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Apple investigated by EU over e-book pricing, Steam next?
Apple and five publishers are being formally investigated by the European Commission over e-book antitrust allegations.
The Commission is investigating whether Apple worked with the five publishers to form a cartel over e-book sales, and whether they engaged in restrictive business practices. The publishers are Hachette Livre, HarperCollins, Penguin, Simon & Schuster, and Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck.
"The Commission has concerns the publishers may have colluded to raise the price of e-books and that Apple may have facilitated this," Commission competition spokeswoman Amelia Torres told ZDNet UK on Tuesday. "We are starting a formal investigation. This does not prejudge the final outcome."
Torres declined to say which concerns the Commission had over Apple’s practices or technology. Apple’s iBooks application is available for Apple devices such as the iPad 2 and the iPhone.
The Commission’s formal investigation proceedings follow a number of surprise inspections carried out by Commission officials in March, according to a Commission statement.
The UK Office of Fair Trading (OFT) shared similar concerns with the European Commission, and was running a parallel probe into Apple over e-books. The OFT closed its investigation before the formal Commission proceedings opened, but may reopen the probe if its concerns are not met by the Commission, an OFT spokeswoman told ZDNet UK on Tuesday.
"We closed the investigation on administrative grounds," said the spokeswoman. "During the course of the investigation, it became clear the Commission is well placed to address matters."
Simon & Schuster shares the same parent company as ZDNet UK: CBS Corp, a US company. HarperCollins is part of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, a US corporation. Penguin is part of Pearson Group, of the UK. Hachette Livre is owned by Lagardère Publishing, France. The German company Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck owns UK publisher Macmillan.
Apple has not responded to a request for comment at the time of writing.
Source: ZDNet
Also guess what happens with Steam and the publishers who put their games on Steam? According to the Steamworks FAQ:
3. Who sets the price for my game on Steam?
Pricing is very title specific, and we’ve got a lot of data and experience to help you decide on what the best price is for your title. We’ll work with you to figure out pricing.
So this basically means that the problem EU sees with Apple is that apple "worked with" publishers to set prices. Steam’s Steamworks FAQ says it does the same thing.
Is it time we contact the European Commission once more?
News thanks to rottencat!
European Union introduces new Internet Shopping rights!
The new EU Consumer Rights Directive has been formally adopted today by Member States in the EU’s Council of Ministers. The new legislation will strengthen consumers’ rights in all 27 EU countries, particularly when shopping online. After publication in the EU’s Official Journal, governments will have two years to implement the rules at national level. Today’s approval follows an overwhelming vote to back the rules by the European Parliament on 23 June 2011 (MEMO/11/450). The European Commission put forward the proposal in October 2008 (IP/08/1474). The final agreement between Parliament and Council on the Consumer Rights Directive was brokered by EU Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding in June this year.
Top 10 benefits for consumers in the new Directive:
1) The proposal will eliminate hidden charges and costs on the Internet
Consumers will be protected against “cost traps” on the Internet. This happens when fraudsters try to trick people into paying for ‘free’ services, such as horoscopes or recipes. From now on, consumers must explicitly confirm that they understand that they have to pay a price.
2) Increased price transparency
Traders have to disclose the total cost of the product or service, as well as any extra fees. Online shoppers will not have to pay charges or other costs if they were not properly informed before they place an order.
3) Banning pre-ticked boxes on websites
When shopping online – for instance buying a plane ticket – you may be offered additional options during the purchase process, such as travel insurance or car rental. These additional services may be offered through so-called ‘pre-ticked’ boxes. Consumers are currently often forced to untick those boxes if they do not want these extra services. With the new Directive, pre-ticked boxes will be banned across the European Union.
Steam should provide buying international titles around the globe
There’s a pretty interesting post on Steam Forums (thanks for the info Kossak) about regional versions of Steam games being released in Russia (yep, Russian only). The original poster thinks that "cheap region restricted versions should be optional, not forced".
Lets expand the idea a little and say why not release games around the world in two versions, one cheaper (restricted to one language only and even one area only where you can’t play it in other country) and one in full price but without any limitations?
What do you guys think about that? Do you have forced localized games too? I didn’t notice that in Poland (well maybe MAFIA 2…) but I guess if Steam would force me to use Polish version only of most games I would be pissed. Especially while playing multiplayer games.
Oh hai btw, Dead Island fucking rocks. I’m back.
Cool offers on GameTail.com!
Guys this store has an amazing discounts for retail games (boxed) such as Bad Company 2 £9.95, Fallout 3 GOTY £10.95 and much more. Plus the shipping is free to customers from European Union (including UK). I think I’m gonna get Fallout 3 GOTY… Thanks to Dragoon for this info!
Microtransactions Coming Soon To Steam
According to Voodoo Extreme 3D at IGN next month’s Steam client update will introduce support for much-hated microtransactions:
(…)
Microtransactions
Want to offer your customers a scabbard for their sword? New tires? The latest in night vision goggles? Now you can through microtransaction support in Steamworks.
Your item server can now be easily integrated with Steamworks so that Steam users can buy and instantly use the items they want – all without leaving the game. Steam handles all of the billing through the user’s Steam account.
Steam Cloud
Now with a greatly expanded capacity — now 100 MB per user, per game. The Steam Cloud API allows your game to write and retrieve files for each user.
Steam Total Makeover
The new Steam client makes finding friends, tracking achievements, reading news, organizing game collections, and keeping up to date easier than they ever have been before.
Even when creating visual aids, Valve remembers to screw mainland Europe.
