EU Charges Valve and 5 Game Publishers With Unfair 'Geo-Blocking' (venturebeat.com) 129
The European Commission charged Valve, the owner of a video distribution platform, and five game publishers on Friday with preventing EU consumers from shopping around within the European Union to find the best deal for the games they offer. From a report: The case is the latest move by EU antitrust regulators against cross-border curbs on online trade, key to what is seen as a major part of economic growth in the 28-country bloc. The Commission, which oversees competition policy in the 28 EU countries, said that the companies were Valve, the owner of the world's largest video game distribution platform 'Steam', and five game makers -- Bandai Namco, Capcom, Focus Home, Koch Media and ZeniMax. "In a true digital single market, European consumers should have the right to buy and play video games of their choice regardless of where they live in the EU," European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said. The Commission has sent what it calls a "statement of objections" to the companies, allowing them to reply and request hearings to present their arguments.
Rising prices (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Rising prices (Score:4, Insightful)
The EU would first have to unify the licensing market in some way, or the member states would have to reach some consensus through other means, before this can happen.
Re:Rising prices (Score:4, Interesting)
Unfortunately, this argument also seems to have only one conclusion under current EU rules: platforms like Netflix can't offer content anywhere in the EU unless they hold the relevant licences for everywhere in the EU.
This criticism, along with the pricing level problem I mentioned in another comment below, has been made repeatedly for about as long as the EU has been trying to establish a digital single market.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Rising prices (Score:5, Insightful)
platforms like Netflix can't offer content anywhere in the EU unless they hold the relevant licences for everywhere in the EU.
That's not really a problem, it will only require some adjustment. Nobody else will be able to, either, so the people who control the licenses will start providing licensing that permits such distribution. Otherwise they lose out on the sales entirely.
Re: (Score:2)
There's a simple solution for that, just don't allow any EU media company to enter into such a license contract going forward ... the problem will solve itself in due time as existing contracts expire.
Re: (Score:3)
Or having a license anywhere in the EU automatically grants an EU-wide license since the EU doesn't allow something to be licensed in only one member state as that's an artificial restriction of trade.
Re:Rising prices (Score:5, Interesting)
The trouble with this sort of argument is that IP law is mostly made at a global scale through mechanisms like WIPO treaties. The EU might not have the ability to enforce arbitrary restrictions on IP and licensing like that.
You mean the Berne Convention (Score:1)
And yes, it does let the EU do that.
Re: (Score:2)
There's a lot more to international IP law in 2019 than just the Berne Convention, and "Yes, it does" is not exactly a powerful argument.
The principle of copyright is that the rightsholder gets to determine who is allowed to perform certain restricted acts with the work. The function of most international copyright law today is to extend those same rights across almost the whole global market, in particular enforcing the rights of copyright holders in one place against people using the work in restricted wa
Re: (Score:2)
The point is that the default position under copyright is that the right holder gets to control who is allowed to perform certain acts with the work, and the main effect of all the related international law is to allow the enforcement of such rights internationally. Permitting other use without the copyright holder's consent requires specific provision. For example, various countries' fair use/dealing provisions permit some use even without the copyright holder's consent and the law specifically allows for
Re: (Score:2)
Well, at this point I'm pretty sure one of us doesn't really understand how copyright works, but as someone who has run businesses in this field for a long time and probably spent more money on real legal advice about these issues from real lawyers that you've earned in your entire career, I suspect it's not me. In any case, this discussion isn't going anywhere, so HAND and I think we're done here.
Re:Rising prices (Score:5, Insightful)
That's patently untrue. Steam is not charged because it does not sell something in regions where it is legally not allowed to: that would be absurd. Also, the EU has already explicitly acknowledged the problem of distributing digital content in a fragmented market where you may not have license in all the EU states and it's OK with a partial distribuion so much that it already has regulation for this exact situation.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Sure, at the moment the EU is basically part-way to its ideal conclusion, but it's been fairly clear about the direction of travel and where it intends to end up. The intent is to have a digital single market where the rules are entirely uniform across all member states and the sorts of pragmatic exceptions that are tolerated today have been eliminated.
