by Antonio Delgado 2 hours ago …

The European Commission has imposed a millionaire fine on companies such as Valve, Capcom, Bandai Namco, Focus Home Interactive, Zenimach and Koch Media for apply regional locks to their games , something that made certain titles They could not be acquired depending on the country from which the user was connecting and that contravenes the European Union regulations for the digital single market among member countries.

These companies applied regional blocks after reaching agreements with Valve, a company that has refused to cooperate with the authorities.

The combined fine amounts to 7.8 million euros, with Focus Home Interactive being the most affected company, which has received a sanction of 2.9 million . Valve has refused to cooperate with the Commission, for which it has had to pay 1.6 million euros of fine, while the rest of the companies received smaller sanctions for having collaborated with the investigators.

These developers reached bilateral agreements with Valve, owner of the huge digital distribution platform Steam, to allow the implementation of geo-blocked game keys that did not work in countries like Poland , Hungary, Estonia and others in the area between the years 2010 and 2015. In total more than 100 games were detected with this illegal practice.

The fines and their discounts and amounts are detailed in the following table:

10%

Company	Discount for cooperation	Penalty fee ( €)
Bandai Namco	10%	340 000 EUR
Capcom	15%	396 01 EUR
Focus Home	10%		2 888 01 EUR
Koch Media	10%	977 01 EUR
ZeniMax	1 664 01 EUR
Valve	0%	1 624 01 EUR