Thanks to Kossak for providing the news from VE3D.IGN.COM (click for full article)!
Steam grows by 205% in 2009
Steam keeps growing even though the prices are very high in Europe – people are still paying for the digital downloads (although we can’t really say if Steam is more popular in USA or Europe).
Steam, now has over 25 million active users. Those 25 million users managed a peak concurrency of 2.5 million games players, racking up more than 13 billion player minutes per month.
But of course, the proof is in the profits: there are now over 1,000 games available on Steam, distributed by over 100 developers and publishers — big-boys and independents alike. All told, Steam sold 205% more units in 2009 than the previous year.
Gabe Newell added that Steam has grown immensely each and ever year of its existence. Steam’s only been around for five years, but in that time there have been numerous improvements and additions to the range of products provided by Valve, resulting in a greater-than-100-percent increase in sales year-over-year since its creation.
Steam: New Releases Week 45
I decided to start making these weekly articles that will illustrate the new game releases on Steam and how they are priced compared to US.
6 November update: added new releases: Big Brain Wolf, Magnetis, Aztaka, Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age: Origins Digital Deluxe Edition, RailWorks HST Buffer Version DLC, and Sacraboar.
7 November update: added League of Legends, Europe only.
2 November
- Men of War: Red Tide
- Men of War: Gold Edition
3 November
- Spellforce – Platinum Edition
4 November
- Shattered Horizon
- Massive Assault
- Massive Assault: Phantom Renaissance
- Massive Assault Network 2
- Massive Assault Collection
- Doom Rails
- Fatale
- Earthworm Jim Collection
5 November
- Big Brain Wolf
- Magnetis
- Aztaka
6 November
- Dragon Age: Origins
- Dragon Age: Origins Digital Deluxe Edition
- RailWorks HST Buffer Version DLC
- Sacraboar
- League of Legends
Left 4 Dead 2: Demo coming today, servers are up!
Left 4 Dead 2 was rescheduled for today @ 9PM (Central European Time). Meanwhile Left 4 Dead 2 demo server files are already available and we have some good news, thanks to our friends at Strefa Gier TP we just setup 10 servers in Poland.
Click here for IP addresses!
Update:
Something is downloading right now:
Update 2:
Fuck it, still blocked and redownloaded the whole demo and nothing. Nice job Valve.
L4D2 Pre-Purchase unfair regional pricing
If you are thinking about pre-purchasing L4D2, you should think twice, as you might be yet another victim of Valve’s regional pricing scam.
Previously only differing the price between US Dollar, Euro and British Pound, they now topped it by even discriminating between the European countries.
So we not only have the well known unfair price difference between Dollar, Euro and Pound:
but also differences between european contries:
Germany, France, Netherlands, Denmark, Finland, Sweden and a lot of others pay the high, unfair price of 44,99€ (L4D2)
http://store.steampowered.com/app/550/?cc=de (or /?cc= fr, nl, dk, fi, se..)
while countries like: Poland, Norway, Italy, Spain, Lithuania and a few other – for incomprehensible reasons -, pay a much cheaper price of 34,19€, which is only slightly more than the UK price in Euro!
http://store.steampowered.com/app/550/?cc=pl
Thats a price difference of 10€ or even 20€ less when buying a bundle of four L4D2 copies.
Workarounds:
1.) Gifting cheap games to friends in an expensive, foreign region is thankfully still possible, eventhough it probably won’t be for long, judging from recent developements.
So have a good foreign friend who lives in a cheap priced region gift you L4D2, after sending him the money via PayPal or likewise.
2.) If you can live without the “exclusive baseball bat” weapon that comes with Steam Pre-Purchases: Don’t support the Steam Regime at all and Pre-Order L4D2 on Amazon.co.uk for the cheapest of all prices: £26.99 (29,26€)
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Electronic-Arts-Left-Dead-DVD/dp/B002BSH9J4/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=videogames&qid=1254503223&sr=8-2
German users should be aware that L4D2, like 1, will be censored again, when buying from their region.
Buy the game at Amazon.co.uk or have a foreign friend gift it to you, for uncensored Zombie Slaughter.
Mouths wide shut
A user called gimpymoo created a thread on Steam Forums called Should Valve open a European Office?.
After few hours the thread got shut down…by the Steam Forums Administrator, and apparently for him an office in Australia (that’s where he’s from) is a priority and he decided to close the thread.
In case this gets removed:
Do you think that Valve should open an office in Europe?
I personally think that this office would be invaded with furious customers from all over the Europe in few days…
Latest on Mon, 05:29 pm
: http://7.asset.soup.io/asset/3169/3479_e953.jpg
: http://mp1st.com/2012/05/18/arma-2-sees-500-increase-in-sales-with-introduction-of-dayz-mod/ Oh what is it about zombies... Just makes everything better. haha
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: im just frustrated that they keep selling old games on everything digital now, making them HD and shit, there is no progress at all in gaming
: oh well got that on steam anyways already... so no good?
: it's just stupid wolf3d in browser
: FUCK THAT SHIT: Sorry, your IP address shows you are coming from a country that requires us to block access to this particular site. Click here (www.bethsoft.com) to check out our other games.
: http://wolfenstein.bethsoft.com/
: FEAR 3 75% discount (£3.25) in GameFly Activate in Steam. Steam price: 36,99€ http://www.gamefly.co.uk/
: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/stainlessgames/carmageddon-reincarnation
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: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=68460456
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: Thanks Tommy. And Stranded. Both questions answered flawless. :)
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: (Too bad the chatbox is not logging. So many good pictures get posted when I'm not checking the page for a few days.)
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