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The European Commision has detailed its plans to outlaw geoblocking and enforce EU digital price parity. The plans will ensure all digital content can bought and accessed regardless of what country it’s bought in, but it also means Europeans could be forced to pay a single price across all territories - for better or for worse.
As it stands the likes of Steam’s efforts in geoblocking have seen users restricting from giving or receiving gifts from certain territories, closing loopholes on cheaper games. If these reforms from the European Commision become law then this will apply to all digital platforms, including Steam, Origin, Xbox Live, and PSN.
In theory the illegalisation of geo-blocking should ensure any digital code bought from around the world will work in a European territory, but it’s difficult to interpret whether this will in fact be the case.
Recently it emerged that geo-blocking via Steam could prevent users from accessing their own games while travelling abroad. These changes should overwrite this with amendments to copyright law, so content bought in one region will still be accessible in another.
Finally the European Commision is taking a look at the curation of content on digital platforms. Clearly it isn’t happy that priority is being given to some titles over others on storefronts.
“I want to see every consumer getting the best deals and every business accessing the widest market – wherever they are in Europe,” said EC president Jean-Claude Juncker. “Exactly a year ago, I promised to make a fully Digital Single Market one of my top priorities. Today, we are making good on that promise.”
The cynic in me believes this this will just result in the raising of pricings to the highest common denominator rather than the “best deals” for all. Time will tell, but it’ll be interesting to see this one pans out, and whether we could see standardised prices roll out globally.
Do you think this move is in the best interests of gamers? Are you expecting a Europe-wide price hike when this comes into force?
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