Valve Ordered to Give Apple Information on 436 Steam Games As Part of Epic Games Legal Case

Valve, the makers behind popular game distribution platform Steam, will be forced to hand over aggregate historical sales, price, and other information on 436 games hosted on the store to Apple, as part of the Apple vs. Epic Games antitrust case.

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As reported in a paywalled report by Law360, during a virtual discovery hearing on Wednesday, U.S. Magistrate Judge Thomas S. Hixson ordered that Apple's subpoena for the data to Valve was valid, however, noted that Apple has "salted the earth with subpoenas," telling Valve "don’t worry, it’s not just you." Apple's original subpoena requested data from Valve about Steam dating as far back as 2015, the judge's ruling however will only require Valve to produce data limited to as early as 2017.

‌Epic Games‌ is in a heated legal battle with Apple over the App Store and claims that the Cupertino tech-giant locks developers into its ecosystem, and forces them to pay a "30% tax" for in-app purchases. Apple's subpoena for data from Valve is one of many that Apple has set forward as it attempts to prove its point that the ‌App Store‌ as a distribution platform for software is no different than others.

Gavin W. Stok, a lawyer representing Valve in the discovery hearing, urged Judge Hixson to reject the subpoena and not force his company to produce the data. Stok says that Valve is run by a small team and that collecting all the data Apple is requesting would require it to "dedicate multiple employees working full time," and that it would not be able to guarantee the request could be met on time.

Apple's lawyer, Jay P. Srinivasan, says that the request is doable, and points out that Apple could have requested data on all 30,000 games on the Steam store, but that it instead is only requesting data on 436 games. Apple continued to defend its subpoena, calling Valve a "prominent player" in the complete picture of relevant markets like the ‌App Store‌.

Ahead of what is expected to be a heated court hearing set for July 2021 between Apple and ‌Epic Games‌, Valve has until mid-March to produce the data. We've reached out to Valve for a comment on the judge's ruling and will update the page once we hear back.

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Top Rated Comments

contacos Avatar
53 months ago
How is that legal? Why involve a company that has nothing to do with a legal battle of two other companies exposing their own company data? Seems messed up to me
Score: 21 Votes (Like | Disagree)
cmaier Avatar
53 months ago

How is that legal? Why involve a company that has nothing to do with a legal battle of two other companies exposing their own company data? Seems messed up to me
It’s called a third party subpoena and it’s completely legal.

And epic’s theory is that if it is allowed to have its own store on iPhones, then prices for apps will decrease. That’s what they claim in their complaint. Apple is entitled to defend itself by showing that when epic created and App Store on PCs that the price of apps on PCs did not decrease. And to show that they need information on what happened to prices and sales on PCs (eg Steam).

The court weighs the burden on the third party vs the relevance and necessity to the case, and in this case decided that what Apple asked for made sense.

And before anyone starts mansplaining to me why I’m wrong, I watched the hearing and reported on here about it yesterday, so don’t bother telling me what epic’s theory is, what the judge thought, etc. :-)
Score: 20 Votes (Like | Disagree)
ruka.snow Avatar
53 months ago

How is that legal? Why involve a company that has nothing to do with a legal battle of two other companies exposing their own company data? Seems messed up to me
It has everything to do with Valve. Valve are Epics biggest competitor and the biggest game store and they started the 30% cut. So Apple will be able to show that Value did not change its cut and games did not get cheeper when Epic opened up. They might even get to bring up all the times Epic has caused harm to Value customers by pulling a game into an exclusively deal when it already has millions of pre-orders in Steam(Anno 1800).
Score: 13 Votes (Like | Disagree)
cmaier Avatar
53 months ago
Thomas, post: 29636746, member: 1021539"]
Against a company which is not related to neither Apple nor EPIC? Seriously?


How kind. And, no, that would not have been reasonable.

In any case handing out the data to Apple is a joke...
Handing out the data to anti-trust authorities... yes... to the court/judge maybe... but to your competitor?!


No, Apple should have not insight into Valves accounting because of EPIC. An independent entity should have.
As such it's not EPICs fault that Valve has to hand out data TO THEIR COMPETITOR. I would rather see the court/judge or legal system at fault.
No competitor sees valve’s data. There is a protective order in place. Only outside counsel can see it. Nobody who works at Apple or epic will ever know about it.
Score: 12 Votes (Like | Disagree)
kcslc Avatar
53 months ago

you can blame epic for all of this
Or apple.
Score: 7 Votes (Like | Disagree)
farewelwilliams Avatar
53 months ago
you can blame epic for all of this
Score: 6 Votes (Like | Disagree)