Re: (Score:2)
The entire point of this endeavour is that you cannot have a licence for "region in EU" and segment the common market. You can only have a licence for entire market. If you have a licence for "some part of the market", you may as well not have a licence. Which means such licences will no longer sell.
Re: (Score:3)
That's wrong, the rules do allow different countries to have different content available. The EU even made an FAQ explaining this here: http://europa.eu/rapid/press-r... [europa.eu]
The issue is that if someone takes out a Netflix subscription in their country of residence and then goes to a different EU country for work or a holiday, they need to have access to all the content from their home country.
That's not what TFA is about though, TFA is talking about the ability to buy games from other regions and have them work
Re: (Score:2)
The situation today is clearly only intended to be temporary, though. The EU's openly stated goal is uniformity across the whole digital single market, it's just that some forms of portability and pricing constraints are already required while certain liberties are tolerated for the time being.
Re: (Score:2)
With the Epic one-year exclusives, that makes it easier.
There are no Epic exclusives except Fortnite.
There are several games that have curiously failed to release on time, but the publishers promise me they'll be available next year instead.
That's ok, I can wait.
Re: (Score:2)
Part of problem with digitally distributed is that some of the typical market forces no longer appear. You have extremely low production costs (making a new copy is trivial). You have extremely low costs for storing inventory (it's all digital). And there's no external distributor who's buying for $x and trying to resell for $y.
This was one of the biggest things I saw when digital games became popular and physical copies started going away. With a physical copy of a game you'd see the price drop by at lea
Re: (Score:3)
Of course they will. As someone who sells digital products to customers around the world, I have to wonder what else the EU ever thought was going to happen in this situation.
You can call the 28 a single market, but if the purchasing power of people in the relatively wealthy member states is several times that of people in the relatively poor member states and you prohibit market segmentation, the only options you leave your merchants are making all prices the same at some level they choose. Anyone below th
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
The Treaty of Rome states to work towards and ever closer economic and political union. The end state of that as a federal state will likely take hundreds of years.
Re:Rising prices (Score:5, Informative)
No, it has always been an economic union. Europe has experienced the longest running peace in centuries because of it. They've had wars on the Continent almost every 40 years prior to that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
The only reason to charge more in some areas is that you can.
Yes, and the only reason to charge less in some areas is because your buyers won't pay more. Welcome to economics 101. Merchants are in business to make a living, and they need to bring in at least enough revenue to leave a reasonable profit after costs. If artificially distorting the market to force uniform pricing prevents that, the product or service won't be available at all to anyone.
Re: (Score:2)
The purchasing power of people within any market will vary, and any pricing will inherently discriminate against those who can't afford it... Not everyone can afford a ferrari for instance..
The difference with digital content is that the pricing is totally arbitrary, and has no relation to the cost of actually providing the content.
Re: (Score:3)
The purchasing power of people within any market will vary, and any pricing will inherently discriminate against those who can't afford it...
Of course, and merchants often segment markets as a result. That's basic economics at work. The difference here is that the EU is artificially distorting what would happen in a free market for ideological reasons, and there are a variety of adverse consequences to doing that.
The difference with digital content is that the pricing is totally arbitrary, and has no relation to the cost of actually providing the content.
That's not entirely true because of issues like taxes and regulatory compliance, but sure, the basic idea is correct.
Now, please consider this thought experiment. You have an idea for a product with a potential global market of exactly
Re: (Score:2)
The goal of EU is to get rid of such differences, not to enforce them.
Sure, but they're putting the cart before the horse.
Re: (Score:2)
But the EU isn't a single digital market, at least not in the typical sense of a free market as used in economics. You can't legislate that away. It's just how things are, because you have such different economic conditions in different parts of the Union. Distorting that market to try to make it all work the same anyway is the EU's ideology.
Re: (Score:2)
The definition of a free market is essentially that the forces of supply and demand determine what happens without government interference. If the EU really were a single digital market in the economic free market sense, we wouldn't be having this conversation.
Re: (Score:2)
This is a textbook example of the EU's idealistic principles coming into contact with economic reality
And which part of: the economic reality is wrong, don't you grasp?
Just because one is richer you take more money from him? For what reason? The service is the same, the costs are the same.
