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Steam Owner Valve Faces $900 Million Lawsuit Over PC Monopoly Claims, Following UK Tribunal Ruling - IGN (www.ign.com)

submitted 2 days ago by thelastaxolotl@hexbear.net to c/games@hexbear.net

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A UK tribunal has given the go-ahead to a £656 million ($901 million) collective action lawsuit targeting Valve over alleged anti-competitive practices on PC storefront Steam.

The legal action, originally filed in 2024 by digital rights campaigner Vicki Shotbolt, has now been given the green light to proceed following a ruling by the UK's Competition Appeal Tribunal, BBC News has reported.

In short, Valve is accused of wielding its status as the dominant digital game storefront to lock game developers and publishers into release parity restrictions, and keep game owners spending on Steam when buying add-ons.

Shotbolt's lawsuit is a collective action claim, effectively a class-action suit, which she is attempting to take forward on behalf of the 14 million UK citizens who have bought games or add-on content through Steam since 2018.

The tribunal's new ruling, published this week, takes into account Shotbolt's claims and an initial response by Valve designed to halt the legal action from progressing further.

The lawsuit alleges that Steam unfairly imposes platform parity obligations which prohibit publishers from selling games on rival stores with better terms, causing a restriction of competition. The legal action has also taken aim at the need to continue buying add-ons for games bought through Steam via Valve's own marketplace, leading to a further reduction in competition. Finally, it alleges that Valve imposes unnecessarily high commission charges — essentially, the typical 30% cut it takes when you spend money on Steam — which results in higher prices for consumers.

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[–] aanes_appreciator@hexbear.net 12 points 1 day ago

So:

most of the complaints are bogus, or are standard practice across most of the industry.
if it was successful it would set a precedent that would punish MUCH more egregiously monopolistic entities, namely Google and Apple, the latter of whom is engaged in a hyper-aggressive variant of the rentseeking complaint.
even despite the previous two, the UK has essentially zero authority go enforce this ruling: Valve is an American business, and a massive one at that. Trump has already directly intervened to get massive concessions on major legislation, such as allowing Twitter's "child porn generator" feature and Meta's "the child can consent to being groomed by the MLK chatbot" platform.

I'm no Valve sycophant, it's simply a capitalist entity fulfilling a niche, but this shit is about as realistic as that time Russia fined Youtube a bajillion dollars for banning RT with zero irony.