Epic Games’ legal battle against Apple over App Store charges continues to drag itself to stranger and more esoteric fronts. The latest development? Apple is actively trying to subpoena years of in-depth sales information from Valve on all of the games listed on Steam, showing that Epic has plenty of other places to go Fortnite goods.
“Apple and Valve have participated in several meet and conferences, but Valve has declined to provide information responding to requests 2 and 32,” reads a new joint discovery letter spotted by PC gamer that was submitted earlier this week. Request 2 contains full annual data such as sales, revenues and other financial information from ‘total annual sales of apps and in-app products’. Request 32 is a complete list of every app on Steam, the years it was available, and what it was priced for. You know, just a quick look at the lifeblood of Valve’s company.
The key question in the ongoing dispute between Epic and Apple is whether the latter has a monopoly-like position within the world of smartphone app distribution, and as a result is abusing that position to impose unfair and unreasonable commissions on all apps. operating through its platform. To try to prove that the App Store is not monolithic and Epic has other options, Apple wants to collect data from other competitors to show that the Fortnite maker can do fine elsewhere.
Valve admits that the requested information exists in some undisclosed, easily accessible format, but generally claims that it will not provide the information because it is confidential or too troublesome to collect in the way Apple has requested Apple’s side of the joint statement reads. Valve has already provided Apple with some information, but the iPhone manufacturer found that insufficient. It is now calling the court to enforce the digital gaming store to comply, as it had previously done with Samsung.
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As this Court recognizes with regard to Samsung, this information is ‘relevant to demonstrate the degree of competition’ between digital distribution platforms available for distribution Fortnite, including the Apple App Store, ”says Apple. However, the Samsung Galaxy Store is nowhere near as big as the App Store or Steam.
For its part, Valve claims it would take a lot of work to get all this information to Apple as, unlike Samsung, it is a private company and does not have the same granular level of record keeping, and that Steam has nothing to do. has to do with the bigger piss contest. “Somehow, in a mobile app dispute, a PC game maker that doesn’t compete in the mobile market or sell ‘apps’ is portrayed as a key figure,” the section read. “It’s not.” (Valve seems to have forgotten that it let go of the auto-battler Dota Underlords last year on both iOS and Android).
I don’t necessarily believe this argument that Valve is just a side player in these ongoing discussions about the market monopolies, but it is also extremely entertaining to watch the virtual hat seller get snippy with the ninth largest company in the worldWe will see what the court ultimately decides.