In the United Kingdom, it has been revealed that Valve is facing a £656 million ($840 million) lawsuit, with accusations surfacing that the tech titan is using Steam to ‘take advantage of UK gamers’. At the heart of the suit is the claim that Valve has been ‘rigging the market’ for years, shutting out competition and holding a monopoly over the PC gaming market.
That’s a Lot of Damage(s)
This landmark lawsuit seeks serious reparations from Valve in the United Kingdom. In 2023, Valve reported record-high revenues on Steam, pulling in more than $9 billion globally and selling more than 580 million games. This data comes courtesy of VG Insights (via the BBC).
It has been alleged by the claim filed at the Competition Appeal Tribunal that Valve charges excessive commissions on games, which forces UK-based PC gamers to purchase digital software at a price far higher than they would on other platforms, such as Xbox or PlayStation. In this collective action claim, Valve has been slammed by digital rights campaigners who have branded the company as ‘unlawful’.
In a statement, Milberg’s Natasha Pearman, the leading partner in this lawsuit, said:
UK gamers spend billions every year and Valve has a stranglehold on the PC gaming market. Competition law is there to protect consumers and ensure that markets work properly.
Historically, Milberg has worked with consumers to combat the likes of Sony – in 2022, the London-based law firm took the titanic Japanese tech company to court with a £5 billion class-action suit for similar claims.
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Valve needs to sell to Savvy
You know it’s not right. And it’s not that they have a monopoly either. There’s other platforms like EA’s Origin and the Epic launcher as well as the ubisoft store app and many others. The fact is that Valve’s Steam platform store offers a far wider variety of games due to the increase of indie dews that are being laid off and let go aside from the amateur indie dews. The other platforms just won’t sell things they don’t make and that’s their folly. And the prices? Steam sells the same games at the same prices and has sales every day. The main difference is that the physical copies lose value once sold as used. Steam, due to the digital distribution, takes advantage of the fact that they’re selling digital copies(you will NEVER BUY a USED game from them). Over all the stranglehold is real, the monopoly isn’t, and the main point that it boils down to is that steam has a console mode UI as well as a far larger library to select from than the other platforms stores, including a large selection of the games from those other developers’ platforms.
Yeah the UK and EU made stupid claims like this before with Microsoft over ABK. Tech companies just need to leave the region. This is mostly based against other nations they only want their own tech companies to be massive not the foreign ones with China being an exception. It’s very political. Honestly big tech companies would do fine without the UK or EU having just the US and Asia is fine as major markets.
Or maybe tech companies need to pull away from US and their crying
I always find alternatives to purchasing PC games digitally, I’m from the UK and agree valve charges way too much on steam in the British market and the valve marketing team should absolutely revaluate how they price or influence pricing on their digital store market.
“Valve charges excessive commissions on games, which forces UK-based PC gamers to purchase digital software at a price far higher than they would on other platforms, such as Xbox or PlayStation.” What an idiotic claim pull up any game on these platforms and the price will be identical with the exception of games having a sale on a specific platform.
The UK did the same thing with Microsoft over ABK. Honestly it’s time companies pull from Europe as a whole in the tech space. Apple I believe was having problems with them too.
Or maybe tech companies need to pull away from US and their crying
“It has been alleged by the claim filed at the Competition Appeal Tribunal that Valve charges excessive commissions on games, which forces UK-based PC gamer’s to purchase digital software at a price far higher than they would on other platforms, such as Xbox or PlayStation.”
What a load of bs. As a UK citizen myself Valve is cheaper than all the big 3 Sony/Xbox/Nintendo.
I’ve never heard such ridiculous claims. I’ve completely transfered over from console to pc over the last generation as console manufacturers have become anti consumer and predatory. I own games on 4 different marketplaces that sell games for pc in the uk and the games are invariably cheaper than they would have been for PlayStation or Xbox. Plus the 30% percentage is an industry standard with only epic taking less…. sometimes
How about instead of attacking valve to make money of them they attack the practice of abandoning live games (this is the gaming Industry as a whole) how is it not illigal yet to sell games to people and not even give them a single player option when they decide to shut down the live services that’s like selling someone a TV and saying welp we can’t run this channel now so can’t use the TV anymore.
I use Steam because I like the launcher and it has far far more than other low effort launchers.
Are they suing Valve because they won the price war against physical games?
I’m very confused as to how xactly what the violation is here.