Valve loses: European Court of Justice upholds antitrust fines incurred by its "locked area"

Thanks to CTOnews.com netizen Alejandro86 for the clue delivery! CTOnews.com, Sept. 27 (Xinhua)-- the European Court of Justice rejected Valve's appeal and upheld antitrust fines on him and several other game publishers who had previously been convicted of violating EU single market rules for imposing regional blockades (geo-blocking) in EU countries.

Regional blockade means that the PC game activation codes sold by some game publishers in some countries of the European Union can only be used in that country, in order to prevent consumers from using the lower prices of games in these countries to buy games through some technical means, which is considered by the European Commission to limit consumers' choice.

The European Commission launched an antitrust investigation into the regional blockade in April 2019, involving several large game publishers, including Valve, ZeniMax, Capcom, Bandai Namco, Focus Home Interactive and Koch Media. In 2021, the European Union fined these companies. Of these, Valve was fined 1.6 million euros, ZeniMax was fined 1.6 million euros (CTOnews.com Note: currently about 12.368 million yuan), Focus Home Interactive was fined 2.8 million euros (currently about 21.644 million yuan), and Capcom and Bandai Namco were fined less than 400000 euros (currently about 309.2 million yuan).

Valve appealed the EU's antitrust ruling at the time, arguing that copyright holders should have the right to charge different prices in different regions. This week, however, the European Court of Justice rejected Valve's appeal, saying copyright holders could not use copyright laws to discriminate against prices or create "artificial price differences" in different countries.

It is unclear whether Valve will appeal again and refer the case to a higher court.