Valve has been forced by a California court to provide sales data for more than 400 Steam games to Apple and possibly also disclose annual sales, revenues and profits to Apple. The iPhone maker has sued Valve for the data as part of its ongoing dispute with Fortnite developer Epic Games.
According to a Wednesday order from Judge Thomas Hixson, Valve will be required to provide annual sales and pricing data for 436 games available on both the PC game distribution platform, Steam, and the Epic Games Store. Apple has requested the data so it can define the video game market in its case against Epic.
In a filing published Feb. 18, Valve had argued that Apple’s demands were too broad. Apple had asked for more details in its subpoena, including Steam’s annual earnings, the name of each app on Steam, and the date range for when those apps were available. Valve argued that the demands would place “an extraordinary burden” on the company.
Valve has also been forced to share “aggregated data” on how much it makes from Steam, although it’s not clear exactly what that means. Apple had asked for the following:
RFP 2 requires documents sufficient to show as of 2008 Valve’s (a) total annual app sales and in-app purchases from Steam, (b) annual ad revenue attributable to Steam, (c) annual sales of third party products attributable to Steam, (d) annual revenue from Steam, and (e) annual revenue, revenue or profits from Steam. Apple requests this information per app if it is available. During meet and confer, Apple has limited the relevant period from 2015 to the present.
In his ruling, Judge Hixson largely sided with Apple. “In the letter, Valve said this would be an overwhelming amount of work, but beyond the use of adjectives, the burden was in no way substantiated or quantified,” said Hixson.
“Apple has shown a great need for this information to obtain evidence to support its arguments regarding market definition and the effects of competition, and it cannot obtain this information elsewhere without undue burden,” he added. “Valve offers several reasons why Apple doesn’t meet this standard, but none are convincing.” Valve is the largest PC game store out there and generally doesn’t offer any sales data at all, although you can find simple unordered lists of the best-selling games every month.
Hixson has limited the amount of information Valve must provide. While Apple requested data dating back to 2015, Hixson ruled that Valve only needs to produce data from 2017 to the present.
Epic sued Apple in August after Apple was removed Fortnite from the App Store for the introduction of an in-app payment system that is said to have broken App Store rules.