Posts tagged european-union 
EU Commission holds meeting over free-to-play concerns
The European Commission is meeting with member state authorities and companies like Apple and Google with an eye to enforcing stronger regulation of free-to-play games. The European Union's executive body says it's concerned a substantial number of games are marketed as free but in truth entail in-...
Valve can restrict resale of digital games in Germany, court rules
The Regional Court of Berlin has dismissed a lawsuit from the German consumer organization VZBV against Valve, for now granting Valve the authority to prevent Steam users from reselling their libraries of digital games. Business as usual, that is. In September 2012, VZBV brought a desist letter...
UKIE 'pretty confident' UK tax relief will go through despite EU doubts
UK gaming trade body UKIE is "pretty confident" the country's tax break proposal will be approved by the European Union and finally put into place, nullifying the doubts raised by the EU Commission over taxpayers contributing to the proposed relief. Last year, the UK government approved the much...
EU Commission raises doubts over UK games tax relief, launching investigation
The European Commission announced an impending "in-depth investigation" into the UK tax relief for video games following doubts regarding its necessity. The breaks, announced last year by the UK government, are set to provide 25 percent tax relief on 80 percent of qualifying games' budget spent in ...
EU court rules it's legal to resell digital games, software
Buying and reselling any form of digital software is perfectly legal, the Court of Justice of the European Union has ruled. Software authors – or in the gaming world, publishers – can not stop customers from reselling their games, even if the publisher attaches an End User License Agree...
Square Enix files for European trademarks 'Drakerider' and 'Blood of Chaos'
The problem with trademark filings, folks, is that unless they're tied to an already existing intellectual property, it's a bit difficult to suss out whether they're for a new game or for a new downloadable content pack or ... what, exactly. Such is the case with two newly discovered Square Enix tr...
EU could lose tax breaks for game developers, threatens talent exodus
The European Union provides us a small-scale glimpse into the potential functions of a truly global society -- and more recently, a global society in crisis. The unified currency of the EU, the Euro, was on the brink of collapse recently and all of its member countries are still running damage cont...
Terraria goes retail in EU with 'Collector's Edition' on March 16
Despite selling over 1 million copies of Terraria across Terra Firma, Merge Games believes the title has yet to reach a key demographic: PC game buyers without internet connections. Okay, okay, it's also possible that the Merge Games-published "Collector's Edition" of the Re-Logic-developed 2D indi...
Sony 'PS Vita' logo appears on EU trademark registry filing
On friday, while no one was peeking, Sony Computer Entertainment was quietly filing to trademark the name "PS Vita" and a logo in Europe. But NeoGAF forum user B.D. noticed, and pointed out the Trademarks and Designs Registration Office of the European Union (breath) filing this morning, which ag...
PlayStation Network's 'Welcome Back' content now available
Sony is currently rolling out the content previously detailed in its "Welcome Back" package in North America. A post on the US PlayStation Blog details as much, and dishes out a lengthy FAQ on the offerings. First and foremost, if you weren't a PlayStation Network user before April 20, 2011, you'...
