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I'm sure those countries love paying UK prices when their currency doesn't even have half of the buying power.
The issue with abuse of cross-regional buying could've also been tackled by creating separate SKUs that only support the regional subset of languages; limiting multiplayer connectivity to only those SKUs; or other means of making it less appealing to use an out-of-region version of a game.
Alternatively, they could've worked with Steam to devise a rebate system allowing people using payment methods that could actually provably be tied back to the regions in question, to receive a partial refund.
All of those would've been legal options of curtailing that problem without sticking it to those regions that are less well off, like the publishers did.
The reason the EU doesn't allow blocking cross-regional purchasing within the internal market, is that in general where local demand is met with local supply, it causes the local economy to grow and do better. So any additional out-of-region purchases adding to local demand actually flow money into that poorer economy and improve it, both from the retail side as well as the producing side.
Digital content just happens to be a market where this doesn't work out for the better.
Thing is- nowadays, the EU legislative package does actually have an exclusion for creative works that involve intellectual property rights, afaict. So it's possible this was actually already amended - even though Valve would still be fined for what the law was at the time.
You are the one that brought up the cases in France and Germany, sport.
You claimed this new case in the UK having no chance of going anywhere, and that it reminded you of several other cases involving politicians not understanding the law and being 'slapped down' by the courts - citing the cases in France and Germany to kind of resemble that.
My point is that that was wrong. Because for one, the French case wasn't a clear cut case of the plaintiff being 'slapped down' - it took rather careful consideration and appeal. And for another, it wasn't a case that involved actual government or politicians, but rather originated from the private sector. Pretty much like this case in the UK, which - for the record - I agree with you: it is preposterous and the plaintiff's claims are unfounded.
I cited the case regarding the EU price segregation because it's an example of an actual case started by a government organization, and it sticking. Could've equally substituted the famous case from Australia as well.
Actual governments tend to know what they're doing and won't start something unless they're quite sure they're in the right. More so than consumer rights organizations, where starting such cases is in part also activism to bring certain topics back into the public eye; or on a more practical note: to keep themselves relevant.
The thing they were sued for was disallowing a key corresponding to a particular SKU from being activated under an account in another geographical region than the SKU's assigned one. That was deemed to fall under the domain of the legislation on illegal price segregation, because it leaves consumers with no way to use their voucher (the key) to redeem the actual product and complete the transaction.
But it would've been perfectly legal to create and market different SKUs meant for different countries with different language support. Like, let's say, create a cheaper separate SKU that only contains on-screen text in Eastern European languages - without English present. And that would prevent most of the richer Western region of the EU from buying those keys. Even if they did buy them, and could activate them, those editions would be worthless without knowledge of those languages.
Similarly, SKUs that isolate multiplayer to only those alternative regions mean ladders, ingame social events, etc. are all going to be tied to only that region as well. And would for instance also not allow multiplayer with friends that bought the 'normal' version. Again, an easy to implement and legal deterrent.
(Heck- that whole case was about keys acquired via third-party resellers. The whole issue could probably have been ameliorated simply by offering the regional cheap prices only when purchasing directly through Steam, and setting the price for all generated keys provided to resellers to the high-value price point, precluding any need to block out-of-region activation within the EU market.)
So you're saying they should have "helped" the players by segregating them, doubling the development and maintenance workload, and scamming them by giving them a version of the game that is missing features rather than just giving lower prices to people in countries with less buying power.
You should familiarize yourself with the thread rangers, the EU already got change, unfortunately it ended up being very anti-consumer for the customers thanks to the EU laws.
That segregation is in many cases an implicit fact already, for instance you are quite commonly assigned to servers in the region you are geographically residing. And even if you're allowed to hop regions, ladder standing etc. will be kept isolated per region, so you're restarting from the bottom. In some cases even in-game or platform community award unlocks are tied to regions. Blizzard does this with their games on Battle.net - for instance.
Moreover, time zone differences and the different 'prime times' for gaming being offset from one another already create a soft implicit split as well.
As for doubling development and maintenance?
No. Games already maintain separate regions and - if they have big infrastructure support - also separate geographically co-located server farms. This suggestion would've just locked you to one corresponding to the purchased SKU, rather than setting you to your current geographical location (and optionally allowing you to roam - because also not all games support that).
And multiple different languages are already implemented using a baked in system with different text resources being pulled in dynamically, based on selected language. Creating different SKUs with different levels of language support just means removing part of the language files from one SKU. And if you really don't want them to be able to be pasted in by users after the fact, you could easily set up a build pipeline that uses cryptographic signing to only allow certain SKUs that have the right credentials baked in, to load certain languages. This is a one-time setup, kind of deal.
But I'm not here to sate people's needs for a lengthy cross-examination, so let's bury the topic here and return to the issue of the UK case, please?
The EU ♥♥♥♥♥♥ over poor countries. That's it.
Encouraging frivolous lawsuits just because you hate a company isn't a good look
Not sure I'd call this frivolous.
Given the sordid reputation of the law firm in question, this might have a good chance of being less 'on a whim' and more premeditated malignancy.