Valve refuses Apple subpoena of its sales & operations data in Epic Games legal battle
Valve claims Apple's request for the data falls well outside of reasonable cooperation.
As the antitrust legal battle between Epic Games and Apple continues, many other major groups in the gaming industry have either been drawn into the fracas or stepped in of their own accord. Valve is the latest big name to come up in the matter. Apple filed a subpoena asking for access to extensive Steam sales and operations data. Valve denied the subpoena in joint filing with Apple, calling the request unreasonable and burdensome.
Apple and Valve recently filed the joint letter of their recent legal interaction in the Northern District of California Oakland Division US District Court, as reported by PC Gamer. According to the subpoena, Apple asked for access to Steam product listing, operations, and sales data for information the company deemed relevant to its ongoing legal battle with Epic Games, in which the latter purposefully defied Apple’s app platform rules with Fortnite before accusing Apple of antitrust business practices. Apple believes this data relevant to the case because Steam “is the dominant digital game distributor on the PC platform and is a direct competitor to the Epic Game Store.” Apple further claims that the data is not readily available and “does not raise risk of any competitive harm."
To clarify, Apple wants Valve to compile data of all product listings, sales, operations, and further info across its entire marketplace. Putting that into perspective, it should come as no surprise that Valve found the request wholly unreasonable and refused
“Valve already produced documents regarding its revenue share, competition with Epic, Steam distribution contracts, and other documents.” Valve argued. “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. Apple’s demands for further production should be rejected.”
It will remain to be seen if Apple takes further action to attempt to garner data from Valve for its cause. That said, in a legal battle that has included Epic Games calling its plan to get into a legal fight with Apple “Project Liberty”, Apple’s request for an absurd amount of Steam data might be one of the most comical plays yet.
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replyTJ Denzer posted a new article, Valve refuses Apple subpeona of its sales & operations data in Epic Games legal battle
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Apple is dragging Valve into the fight against Epic, specificly seeking subpoenas related to Valve's own profits off Steam which Valve apparently refuses to give.
https://www.pcgamer.com/apple-subpoenas-valve-as-part-of-its-legal-battle-with-epic-valve-fights-back/-
That is some chutzpah!
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Bringing Valve to talk about their 30% cut (not via subpoena) makes sense, as to survey other storefronts and thus justify Apple's own numbers. But requiring Valve to actually give a breakdown seems unnecessary and thus odd why the subpoena was granted since Epic has only targetted the mobile space and Valve's not party to this.
(Fun fact: 30% is the number set by Nintendo waaaaaaay back when they decided to license out the development of games for the Famicom to other developers like Hudson: 20% for cart manufacturing, 10% for licensing. Those numbers just stuck with the industry since).-
I would think this would backfire on Apple though. Steam is not the only player in the space, and GOG has certainly cut into their market share. Obviously, Epic has too. I would assume the Epic lawyer army is going to counter this but pivoting how the space is completely different inside Apple's walled garden. Who cares if Valve has xx% rate if there is ample competition. To me that proves that Apple should either adjust it's policy on rates or allow more stores on it's platform.
I just can't imaging how Apple expects to control the argument with this. Seems like a free shot for Epic, no?-
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There have been a few high(ish) profile games that went exclusive to EGS because of the difference in cut. I wonder if maybe that's why it's narrowed down to those few hundred games. The list of those games would probably help narrow to argument.
Too bad for Apple, Steam doesn't have everything they're asking for.
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Doesn't the steam app in iOS not allow storefront activity?
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Someone figured that out recently. It was something like half of all games on Steam.
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Way back, like 2008 before the recession hit, I was at a game company and helped to place games on Steam and had some discussions with Xbox about our games on their store. Xbox didn't want more of our IP due to sales not being great. Ironically we were part of a promotional pack of games at that time, so we got sell through anyways. Steam was less strict about it, but this was back when they were just getting into casual games so that part of the catalog wasn't so big and they hadn't open the floodgates. I assume they don't have as high of requirements, and I haven't heard of games being delisted due to sales. I think I was one of the early guys putting casual games on Steam. That was 3 kids ago, and the memory is very fuzzy now. I assume there are plenty of games with low to no sales. Steam doesn't care since it bulks up their catalog. But, they've also had to develop numerous systems to cope with it too.
I wish digital movies/tv would take some notes; especially Amazon. Steam isn't perfect, but at least they're trying to find ways to deal with ever expanding catalogs.
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Google/Microsoft probably has a good argument for anti-competitive practices suit against Apple for the blocking of Stadia/xCloud.
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Google/Microsoft both also run their own closed environments with the same standard 30% cut.
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Google/Microsoft run stores with a 30% cut but neither are the only store on their platform. While the Windows Store exists you can get applications from outside of it. And on Android you have companies like Amazon, and Samsung that run their own stores in addition to Google Play. Microsoft console you probably is probably a better argument but there is also retail and used games and things like that for those.
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You think Microsoft is going to allow Playstation Now on their Xbox platform? Until they allow that- they can't really go around suing apple for not allowing xcloud. Nor do I think they want to...
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Apple isn’t doing anything different than other walled platforms have done since Nintendo got into this business over 30 years ago. Apple is simply the biggest and most successful of these companies.
They don't have to do anything differently to abuse their market power. When you have the kind of power that Apple does even normal activities can amount to abuse. Nintendo and other platforms don't have that problem because they just don't have the amount of power over the market that Apple does. -
imo you’ve missed a fundamental point of the argument if you think the existence of other businesses also charging 30% is a good rebuttal.
Trust and competition laws are (for good reason) sensitive to both the size of business and the scale economic harm.
as for suing vs legislating: the laws already exist and they are the basis for the lawsuit.-
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It occurs to me that mobile phones as they're sold today - mostly locked down devices requiring signed code and going through a walled garden - are in this weird middle ground.
