It’s no big secret that Valve, via Steam, has an iron-fisted grip over the bulk of the PC games market. It’s the dominant platform in the space, and that allows it to have a monopoly of sorts, easily outpacing competing launchers and storefronts.
In recent years, lawsuits challenging these monopolies have become commonplace, and Valve is no stranger to them, as the firm’s suite of lawyers is kept busy fending them off. However, a recent report revealed just how aggressive Valve can be (and has been) when it comes to ‘defending’ that monopoly.
Ubisoft and Valve Going Head to Head
In an all-new report from Bloomberg, it was explained that Valve once clashed with Ubisoft over Rainbow Six Siege. This was a few years back, when Ubisoft was still using the UPlay app on PC. It has since been rebranded as Ubisoft Connect, a replacement that occurred in 2020.
Rainbow Six Siege had been on the market for a few years by that point, and Ubisoft listed a particularly tasty deal for the game on the UPlay platform. Per the report, Valve discovered this and made a bold threat, demanding that Ubisoft remedy that price point or face the tech titan’s wrath.
That wrath would have come in the form of a complete delisting of Rainbow Six Siege from the Steam platform, the primary app of choice for PC-based gamers. It was claimed that Valve gave Ubisoft 24 hours to sort the situation out.
Thanks to GamesRadar for the spot.
Steam is still a huge platform for Rainbow Six Siege, which boasted a peak player count in the last 24 hours (at the time of writing) of 75,000 users. In general, Rainbow Six Siege is a monumental cash cow for Ubisoft, and in 2024, it was revealed that it alone had made almost more money than any other Ubisoft franchise ever made.
In response to recent accusations regarding this Steam monopoly, Gabe Newell, co-founder of Valve and eclectic billionaire, said, while suggesting that players still have plenty of options:
(Customers have enormous choice) where they purchase their products, whether they buy the game on an Xbox, whether they buy it on Steam, whether they buy it on Epic Games Store, or whether they buy it directly from software developers.
Do you think Valve needs to own up to these monopolization claims, or is it a load of fuss over nothing? Let us know your thoughts on the Insider Gaming Discord server.
For more Insider Gaming coverage, check out the news that TheBurntPeanut is embroiled in a controversy again
Grant has been gaming for 30+ years and in the industry for 10+. You'll probably find him playing a post-apocalyptic game or an extraction shooter somewhere.
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