Valve hit with $800 million lawsuit over Steam monopoly Valve \/ CapcomValve has been hit with a \u00a3656 million lawsuit in the United Kingdom, which claims they\u2019re \u201crigging the market\u201d against players in the UK. Valve, the game developer behind Half-Life, Portal, and Counter-Strike, launched Steam in 2003, providing a platform to digitally purchase PC games, as well as hosting the Steam marketplace and workshop. The BBC reports digital rights campaigner Vicki Shotbolt of Milberg London LLP, filed the lawsuit on June 5 to the Competition Appeal Tribunal. The lawsuit alleges \u201cValve is rigging the market and taking advantage of UK gamers,\u201d potentially \u201covercharging 14 million people in the UK,\u201d and claims they are \u201cshutting out\u201d other platforms for purchasing PC games. Shotbolt also made a website called \u201cSteamYouOweUs\u201d that provides more detail behind her claims and why she\u2019s taking the issue to court. Natasha Pearman, a partner at the law firm, states, \u201cCompetition law is there to protect consumers and ensure that markets work properly, when they don\u2019t work properly and consumers are harmed, collective actions of this kind provide consumers with a voice and a way of holding big companies, like Valve, to account.\u201d Steam is the largest distributor of PC games, reporting $9 billion in global revenue across 580 million game sales in 2023 according to a report by VG Insights. Game developer behind the \u2018Postal\u2019 series, Running With Scissors, defended Valve\u2019s practices with Steam, arguing these \u201clawsuits don\u2019t really care about the gamers\/consumers, they only care about making money for themselves.\u201d Other competitors, such as Epic Games Score, take 12%, and Good Old Games take 30% as commission compared to Steam\u2019s 30%. RWS called the cut \u201cindustry standard,\u201d and claimed it\u2019s \u201cworth the 30% when the platform offers so much more to us and the consumers we\u2019re catering to, not to mention sale numbers.\u201d If the allegations are proven, Valve would be required to pay the full amount to the class, rewarding them all up to \u00a344, approximately $55, each, based on the 14 million figure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Valve hit with $800 million lawsuit over Steam monopoly Valve \/ CapcomValve has been hit with a \u00a3656 million lawsuit in the United Kingdom, which claims they\u2019re \u201crigging the market\u201d against players in the UK. Valve, the game developer behind Half-Life, Portal, and Counter-Strike, launched Steam in 2003, providing a platform to digitally purchase PC […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-86022","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86022","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86022"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86022\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86022"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86022"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86022"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}