On one end you have computers where anyone can run anything. You can write a program, compile it, then put it on the internet and everyone can download it or buy it, and you don't need anyone's permission. You can even release the source code so people can roll their own. And even with things like Apple and Gatekeeper warning you half a dozen times about unsigned code and are you sure you want to run this non-notarized blah blah blah you can still just run whatever you want.
On the other end you have game consoles where you can only run things that were blessed by the platform vendor, and the platform vendor has a ton of rules and you have to abide by them and even then there's no guarantee you can get on the platform. I don't know how often it happens but it's definitely the case that sometimes a vendor like Nintendo or Sony just absolutely won't let a game on their system. It took years to get Nintendo to allow The Binding of Isaac on 3DS.
Apple's App Store, for example, is in the middle - on the one hand you have to go through the vendor to get your app on the store but they're less stringent. Lots of stupid crap makes it through. Games that suck, apps that are pointless, as long as they fit whatever rules Apple has they all get in. Whereas a game console is ultra-curated (well, Nintendo eShop shovelware aside), the App Store has only a handful of rules and then you're in. Heck I got Disasteroids 3D on there when there's already a game called Disasteroids on there. That would be like if I got a game called "Doom, Too" on the eShop.
What Epic is saying is pick a side - either be the open thing that computers are or be the ultra locked down thing game consoles are.
I do agree with your premise that this is sort of like the gaming equivalent of that disastrous Tidal ad which purported to be artists fighting for their rights but really was a roundtable of millionaires complaining they don't make more money
https://metro.co.uk/2015/04/21/this-spoof-tidal-ad-asks-music-fans-to-stop-poor-multi-millionaires-from-suffering-5160227/
Epic is only in this fight because Fortnite was this surprise success and they made so much money with it they decided to get into the gaming space and spend money to do it in the form of lowering their cut. They for years ran an asset store (still do, I think) for Unreal games that took the 30% cut then dropped it down to the 12% cut they're famous for. And to their credit they went back and retroactively gave that 18% back to the creators of the trees or whatever they put in their games. But this move still comes across as someone who has a fuckton of money and wants even more. It has as much impact as when a wealthy musician makes an "eat the rich" song like they're the little guy. -
> approach should be tackling the laws that allow this system to operate in such a way that causes problems at scale.
This is more where I land as well: Epic should have collaborated with other large developers, built a consortium of groups that didn't like the practices of walled gardens, then petition for laws to change -- IF Apple/Google/MS/Sony/etc didn't make change.
Epic went the business route of "sue the guy with the biggest wallet" first, vs. attempting any form of groundswell support.
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Epic should ask Apple when it will be allowed to open a competing Appstore for iOS.
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In response Epic should subpoena Apple and Valve about all communications related to the Steamlink app, and why it was approved then denied back in 2018, and why it got approved again in 2019.
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Yes they do
Your product must use Steam Wallet for any in-game transactions.
This means that your product cannot link to other store pages that does not offer Steam Wallet.
https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/store/review_process
This isn't to say no one breaks the rules, and there's probably negotiated exceptions like EA Pass or whatever, but it's absolutely the case that IAP in Steam games have to go through Valve.
It's one of the reasons Mojang never put Minecraft on Steam, they didn't want to share revenue for the IAPs they had in mind-
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np, and like I said it's possible/likely that some games have skirted it. But I guarantee you if Fortnite was on Steam and skirted it, Fortnite would be banned, which is why it's not on there in the first place.
Plus there might be some interpretation of "your product cannot link to other store pages that does not offer Steam Wallet" that could mean you just have to offer Steam Wallet as an option, not the only option. Dunno.
But this is also why EA started pulling their shit from Steam years ago and made Origin. They didn't want to share. They've since decided it's not worth the hassle and Origin is basically an also-ran at this point.-
In the past at least, the agreement required that everything your company does with a Steam-linked user and ingame purchases gives Valve the cut, even if it has nothing to do with Valve. Which makes sense, from Valve's end.
The first I saw of that was Elite Dangerous years ago - when they made it available on Steam, they initially walled Steam accounts away from FDev accounts / existing Elite owners, and later explained that was why. People were understandably pissed though, and they opened it up, but explained "once you've linked your account to Steam, Valve takes their % for everything you do going forward. Even if you purchase a skin directly from our website, Valve still takes their cut. Please keep us in mind before you decide to link your FDev account to Steam!"
Wargaming likely hit a similar thing with World of Warships - the game itself is fully compatible, but they locked Steam accounts into a separate account/payment bucket from Wargaming accounts. If FDev's account above is accurate/still in place, once 'xsoulbrothax' connects the Wargaming account to Steam to download/play WoWs via Steam, Valve would now get a cut of the 'xsoulbrothax' Wargaming account - even for games like their cash cow World of Tanks that *weren't* on Steam (yet). They haven't budged on this in years though, and show no sign of doing so.
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But if they prove they charge industry standard rates they degrade the argument that they are abusing they're monopoly over Apple products. They can combine that with the argument they don't have a phone monopoly since Android and that if they were raising prices consumers can go to another platform if the costs are lower
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Except it's not parallel at all because if someone doesn't want to do that they can go to other distribution platforms and still release on PC. Nobody is forcing Steam Wallet on them because they have other distribution options on the platform.
On iOS they're absolutely locked into the Apple Store for distribution and have no other options. It's a very false equivalency to try to compare the two.-
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The cut they're taking isn't the abusive part. That there's no option to use another distribution platform is the abusive part and ultimately the point Epic is trying to make.
Epic likely couldn't give two shits about Apple's cut if they were allowed to sell directly to the consumer in their app.
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