Valve loses a court case in the EU and has to pay 1.6 million euros in fines for geoblocking

The General Court of the European Union has upheld the decision to impose a fine for geo-blocking on Valve Corp. which owns the Steam digital game distribution platform, reports Bloomberg.

As it is known, the European Commission has fined Valve and five other publishers for obstructing cross-border sales of PC video games based on the geographical location of users, a practice known as geoblocking.

Valve was fined €1.6 million ($1.7 million) for obstructing the sale of certain PC video games outside Europe. However, the company pleaded not guilty.

Now the EU General Court, which is the second highest court in the bloc, has rejected the giant’s appeal. In doing so, it upheld the European Commission’s conclusions that the companies’ actions illegally restricted cross-border sales of games.