Valve Under EU Investigation Over Price Fixing Accusations

Steam is currently the biggest online digital video game retailer for PC with markets encompassing several countries all over the world. Now, its parent company Valve is being investigated by an EU panel over accusations that it colluded with publishers in order to create prices that against the union’s competition laws.

The central point of the investigation appears to be the reports that video game publishers like Capcom, ZeniMax, and Bandai Namco have been colluding with Valve in order to block discounted prices from being accessed by other regions, Digital Trends. According to Margrethe Vestager, the commissioner of competition policy, this is a violation of the EU’s competition laws, which explicitly provides consumers with as many options in terms of products and services as possible.

“E-commerce should give consumers a wider choice of goods and services, as well as the opportunity to make purchases across borders,” Vestager said. “The three investigations we have opened today focus on practices where we suspect companies are trying to deny these benefits for consumers.”

Vestager elaborated that the investigations are focusing on determining whether or not Valve is denying certain regions or countries access to particular deals that are being offered to others. If so, this would be a clear violation of the competition rules that the EU has put in place in order to protect consumers from disadvantageous transactions.

It would seem that Valve is not being singled-out in being investigated either as other e-commerce industries are also being placed under a microscope for potential breaches of the EU’s competition laws. These include Travel & Tours operators and hotel bookings, PC World reports.

It is worth noting that there have been no complaints about such differences in prices from consumers. The EU Commission basically took it upon themselves to launch these investigations after noticing the regional discrepancies on prices.