The proposals are not about costs anyway, they are about not even delivering the service. Why can I not see the same movie in Estonia that I see in Germany? Why are some services simply saying: "uh ... you are not at home?
Re: (Score:2)
And which part of: the economic reality is wrong, don't you grasp?
The part where you think the practical implications of economics are subject to legislation.
Economics is primarily a mathematical discipline. Given a certain set of rules, it attempts to model what will happen next. How realistic the results of your models are depends primarily on how realistic your description of the rules is.
Just because one is richer you take more money from him? For what reason? The service is the same, the costs are the same.
Because some people will both value a product more highly than others and be able to pay that higher price, and under some conditions in a free market it is favourable to allow differ
Re: (Score:2)
Because some people will both value a product more highly than others and be able to pay that higher price That is not what it is about.
It is about me sitting in Germany and having a contract with Netflix, and when I travel to Spain: I can not see my movie I have paid for in Germany! Or when I'm in Thailand, it tells me: nope you can only watch in Germany!
The rest of your argument is bollocks. The service is the same, so the price should be the same. Just asking for more because you believe he is willing t
Re: (Score:3)
I described a thought experiment in another comment [slashdot.org] to illustrate why allowing price discrimination can ultimately result in better outcomes for everyone under some circumstances. Perhaps instead of arguing based on your personal moral standards, which is inevitably subjective, you'd like to explain how your version would help some or all of the participants more in the scenario I described there?
Re: (Score:1)
Take that up with BREIN, as they insisted a long time ago that German citizens be subject to Geo-fencing for content.
Re: (Score:2)
The part where the EU digital single market isn't actually a free market in the economic sense, and the EU is artificially intervening through regulation to promote greater uniformity in price and availability than would otherwise be present.
Re: (Score:2)
Here you go [europa.eu]. The EU already imposes extensive pricing controls. As we've been discussing elsewhere in this Slashdot story, currently there is still tolerance for differences in IP licensing in different places, but it's clear that eliminating such differences is one of the big goals of the digital single market project (though the degree to which they could legally force that issue given broader international agreements is apparently the subject of some debate).
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
My first thought on reading TFS was that the simple solution is to set one price in the EU - the highest price they are currently charging any member nation....
Which'll probably cost them some customers, and might even cut into their profit margin. But you never can tell, since most of the customers in the richer countries will probably just pay the higher fee....
Re: (Score:2)
My first thought on reading TFS was that the simple solution is to set one price in the EU - the highest price they are currently charging any member nation....
Technically the optimal price will be a little lower than that.
So people in high priced EU countries will benefit, people in the rest of the EU will lose out. Overall it'll encourage further migration from poor to wealthy regions within the EU, further exacerbating existing regional wealth discrepancies and boosting migration related anti-EU sentiments.
But what else can the EU do, without betraying their vision of a single market (or indeed, their seeming mandate to enrich certain countries to the detriment
Re: (Score:2)
Let's hope that they won't raise the poorest regions' prices up to the level of the richest regions' levels.
Of course they will. One market = one price for everyone. That is fair, no?
When are they doing this to Netflix etc.? (Score:3)
Netflix is the salvation (Score:3)
There are so many others out there guilty of the same beyond just games.
Netflix has no control over region availability of content that is not theirs, so you'd have to ask why they do not go after studios...
Netflix itself is awesome, because all content produced by Netflix is available in all regions. As the Netflix library expands, more and more content is world-wide, a major plus to going with Netflix instead of some dinosaur of media that insists on keeping some things to specific regions of the Earth.
Re: (Score:2)
If only there was enough good Netflix-original content to actually matter.
Re: (Score:2)
It's not just about content availability, although that is part of it. It's about prince discrimination. I've bought stuff from Amazon France before because it was much cheaper than the same item on Amazon UK. No extra taxes or duty to pay due to the EU single market and customs union.
Re: (Score:1)
No sh.. I’m dtill waiting for primevideo.com to release Babylon 5 ouside the US and UK, come on are the owners such monomantal scombags that norveveb smazon can get acresnwble deal out ofvthem
I'm guessing it's based on volume (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
I stopped subscribing to my favourite sports team's online media because of this.
