Valve’s Demand for Refusal of 30% Commission is Now a Class Lawsuit

Do you still remember the antitrust lawsuit against the video game company Valve regarding its 30% commission discount policy for every game purchase on Steam which was considered “anti-competitive”? The action carried out by Wolfire Games was later discovered to have occurred class action or class action.

According to the GameIndustry report, this re-categorization into a class action is a court instruction that the lawsuit from Wolfire Games be combined with a similar effort from Dark Catt Studios, which previously both filed an antitrust lawsuit against Valve.

Furthermore, this group lawsuit is indirectly open to all developers, publishers and individuals who have paid 30% commission through sales of their games on Steam after January 28 2017.

If the lawsuit is won, it is likely that Valve will be required to pay quite large losses to all parties involved in the class action. Then Valve of course needs to carry out a major policy revision which might also have an impact on the publication of games on PC as a whole.

It’s been going on since 2021

It should be noted that previously Valve itself fought back in July 2021 and accused Wolfire Games of not being able to provide strong enough evidence for its alleged monopoly, especially when the 30% commission itself was actually claimed to be a standard rate in the video game industry.

In November 2021, the court dismissed the lawsuit on the basis that Wolfire Games could not “demonstrate” that they or other parties felt disadvantaged by Valve’s management policies. This can also be seen from shop Others, such as the Epic Games Store, have lower commissions but are not yet able to compete with Steam—a sign that developers or publishers think the 30% commission cut is still worth it.

In continuing its action against this group lawsuit, Valve has asked the court not to include testimony from Dr. Steven Schwartz as an economic expert, but this request was rejected.