
EC sends Statements of Objections to Valve and five publishers on “geo-blocking” - AnssiH
http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-19-2010_en.htm
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dx87
Someone posted Valve's response to this on /r/steam. Basically, they don't
agree with it, but stopped doing it years ago since they knew the EU was going
to give them problems with it. They also said that it only applied to physical
copies of games that included a code to redeem on steam, so they weren't
making any money off of this, and it was only done at the request of some
publishers.

~~~
_Codemonkeyism
X made me do it.

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l0b0
"The information you are looking for has moved. You should find some or all of
it at [http://europa.eu/european-union/index_en."](http://europa.eu/european-
union/index_en.") Looks like it's been taken down, because
[https://europa.eu/search/?queryText=geo-
blocking&query_sourc...](https://europa.eu/search/?queryText=geo-
blocking&query_source=EUNION&filterSource=EUNION&more_options_date=*&more_options_date_from=&more_options_date_to=&more_options_language=en&more_options_f_formats=*&swlang=en)
doesn't return any results.

~~~
thg
No problems here.. In any case, here's a mirror:
[http://archive.is/EJrls](http://archive.is/EJrls)

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londons_explore
Good good.

Time for geoblocking to go away

~~~
Mirioron
But now think about the consequences of this: everybody in the EU has to pay
the same price for the games. There's an income difference of 5-10 times
between different EU countries. The poorest ones will have to now pay the same
price as the richest ones. A game costing >€60 when you have less than €300
disposable income per month is crazy expensive.

~~~
izacus
Why would everyone have to pay the same price for games? Where does this logic
come from?

Just because you can buy a car in Iowa and drive it to California, it doesn't
mean people in Iowa have pay the exact same price for it than in Cali.

Same goes here - EU doesn't force you to price thing the same across all
countries. But you are just not allowed to ban people from buying a thing in
one EU country and take it to another - this is the CORE tenement of EU's
single market and without this limitation, the EU single market cannot exist.

Banning customers from being able to shop around for lower price of a good
they want is also an egregious voilation of core benefit of free market
capitalism.

~~~
michaelmrose
Imagine that based on local income a digital product that has virtually no
marginal cost is $25 in one market and $50 in another for whatever currency
you please.

If someone in market B can by clicking over to a different storefront for
market A then logically the vendor will no longer offer the good at the lessor
rate in market A.

They will have to figure out what price maximizes revenue in both and it will
surely disadvantage buyers in market A because the vendor gains as much for
one market B buyer as two market A buyers.

If 40% of your buyers are from poor land then losing every one of them is as
costly as dropping richland users prices by 1/3.

What if the vendor offered coupons available only locally to make it more
feasible to differentiate prices while keeping stuff portable?

~~~
rcxdude
Because this isn't what happens. Price discrimination, if done perfectly,
minimises the value the consumer can get and maximises the value the seller
can extract from them. Overall it is a negative for consumers.

