The EU says Steams current store geoblocking system will break the law when it changes in 2020, asks them to change it before that happens

[HomeBoi]

Well it aint a bad thing until steam makes it a bad thing, EU has actually done a gppd thing here and as far as i can see they really aint the problem in this setting.

[Lathlaer]

I want geoblocking gone because I want to purchase native english versions of games on Origin  - IDK if that rule will be applicable here but I can only hope.

[Stormseeker9]

4 hours ago, VanayadGaming said:

There are several currencies in the EU... lots more than those 3 you mentioned

Yeah I realised this too late, was kinda drunk when I responded to this haha 

[Lathlaer]

20 minutes ago, huilun02 said:

Why not apply the same rule to food products, and have producers and wholesalers force high prices onto poorer EU states?

 

How would they feel about that?

I think I'm missing the analogy here because I don't see how it's applying the same rule

[Delicieuxz]

5 hours ago, valdyrgramr said:

Can you bypass that by changing your region on Battle.net since Destiny 2 is still listed under there as is the new COD?  

I don't know, but I think that you'd have to change your IP address to one from the region you want your game to be for when buying it, and also to that region in order to play it (and then you'd have latency because it would connect to game servers for that region and through the VPN you're using).

[williamcll]

Hopefully this will bring in some nice EU discounts.

[Doobeedoo]

Seems a messy situation indeed. Here in Croatia something like $60/€60 for a game is, quite a lot. It's numerous times more, compared to average salary, than vs US or some other EU countries for example which have the same price. 

So normalizing prices through EU would make poor countries pay even more (while we currently already do) and more wealthy ones less. Where I live we're in EU for a while now, still not using € though. It will probably suck the day we do. Who knows how this will end up. But oh wow will I not buy games any more if the price would ever go up. Even now AAA price is quite a good chunk of a monthly salary. Should I add games tend to get released more scuffed and extra money grabbing then ever.

[Thaldor]

10 hours ago, mr moose said:

 

The article states that:

 

 

I read that (as many others appear to have), that they are looking at the entirety of steam, meaning it will effect the entirety of the digital online sales and the effects of geo blocking (which is what is actually being discussed here).   If consumers have access to cheaper pricing in another country (through the steam store and not a third party) then that will undermine the current economy of steams business.  How that ends is what people are concerned about.

 

Article says what article says. There's already taxation reasons why Steam can have different pricing in different countries (last year EU stated that ecommerence platforms must pay taxes to and by the coutries of their customers, not many care about that because it's highly unenforced because the monitoring and acting is pushed to the countries tax officials). The press release itself just talks about "activation codes" and in case of Bandai Namco, Focus Home, Koch Media and ZeniMax contractual export restrictions in their agreements with a number of distributors other than Valve (which a lot seems like they were limiting the countries where boxed games could be bought or having geoblocked keys in boxes to limit the key reselling).

 

Either way more or less this falls into the hands of publishers and developers and how greedy they are. The games are actually a lot cheaper in far bigger markets than the richer EU countries and it doesn't even matter because people can just buy the games a lot cheaper by buying them from other services. If they were to remove store areas and put the same price to everywhere and that would be the sixth highest price in the world, I can see how G2A, Kinguin and others rub their hands together because they still can provide keys outside of the EU with a lot cheaper prices and their userbase will grow.

[mark_cameron]

On 4/5/2019 at 9:16 PM, Master Disaster said:

 

Source - https://wccftech.com/steam-geoblocking-eu-antitrust/

 

God damn the EU is on a huge powertrip right now, meddling in everything. RIP cheap game keys from 2020 I suppose.

No it isn't 

 

This is legislation that's been in place for decades. Its Competition law.

 

Companies are fixing prices here within the EU when the EU trade rules allow an EU citizen to purchase goods and services across boundaries equally.

 

Nothing to do with power trips at all.

[imreloadin]

Welp since they passed the whole article 13/17 fiasco and now they want to do this I say it's just time that all internet companies just pulled out of Europe until they get their shit together. The pressure that they'll get from their citizens when they can't access things like Facebook, Google, Steam, etc will force changes to be made.

[Zeeus]

On 4/5/2019 at 4:17 PM, Trik'Stari said:

What's hilarious to me is that this will just default to the most expensive price.

 

The spirit of this is to make it easier for people to get cheaper games, or at least a more fair deal, but it won't result in that. Because, why would they? Companies will just default their games to the highest price in the region, and eat the loss in sales in poorer areas, or areas where the game might be older, and the price having been reduced over time.

 

To me, just another example of how governments routinely don't understand how businesses work, and end up hurting people more than helping.

Although its quite possible this may happen, you cant say this with hundred percent certainty considering theres factors you dont know about. How big is the market in those poorer countries? How many sales will a company lose? Theres a lot of math involved here a lot more variables at play then just saying a will result in b etc.

[Trik'Stari]

9 hours ago, Zeeus said:

Although its quite possible this may happen, you cant say this with hundred percent certainty considering theres factors you dont know about. How big is the market in those poorer countries? How many sales will a company lose? Theres a lot of math involved here a lot more variables at play then just saying a will result in b etc.

Well, I could also factor in the man hours in paying a financial expert to figure all that out.

 

Then I could remove that, by simply defaulting to the highest price in the region and not paying someone to figure all that out. If we've learned anything from the gaming community, it's that their cognitive dissonance will convince most of them to pay anything for whatever is hyped the hardest and hits that indescribable X-Factor.

 

This is the problem with the concept of a single market.

[79wjd]

2 minutes ago, Trik'Stari said:

Well, I could also factor in the man hours in paying a financial expert to figure all that out.

 

Then I could remove that, by simply defaulting to the highest price in the region and not paying someone to figure all that out. If we've learned anything from the gaming community, it's that their cognitive dissonance will convince most of them to pay anything for whatever is hyped the hardest and hits that indescribable X-Factor.

 

This is the problem with the concept of a single market.

The cost of an individuals salary is irrelevant -- and companies certainly realize that. But, more importantly, just setting prices at the highest price doesn't necessarily maximize profits if the largest market happens to be one that can't afford those prices. Regardless, a move like this is far more likely to hurt poorer regions more than it could potentially benefit a wealthier region.

[Trik'Stari]

24 minutes ago, 79wjd said:

The cost of an individuals salary is irrelevant -- and companies certainly realize that. But, more importantly, just setting prices at the highest price doesn't necessarily maximize profits if the largest market happens to be one that can't afford those prices. Regardless, a move like this is far more likely to hurt poorer regions more than it could potentially benefit a wealthier region.

We also need to factor in the political aspect.

 

The CEO or whomever saying, "okay, f**k those politicians, I'll make this entire thing painful for as many people as possible and then spin it as "we had no choice" and then make it the politicians fault for their stupid laws".

 

Not saying I agree with any of this.

[mr moose]

1 hour ago, 79wjd said:

The cost of an individuals salary is irrelevant -- and companies certainly realize that. But, more importantly, just setting prices at the highest price doesn't necessarily maximize profits if the largest market happens to be one that can't afford those prices. Regardless, a move like this is far more likely to hurt poorer regions more than it could potentially benefit a wealthier region.

 

1 hour ago, Trik'Stari said:

We also need to factor in the political aspect.

 

The CEO or whomever saying, "okay, f**k those politicians, I'll make this entire thing painful for as many people as possible and then spin it as "we had no choice" and then make it the politicians fault for their stupid laws".

 

Not saying I agree with any of this.

Both of these are likely outcomes.   Until we have a one world government and currency we are beholden to the complexities of dealing with lots of littler ones.