Gaming IndustryValve is being sued in the UK for $843 million for ‘overcharging 14 million PC gamers and abusing its dominant position’ with SteamWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
Gaming IndustryValve is being sued in the UK for $843 million for ‘overcharging 14 million PC gamers and abusing its dominant position’ with SteamWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
(Image credit: Valve)
Valve is being sued in the UK for £656 million ($843 million) over claims that it uses Steam’s dominance in the PC gaming marketplace to shut out competition and overcharge for games.
“Companies who hold a dominant position in a market are not allowed to charge excessive or anti-competitive prices,” Milberg said atsteamyouoweus.co.uk, a website dedicated to the lawsuit. “They also cannot impose other unfair trading conditions that prevent or hinder others from competing with them.
“We believe Valve Corporation has been unfairly shutting out competition for PC games and in-game content, which has meant that UK customers have paid too much for these products.”
The suit also alleges that Steam’s pre-eminence has enabled Valve to continue charging “an excessive commission of up to 30%” to game publishers, which in turn “results in inflated prices for consumers.”
The lawsuit turns on three key points: That Valve imposes price parity obligation clauses on developers, preventing them from offering lower prices on other platforms; that all add-on content for games purchased on Steam must also be purchased through Steam, a practice known as tying; and that the cut it takes on all sales through Steam—the aforementioned “excessive commission”—has resulted in excessive pricing on games.
Valve has faced multiple Steam-related legal actions in the past: In 2018, for instance, it was slapped with a$2.4 million finein Australia for Steam’s lack of a refund policy prior to 2015, and in 2023 it ate a$1.73 million fine(originallyimposed in 2021) for “geo-blocking” games—that is, preventing game keys purchase in some geographic regions from being activated in other locations. That’s a lot of money, but it’s also a relative drop in the bucket: A 2023VG Insightsreport estimates Steam earned more than $9 billion in revenue in 2023.
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Valve’s 30% take from Steam salesisn’t popularwith developers, particularly in light of the fact that other digital storefronts including the Epic Games Store and Microsoft store only take 12%. But the company has repeatedly defended its take and, aside from arevenue share adjustmentin 2018 that reduced the cut to as low as 20% based on sales, refused to budge on it. That dogged stubbornness led Valve to get tangled up inEpic’s drawn-out battle with Apple, and also inspired Epic boss Tim Sweeney to call everyone at Valve “assholes.”
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