Good, fuck geoblocking. Bandai 340k Capcom 396k Focus 2.8m Koch 1m Zenimax 1.6m Valve 1.6m
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_21_170
Judgement from the EU court of justice: https://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/2023-09/cp230147en.pdf
The listed countries look like countries that often get regional pricing. Was the geo blocking to allow for regional pricing in those areas?
I guess. But that doesn’t matter, it’s against a prime EU principle - free trade inside the EU. They can offer their products cheaper in those countries but they can’t tell other EU members not to buy there.
I actually got in contact with zenimax about that issue 10 years ago and after some back and forth they just forwarded me to their legal team. And I sure made a complaint with the EU about it. I’m sure there were lots of complaints about that issue but I feel somewhat validated right now.
I’d like to believe that this is the culmination of your complaint. You did this!
You‘re great! I recently made a complaint with the eu for apples „need mac to extract iphone passwords“. Lets see how that goes.
One of the rare moments I really like to live in the EU!
I understand the principle, but in practice, the result of this will be negative.
So to comply, companies will now charge people in the poorer countries more money. epic w
Yes, it is a w. As I mentioned, they are free to sell their products at a lower price in certain countries but they can’t tell someone from Italy that they can’t buy their product in Hungary. I honestly can’t understand someone who defends this practice.
So someone from California can’t buy products in Mississippi, that’s just fair - or it’s ok just because it’s via the internet?
Fuck geoblocking.
I think the point he’s making is now poorer countries will not get the benefit of regional pricing, they’ll have to pay full price, because there’s no way to prevent Italians from purchasing at Hungary’s reduced regional price.
Long and short, everybody will get the same high price from here on out.
this is not the same thing.
regional pricing does not block people from buying the game.
regional pricing allows people in poorer countries to afford games.
I do not see a problem with companies offering discounts to people who would not otherwise be able to afford their product.
No that’s exactly the same thing. They can offer the game for a discounted price in some EU countries, nobody said they can’t. What they don’t can is tell other EU citizens that they are not able to buy the product in those EU countries. I don’t know why you can’t understand this simple fact.
deleted by creator
No it’s not. Telling someone from California that they can’t buy products in Mississippi is WAY different than telling them they are offered a different price in the two states. They are not told that they can’t buy it. Your analogy does not translate to the situation.
That’s not what they’re told though. They are told “yes, you can buy our product.”
What you’re saying doesn’t make sense. You’re telling me you don’t have a problem with regional pricing (within the EU) on digital goods, but you’re stating that companies must offer that same ‘regional’ pricing to everyone (within the EU)… that’s no longer regional pricing, it’s all just one price then. These two lines of thought completely contradict each other. How can you have regional pricing if you want everyone from every region to be offered the same price?
Do you really think that companies who offer discounts on digital goods to buyers in poorer regions are being nefarious? If the companies are not able to regionally price the games, then they cannot offer a discount to the poorer regions, and all that happens is everyone in the poorer regions ends up paying more.
At this point I just lost hope to make you understand. One last chance: Italian man wants to buy Skyrim in Hungary and he is told he can’t. That, under EU law is not allowed. That is geoblocking. That is against free trade in the EU. This is exactly the same as if you would tell Californian man he can’t buy Skyrim in Mississippi.
You don’t want to understand, am I right? I don’t get you.
He understands you, but you don’t understand him… let me try to explain:
The EU laws essentially create an equalized economy between participating countries, similar to the analogy that someone in California can buy a product in Mississippi (sort of --we’ll get to this), someone in Italy should be able to buy the same product from Hungary at relatively the same price using the same currency or equivalent.
Now, I don’t live in the EU and I don’t know how it works over there, but in the US, someone buying a product must pay state sales tax; however, if the item is purchased from one state and shipped to another, the purchaser pays the state sales tax to where the product is being shipped. For example, if someone in California wants to buy a game from a retailer in Mississippi, the California buyer would pay California state sales tax.
This works fine within the US and EU, but what about non-US or non-EU countries? For example, Canada’s dollar (CAD) is not as valued as the US dollar (USD), but Canadians sometimes get stuck paying US dollar prices. This is a problem because the CAD is only valued at 74% of a USD (26% difference).
Now, scale the issue to developing countries. It takes 361.90 Zimbabwe dollars (ZWD) to equal 1 USD; therefore, if someone lived in Zimbabwe and they wanted to buy a 60 USD game, it would cost 21,714 ZWD, and this wouldn’t include shipping, taxes, etc. For someone ACTUALLY getting paid in ZWD, living in and amongst the Zimbabwe economy, it would be completely impossible to afford that game.
So how do you solve this problem?
Companies try to solve it by adjusting prices specific to each currency / country. For example, Valve might determine through research that a 60 USD game although equivalent in price to 21,714 ZWD is more proportionally equivalent to the Zimbabwe economy if it costs just 3,619 ZWD (ie. 10 USD); therefore, Valve may encourage the devs to sell the game cheaper in Zimbabwe than the US.
ok, great… everyone is happy? Wrong!
Scalpers will exchange USD for ZWD and buy a crap ton of copies at the ZWD price and then resell the games in USD, making a huge profit. For physical products, this isn’t as major of an issue because shipping costs, customs, etc would quickly destroy any potential profits; however, for digital products… it is a major problem, and company shareholders don’t look too kindly on “lost potential revenue”, especially when they were trying to do what was best for humanity in a developing country that someone else is taking advantage of.
Enter: Sales Geo-Blocking
Now we’re getting back to what @[email protected] was saying; since the EU is now enforcing fines, Valve and these companies may just stop trying to resolve the problem all together and just forget about Zimbabwe which is a travesty.
No, I understand. You are fine with regional pricing as long as there’s absolutely no way to enforce regional pricing. Which, when talking about a purely digital storefront, means there will be no more regional pricing.
This has already started happening in some regard. Recently, many games on Steam have already had their regional pricing removed, to the ire of gamers in poorer regions.
Truly a massive W
I haven’t read full document but I’m Polish and remember that back in the day when buying some games off Steam you’ve got some kind of eastern European version that was separate from global one.
Other than DLC being incompatible, the biggest pain in the ass was that the language selection was very limited, commonly just Polish, Lithuanian and Russian (which nobody speaks here). If you weren’t fan of localization or wanted to play game in the English or original language you were out of luck.
I can tell you for a fact that people in Hungary pay the same amount as the rest of the EU.