UK Approves $900 Million Class Action Lawsuit Alleging Valve’s 30% Steam Share Revenue Is “Excessive” And “Unfair” To Players
In a stark reminder than even the most noble efforts are still prone to massive flaws, the UK has given the go-ahead to a class-action lawsuit accusing Valve of unfairly balancing their Steam revenue share program in such a way that the country’s 14 million players are being “overcharged” for their video game purchases.
First filed with the Competition Appeal Tribunal in June 2024 by the CEO of the UK-based Parent Zone digital rights advocacy group Vicki Shotbolt, the suit claims that Valve “has been operating anti-competitively and as a result, has reduced competition in the PC games market, including by restricting competitors from successfully entering the gaming space and by controlling pricing in the digital gaming industry.”
Noting that “one result of this behaviour is that consumers are paying too much for PC games and in-game content and have lesser PC Game platform alternatives,” the lawsuit’s official ‘Steam You Owe Us‘ website explains that while Steam’s prices often “appear to be the lowest”, this is actually due to “price restrictions that Valve often imposes on game developers and producers (the Price Parity Obligations).”
“This means a publisher or developer would not be able to list a game on another platform as well as Steam, unless the prices offered on Steam is the same or lower. This applies to games on all other distribution stores (including online and physical stores) not just those distributed by Steam Keys. This allows Valve to maintain the monopoly position it has for PC Games as there is not real incentive for gamers to go elsewhere where a game may be cheaper (which would then in turn enable those other platforms to improve).”
In regards to the UK, current law further holds that companies who hold a “dominant” position in any given market “are not allowed to charge excessive prices”.
To this end, the lawsuit asserts that “Valve’s commission rate of up to 30% is excessive given: competitors lower commission rates; the way the platform operates for the consumer; and the high level of profit that Valve is making absent a viable competitor (which its behaviour directly restricts as developers are not permitted to list games at lower prices on competing platforms).”
“This unfair commission charge is paid for by the consumer,” the website’s official recap concludes.
As for relief, the lawsuit is seeking a restitution “provisionally” estimated at “£656m including interest” ($901 million USD), with individual compensation currently predicted to fall in the range of “around £22 to £44 per person [$30.28 to $60.55], depending on how much an individual has spent on Steam or other PC gaming platforms for PC games and add-on content,” with “additional compensation” being made available ” for those based in Scotland.”
And while Valve attempted to prevent the lawsuit from moving forward by arguing that the aforementioned Platform Parity Obligations (PPOs) “are not (perhaps effectively) enforced and therefore did not constitute an abuse (and the resulting inherent tension with the PCR’s case[)]”, London’s Competition Appeal Tribunal determined that the matter was “clearly rather one for trial”.
(Curiously, as noted by Alex Forbes-Calvin of Games Industry.biz, Valve also attempted to argue that Shotbolt would be wholly unable to fund the lawsuit, even though she had already verifiably secured £18.6 million ($25.5 million) at the time of the developer’s response.)
While the UK’s Online Safety Act has resulted in some infringing websites being geoblocked the UK, it seems unlikely Steam will be forbidden from operating while the lawsuit is debated.
Nonetheless, it should be noted Steam’s revenue share split is considered an industry standard, with 30%-to-the-storefront also being the standard for GOG, Microsoft Store on PC, Google, Apple, Amazon, and even GameStop.
Notably, as highlighted by Forbes-Calvin, Valve was previously hit with a United States-based anti-trust lawsuit in 2021, as brought against them by Overgrowth developer Wolfire Games on the issue of the 30% split.
Though dismissed at the end of that year, it was refiled in May 2022 before being combined with a similar lawsuit filed by Djinni & Thaco: Trial By Spire studio Dark Catt Studios and granted class action status by a federal judge in November 2024.
