Valve’s been ordered to hand over to Apple confidential data including aggregate historical sales and price on 436 titles hosted on its games distribution platform Steam Store.
You Have to Admire Apple’s Chutzpah
Apple has subpoenaed Valve as part of its ongoing Apple vs. Epic Games antitrust case. The company argued in court filings that it needed commercial data about Steam sales as part of its legal spat with Epic Games over the App Store fees and terms of business.
In court filings, Apple addresses Steam as “the dominant digital game distributor on the PC platform,” adding that Steam is “a direct competitor to the Epic Game Store.” The company aims to prove that its 30 percent cut and the App Store terms of business are on an equal footing to other software distribution platforms, such as Steam.
Steam is the largest digital distribution platform for PC gaming. In 2019, Steam offered 34,000+ games and had more than 95 million monthly active users. Customers can even play these games on Steam Machine micro-console with dedicated Steam controllers.
“It’s Not Just You”
The fact that Apple originally requested a massive amount of confidential sales, financial and other business information wasn’t lost on US Magistrate Judge Thomas S. Hixson.
A lawyer representing Apple in the ongoing discovery hearing (Epic & class actions) told Magistrate Judge Hixson: they’d like to see whether competition from Epic’s app store resulted in lower prices on Valve’s Steam. Apple apparently wants to argue: look, Steam kept the 30% rate
— Florian Mueller (@FOSSpatents) February 24, 2021
Law360 says Apple wanted Steam data dating as far back as 2015. The judge, however, has ruled that Valve only needs to show Apple newer data from 2017. Remarking that Apple has “salted the earth with subpoenas,” the judge told Valve, “Don’t worry, it’s not just you.”
The amount of Steam data that Apple originally sought from Valve is truly astounding. In its original filing, the company requested data on more than 30,000 titles—not to mention confidential information about Valve’s financial performance.
Magistrate Judge Hixson explains to #Valve‘s counsel that the definition of the relevant market (total games market if #Apple got its way) could be determined one way or the other. Counsel for Valve, however, says they understood Apple as defining the market as “#Epic“. https://t.co/MDd0PPKhor
— Florian Mueller (@FOSSpatents) February 24, 2021
For instance, Apple demanded to see data like annual sales of games and in-app purchases, annual advertising revenues, annual Steam revenues and earnings, and so forth.
Valve Tried to Fight Back
Fired back, Valve said it shouldn’t be forced to reveal commercially-sensitive data spanning several years back, adding “Valve is not Epic, and Fortnite is not available on Steam.”
Somehow, in a dispute over mobile apps, a maker of PC games that does not compete in the mobile market or sell apps is being portrayed as a key figure. It’s not. The extensive and highly confidential information Apple demands about a subset of the PC games available on Steam does not show the size or parameters of the relevant market and would be massively burdensome to pull together.
Valve has requested that Apple’s demands for further production be rejected. But the judge has now ordered that Apple’s subpoena to Valve is valid, with Apple itself arguing that the information it’s requested “does not raise the risk of any competitive harm.”
Valve has been ordered to produce the Steam data by the middle of March.