European antitrust regulators have opened an investigation into the Steam games distribution platform operator, Valve, and five PC games publishers to determine whether geo-blocking agreements between them amount to a breach of the region’s competition rules.
The Commission is concerned agreements around how consumers can purchase digital content are reducing cross-border trade by preventing games players from buying cheaper games elsewhere in Europe. The five games publishers named in the probe are: Bandai Namco, Capcom, Focus Home, Koch Media and ZeniMax.
The investigation will focus on whether activation keys used to confirm a copy of a game is not pirated are (or have been) used for the purposes of geo-blocking — thereby limiting consumers’ access to a purchased game, based on where in the region they are located.
