Valve Antitrust Lawsuit PC Games Explained: £656 Million in the UK, €220 Million in Europe, and a US Jury Trial on the Way

The Steam library is most likely open on a nearby monitor when you sit on a gaming chair in almost any bedroom or college dorm room in the English-speaking world. Steam has been the standard PC gaming architecture for so long that many players who grew up with it have never really thought about using anything else. This is evident in the green symbol, the recognizable UI, and the queue of installed titles with their accumulated hours.

Valve Corporation, based in Bellevue, Washington, gradually established this dominance over the course of 20 years, and it is currently the main focus of antitrust cases in the US, the UK, and the Netherlands. The question of whether the firm that influenced how a whole generation purchases and plays video games has been abusing its position to stifle competition and inflate prices in ways that violate competition law is, upon reflection, actually relevant.

The Valve antitrust complaint centers on two particular processes that the plaintiffs claim worked together to artificially preserve Steam’s dominance in PC games. The first is the 30% fee that Valve takes on each game sold via the platform. According to critics, this cut is only feasible since publishers have few viable options due to Valve’s market position.

Giving up the majority of your prospective consumer base is the practical result of refusing to sell through Steam, which holds between 75% and 85% of the PC digital market. Plaintiffs contend that this leverage keeps the commission at 30% when, in a typical market, competitive pressure would have caused it to decline years ago. The similarities between the Steam lawsuits and Apple’s App Store’s legal battle with Epic Games are not coincidental; the same legal teams are citing both cases.

The lawsuits employ the technical terms of “Platform Most Favored Nation” clauses to explain the second mechanism, which is the price parity regulation. According to plaintiffs, these regulations actually prevented publishers of games on Steam from providing those identical titles at lower prices on other platforms like the Epic Games Store or Ubisoft’s launcher. Valve may take action against your Steam presence if you sold a game for less elsewhere.

If the accusation is true, this had the effect of preventing rival shops from competing on price, which is the most direct form of competition accessible to a new entry attempting to lure publishers and customers away from an incumbent. In an effort to draw in developers with stronger finances, Epic purposefully reduced the commission fee when it first opened its shop in 2018. According to the PMFN accusation, Valve’s regulations made it difficult for those improved economics to manifest as lower prices for customers.

It is worthwhile to pay close attention to the legal geography. In the US, a jury will consider the evidence after a federal judge in Washington State rejected Valve’s request for summary judgment in the developer-led action. This is an important development because denials of summary judgment indicate that a judge has determined that there are enough factual disputes to warrant a trial rather than dismissal. A collective action in the UK that sought £656 million in damages on behalf of up to 14 million Steam customers was certified by the Competition Appeal Tribunal.

In UK competition law, certification is a separate obstacle, and passing it indicates the tribunal considered the allegations to be factually and legally sufficient to move forward at scale. On behalf of Dutch gamers, the CCCF filed a €220 million claim in the Netherlands, bringing a European perspective to an increasingly global legal dispute.

Valve’s defense makes sense and should be taken seriously. Valve contends that publishers set their own prices on other platforms and that it does not require external pricing. The platform’s true quality—its social features, workshop tools, cloud saves, refund policies, and the magnitude of its client base—is attributed to Steam’s domination.

Valve’s attorneys will have plenty of precedent to work with on the well-established legal position that success in a competitive market shouldn’t be viewed as an antitrust infringement in and of itself. The jury in Washington and the tribunals in London and the Hague will ultimately have to decide the more difficult question, which is whether the PMFN restrictions established market conditions that precluded Steam’s dominance from being meaningfully challenged.