They published 'free to access' footage of a match as a teaser to encourage people to sign up for the full highlights package. I tried to view the teaser and got told that it wasn't available to me because I was in the same country as the team, and this footage wouldn't be available in my country until the next day.
They got an email telling them that giving content to people for free while refusing it to their paying customers
Free to buy anywhere in the EU (Score:1)
People should be free to take a train and buy the games they want anywhere in the EU. Oh do they want to purchase games from the comfort of their own home? Seems like a missed opportunity to encourage gamers to leave their house.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Sarcasm aside, I've actually been in Romania last year, visiting my place of birth and some relatives that moved back to their homestead/farm, because they like the climate there more than in Germany.
When shopping in one of the bigger cities I noticed that German supermarket chains have sprouted all over the place there.
There They have a lot of products that are originally from western European states like Ge
Re: (Score:2)
EU's been bitching about this for a while. Supposedly identical products being actually different (i.e. worse) and sometimes even more expensive in the EE markets is a pretty common thing.
It's still surprising that despite living like 200km from Germany, I can't buy most of the products available there, huge global brands excepted obviously.
Re: (Score:2)
I know that at least some of them work in Germany for a couple of months and then head back home to spend money there, while others certainly have to manag
Re: (Score:2)
The whole idea behind the EU is creating a single market and your example is really bad.
Does a digital delivery cost more to Romania* than Luxembourg? No. Does it cost more to operate a bistro in Luxembourg than Romania? Yes.
Are there several Steam companies competing to deliver games? No. Are there several bistros in Luxembourg (and Romania) in a competitive market? Yes.
(* I'll keep your city-to-country comparison but that's... bad)
Partially true (Score:2)
Steam makes a lot of effort to stop people from buying outside the EU. But within the EU it is pretty much "change your current location in the settings, PROFIT".
A couple of years ago I bought all my steam stuff from russian, ukrain, brasilian and indian resellers for like 10-30% of the EU/US prices. This ist pretty much impossible now because those "poor country editions" have been blocked from starting for a couple of years in the EU. Though all my old stuff still works if I would buy a current game it wo
Petrol? (Score:2)
Do they require this of petrol companies as well, or are their prices not different by location? As far as Valve goes, you can activate games not purchased on Steam, so just purchase it in the store if you don't like the price.
Also, didn't the movie industry pretty much invent geo blocking? Or was it the publishing (book) industry? Are they going after them as well?
Re: (Score:2)
Europeans are very much allowed to cross internal borders to access whichever meatspace shop they like.
Exactly my point. Don't like the price for a product online? Go purchase it in a store.
Re: Petrol? (Score:2)
Petrol companies charge vastly different amounts at service stations within the same city. I've seen as much as 10c/litre difference for the same company only a few km apart.
Different countries have different taxes on petrol/diesel too, so prices will differ in different countries. There's nothing stopping me bringing my car to Germany to top it up. But I can't import from Germany without paying Irish taxes on the fuel.
it's NOT valve's 'fault'.. (Score:1)
they just enforce what the developers and publishers demand.
Re:it's NOT valve's 'fault'.. (Score:4, Informative)
they just enforce what the developers and publishers demand.
By that logic, the mafia's goons aren't culpable for their crimes since they're merely enforcing what their bosses are demanding of them.
Without regard for whether or not Valve is actually at fault here, one thing I can say definitively is that engaging in an activity at someone else's request doesn't magically absolve you of your legal responsibilities.
Did they forget about the consoles? (Score:2)
Kobo (Score:3)
I wish they'd do the same for Kobo Books...
I can only buy from the Irish store because I have an Irish credit card. I can't buy from the UK store as I don't have a UK credit card. Books are generally much much cheaper on the UK store.
I can browse the UK store, but get redirected to the Irish store when I try to buy something.
EU VAT rules (Score:2, Insightful)
Companies selling digitally delivered goods and services in the EU are required by law to gather evidence of where they customers are located.
The sales tax (value added tax) percentages, thresholds and rules vary widely across the EU. In the Netherlands you pay VAT on the first euro of sales. In the UK you can sell the equivalent of about 75000 euros of stuff before you need to charge VAT.
VAT is supposed to be paid to the country where the buyer is located. If you sell a pdf knitting pattern to someone in B