Apple subpoenaed Valve in its ongoing lawsuit with Epic Games, demanding that it provide huge amounts of commercial data on Steam sales and operations that date back several years, court records 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 has requested Valve to provide documents to show its total annual sales of applications and in-app products, annual advertising revenue, annual sales of external products and annual revenue and earnings from Steam. There are also more granular requests for the name of each app on Steam, the date range when each app is available, and the price of all apps and in-app purchases.
This apparently involved the demand for information on more than 30,000 games initially, but Apple has since narrowed its focus to around 600 games. However, Apple still insists on receiving documents on all versions of a given product and a large amount of financial information about Valve’s business.
Apple believes that Steam “is the dominant digital game distributor on the PC platform and is a direct competitor of the Epic Game Store”, so information about sales and operations in the digital market can show the extent of the market that Epic Games Store is competing in. Apple argues that Valve should provide this information, as it is not available anywhere else and “does not increase the risk of any competitive damage.”
Although Apple and Valve have apparently met several times to confer, Valve has refused to produce much of the information that Apple is requesting in the subpoena. Valve says it cooperated reasonably, providing documents on revenue sharing, competition with Epic, Steam distribution contracts and more, but claims that the six-year order for PC games and sales of items to hundreds of third parties games and confidential information about those games and Valve’s revenues are unreasonable.
The company was also angered by Apple’s request for Valve’s involvement in the case, since Steam is not a competitor in the mobile space, saying “Valve is not epic and Fortnite is not available on Steam.” Valve goes so far as to claim that Apple is using the request as a shortcut to a large amount of commercially sensitive third party data.
Somehow, in a dispute over mobile apps, a PC game maker that doesn’t compete in the mobile market or sell “apps” is being portrayed as a key figure. It is not. The extensive and highly confidential information that Apple requires about a subset of PC games available on Steam does not show the size or parameters of the relevant market and would be very difficult to gather. Apple’s demands for more production must be rejected.
Valve added that it doesn’t even keep all the information that Apple is looking for, since it doesn’t need it in the normal course of business, and is now asking the court to reject Apple’s subpoena. Meanwhile, Apple’s process with Epic Games continues.