In May this year, Wolfire Games, the creator of the Humble Bundle and also an indie game developer, sued Valve for uncompetitive practices with Steam. Valve sent its defense to the court and demanded that the case be dismissed without being discussed because the petition “failed to prove even the most fundamental elements of a monopoly case.”
In responding to Wolfire’s various claims in the petition, Valve defended the 30% cut against the claim that “alve abuses its market share, leaving game publishers with no choice but to sell their games on the Steam Store, and Valve is also cutting 30% here,” saying there was “no real evidence that this outage was unusual.”
“Plaintiff can only make a generalization that economists estimate that Valve’s 30% commission should fall over time. In reality, it has been a 30% industry standard and Valve has competitors including some of the biggest names in the industry, including Microsoft, Epic Games and Amazon.”
The 30% valve calls “standard” is not really standard. The Epic Games Store already charges a 12% commission, and Microsoft has increased its commission from 30% to 12% in recent months. So there’s nothing provable about Valve’s defense.
It also says Wolfire’s claim that Valve holds 75% of the market through Steam is “not supported by evidence.” So he’s not denying that share, but he wants the case dismissed, saying Wolfire can’t prove it.
When we look at Valve’s answers, it can be seen that they are trying to dismiss the case by suggesting that there are allegations that cannot be substantively substantive. Otherwise, they don’t say to the allegations, “No, sir, it’s a lie, we’re not doing that.” If the court accepts the case, then things will get interesting.
