In late April,Wolfire Gamesannounced it was filing a class action lawsuit againstValve Corporation. The suit alleges thatValvehas broken antitrust laws with Steam, controlling developers through exploitative actions that prevent fair competition. The case revolves around Steam’s domination of the PC gaming marketplace, its expensive 30% revenue share, and the rules it places on developers trying to sell games elsewhere. To provide further context, Wolfire founder David Rosen has written a lengthy blog explaining the decision.
Rosen starts with his personal experiences with Valve and Steam regardingWolfire’s gameOvergrowth. As other PC storefronts began offering lower revenue shares, Rosen says he decided to try and offerOvergrowthat a lower price outside of Steam to “take advantage” of the lower rates. However, when he discussed this plan with Steam, he was told thatOvergrowthwould be removed from the platform if he sold the game at a lower price on other platforms.
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Steam’s orders, according to Rosen, made it impossible for him to evaluate whether Steam was “earning” its30% revenue share. Further, no other developer would be able to, either. In other words, Steam’s rules made it prohibitive for developers to succeed off of Valve’s own platform. Rosen believed that other developers have had similar problems, which led him to begin discussing the subject with other teams.
Speaking with other developers led to the subject of Valve holding a monopoly with Steam and the possibility of it breaking antitrust laws. Those discussions led Rosen to pursue the advice of legal experts. That, in turn, led to Rosen and Wolfire filing theclass action lawsuit against Valve.
The idea that Rosen posits is that Valve has created an environment on Steam where developers have “little or no choice” but to sell game on Steam. Further, that they then have to “do as they’re told by Valve.” It’s this control over the market that Rosen takes issue with. He saysValve is taking away developers' freedomto use different pricing models, gamers' freedom to choose pricing and platform, and storefronts' freedom to compete. To that effect, Rosen says the lawsuit’s goal is to insist “that Valve stop interfering with pricing on other stores.”
It’s worth point out that Rosen founded and was the CEO of the Humble Bundle storefront, which wassold to IGN in 2017. So on one hand, he has firsthand experience with the impact of Steam’s rules on competing storefronts. On the other hand, while Rosen no longer runs Humble Bundle, there may be more to his reasons for the lawsuit than has been explained. Regardless, storefronts, developers, and gamers, will be watchingWolfire’s lawsuit againstValvewith much interest.
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