An on-going lawsuit against Valve about Steam's

That lawsuit against Steam’s 30% cut of game sales is now a class action, meaning many other developers could benefit

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2024-11-29 12:00:04

An on-going lawsuit against Valve about Steam's "anti-competitive" practices and especially, its infamous 30% per-game revenue cut, has taken an interesting twist. According to a report, it's now a class action suit that could benefit any developers or publishers who have sold a game over the Steam store on or after 28th January 2017.

Here's the broad background: in April 2021, Overgrowth developers Wolfire Games filed an antitrust lawsuit against Valve in the USA, arguing that Steam uses its dominance of PC game sales to distort the market and bury the competition, and in particular that the company's base 30% cut of revenue from each video game sold on Steam keeps overall game prices artificially high, with Valve allegedly pressuring developers not to sell their games for lower prices on stores with smaller commissioning fees.

"I believe that Valve is taking away gamers' freedom to choose how much extra they are willing to pay to use their platform," Wolfire founder David Rosen said at the time, as preserved by the GameDiscoverCo newsletter. "I believe they are taking away competing stores' freedom to compete by taking advantage of their lower commission rates. I believe they are taking away developers' freedom to use different pricing models."