaming service. Instead the EC alleges that Valve enabled geo-blocking by providing Steam activation keys and – upon the publishers’ request – locking those keys to particular territories (“region locks”) within the EEA. Such keys allow a customer to activate and play a game on Steam when the user has purchased it from a third-party reseller. Valve provides Steam activation keys free of charge and does not receive any share 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 applied to a small number of game titles. Approximately just 3% of all games using Steam (and none of Valve’s own games) at the time were subject to the contested region locks in the EEA. Valve believes that the EC’s extension of liability to a platform provider in these circumstances is not supported by applicable law. Nonetheless, because of the EC’s concerns, Valve actually turned off region locks within the EEA starting in 2015, unless those region locks were necessary for local legal requirements (such as German content laws) or geographic limits on where the Steam partner is licensed to distribute a game. The elimination of region locks may also cause publishers to raise prices in less affluent regions to avoid price arbitrage. There are no costs involved in sending activation keys from one country to another, and the activation key is all a user needs to activate and play a PC game.

rl66:

I don't agree, the price should be set for everyone, and so the poorer side. Not so long ago the normal price for a physical game was 10 Euro, and for a AAA game you were accepting to pay 40 Euro. There is too much sheeps in EU and US that accept: -to give their confidential data for a skin ingame -micro-transactions that cost them 40 euro by month if all merged for a "free game" -to pay a game 120 euro just to have it the 1st day when few week after you will have the same game at 59 euro -... and more we can write pages about the stupidity... All of that because because some brainwashed said "it's a normal way to do", "what can we do about it?", "it's not important, everybody do like that"... CONSUME OBEY PAY Hopefully there is alternatives, and people started to wake up since few years.

You need to get outside more socialist.

Agonist:

You need to get outside more socialist.

Maybe in your country... not here or in our neighbourg, socialist and communist do less than anarchist or independentist in vote since a decade.

Asgardi:

From trade and sales perspective, EU is one "country".

It should be like that, but in reality it is not. The tax are different from one country to other some even have no taxes, the incoming aren't the same (if i were working in france i would gain around 1600 Euro, 1200 in spain, around 1000 in newcomer country). Actual EU have just made trade and sale easier inside EU... It's already a good point, but it is not enough for future as the economic fight is global (China is very very hard, they have money, ressources and can do anything from crap to highest luxury).

My my i guess they needed to fund peanut snacks ! :P