The EU Commission imposes fines totalling €7.9M on a digital distribution company and 5 publishers for geo-blocking (Valve / Bandai Namco / Capcom / Focus Home / Koch Media / ZeniMax)

On 20 January 2021, the EC fined Valve Corporation and five publishers, Bandai Namco, Capcom, Focus Home, Koch Media and ZeniMax, a total of EUR 7.9 million for breaching antitrust rules by partitioning the EEA market. Background Valve, together with the five publishers, restricted cross-border sales of certain PC video games based on the geographic location of the users, within the EEA (otherwise known as geo-blocking). Valve operates Steam, one of the world’s largest online PC video gaming platforms. It allows users to download and activate PC video games. Valve provides publishers the opportunity to use Steam to ensure authenticated copies of their video games are played by customers. Alongside this service, Valve offered publishers the ability to control the country