Epic Games and Fortnite CEO Tim Sweeney, as you might be able to guess, is in favor of the £656 million (about $900 million based on current conversion rates) lawsuit against Valve that was recently approved by the UK Competition Appeal Tribunal.
The gist of the lawsuit, brought forward by self-proclaimed digital rights campaigner Vicki Shotbolt, is that Valve‘s policies and position as the leading distribution service in PC gaming means publishers are effectively blocked from selling games and add-ons at lower prices on competing stores. The suit also seeks a payout for millions of UK gamers who might have overpaid £22 to £44 for games since 2018. The finer details get really messy, especially as Valve countered that Steam key resellers do allow for transactions outside of its own platform, so you should probably read our full breakdown.
As Steam’s loudest competitor, Epic Games Store boss Tim Sweeney didn’t pass up the opportunity to give his two cents on the situation. “Steam’s rules do explicitly prohibit games from steering players to competing purchase methods, forcing everyone to pay 30% to Valve,” he recently tweeted. “Apple and Google did the same until the court explicitly found this practice to be unlawful. Now they don’t!”
It’s not clear exactly what rule Sweeney’s referring to here, but Steam’s own guidelines state that “it’s OK to run a discount for Steam Keys on different stores at different times as long as you plan to give a comparable offer to Steam customers within a reasonable amount of time.” Though Valve would also prefer that developers “don’t give Steam customers a worse deal than Steam key purchasers.”
“Today, in the USA, developers are free to steer users of iOS and Android apps to competing purchase methods. Apple and Google collect 0% on those transactions. On computers and smartphones, Valve is the only major store still holding onto the payments tie and 30% junk fee,” he continued. “A store can charge a fee for selling a product. What the court found is: after you’ve bought a game, the store can’t force all in-game commerce between you and the developer to go through them with 30% junk fees. It’s like a car dealership demanding 30% of gas purchases.”
In a follow-up comment, Sweeney gets a little more specific, claiming that almost all stores allow for games to redirect players toward an off-store website for transactions, but what Steam doesn’t allow “is the developer selling you stuff directly from the app using their own payment screens or their own website.” Several commentors debunked the claim, pointing to various examples of Steam games that do in fact have their own payment screens.
Epic Games boss Tim Sweeney doubles down on his critique of Steam’s AI disclosures: “I just hate to see Valve confiscate ever more opportunity from small developers…”
