Nintendo, Game-Making Rivals Probed Over Contracts in Europe
- U.K. looking into auto-renewal of contracts by Nintendo, Sony
- EU targeting companies including Valve, owner of Steam
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The European Commission accused Valve Inc., the owner of Steam, and five other video-game publishers of breaking competition rules, while the U.K. began a probe into the automatic renewal of online gaming deals from Nintendo Co. and Sony Corp.’s PlayStation.
Contracts that penalize some customers because of where they live are a focus of several EU antitrust probes that have already fined Nike Inc. and Guess? Inc. for unfairly curbing sales outside of one country. Britain’s Competition and Markets Authority is looking at the annual rollover of contracts, and barriers consumers face to canceling them. The investigations form part of a larger push to knock down barriers to online sales.