Apple has sued Valve in its pending lawsuit with Epic Games demanding that it provide massive amounts of commercial data on Steam sales and operations going back several years, court documents have revealed (via PC gamer
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The subpoena was initiated by Apple in November 2020 on the grounds that information about Valve’s digital distribution service, Steam, would be crucial to building its case against Epic Games.
Apple requested that Valve provide documents showing the total annual sales of apps and in-app products, annual ad revenue, annual sales of third-party products, and annual Steam revenues and earnings. There are also more detailed requests for the name of each app on Steam, the date range each app was available on, and the price of all apps and in-app purchases.
This apparently concerned the demand for information on more than 30,000 games initially, but Apple has since narrowed its focus to around 600 games. Nonetheless, Apple still insists on receiving documents on every version of a particular product and a large amount of financial information about Valve’s business.
Apple believes that Steam is “the dominant distributor of digital games on the PC platform and is a direct competitor to the Epic Game Store,” so information about the sales and operations of the digital marketplace can demonstrate the size of the market with which the Epic Games Store competes in. Apple states that Valve must provide this information as it is not available elsewhere and “poses no risk of competitive harm.”
Although Apple and Valve apparently met several times to confer, Valve declined to provide much of the information Apple is asking for in the subpoena. Valve says it cooperated reasonably in providing documents on the revenue share, competition with Epic, Steam distribution contracts, and more, but claims that the request for six years of PC game and item sales for hundreds of third-party games and confidential information about these games and Valve’s revenue is unreasonable.
The company was also upset with Apple’s request for Valve’s involvement in the case, as Steam is not a competitor in the mobile space, saying, “Valve isn’t Epic, and Fortnite isn’t available on Steam.” Valve even claims that Apple is using the request as a shortcut to a huge amount of commercially sensitive third-party data.
Somehow, in a dispute over mobile apps, a PC game maker who doesn’t compete in the mobile market or sell “apps” is portrayed as a key figure. It is not. The extensive and highly confidential information that Apple requests about a subset of the PC games available on Steam does not reflect the size or parameters of the relevant market and would be hugely difficult to work together. Apple’s demands for further production must be rejected.
Valve added that it doesn’t even keep all of the information Apple is looking for, as it doesn’t need it in the normal course of business, and is now calling the court to dismiss Apple’s subpoena. Meanwhile, Apple’s lawsuit with Epic Games is ongoing.