An American judge ordered Valve to provide sales data to Apple in response to a subpoena issued amid Apple’s continuing legal struggle with Epic Games.
In addition to some aggregated sales data for all of Steam, Valve will only have to provide specific prices per title and sales data for “436 specific applications that are available on Steam and the Epic Games Store”, according to the order. This is a significant reduction from the 30,000 Apple titles for which Apple originally requested data.
In resisting the subpoena, Valve argued that its Steam sales data was irrelevant to questions about the purely mobile app markets in question in the case. Refocusing the order only on games available on Steam and the Epic Games Store makes it more directly relevant to mobile competition issues in the case, Judge Thomas Hixson writes in his order.
“Remember, in these related cases, [Epic] argue that Apple’s 30% commission on sales through its App Store is anti-competitive and that allowing iOS apps to be sold in other stores would force Apple to reduce its commission to a more competitive level, “Hixson wrote in the order.” … in 436 specific games that are sold on Steam and Epic’s store, Apple seeks to find out whether the availability of other stores does affect commissions. [Epic] claim. “
Just deliver
Valve’s lawyer, Gavin Skok, also argued that responding to the subpoena would be excessively costly for the company, requiring several full-time employees working hours to compile data from various sources for each game (as reported by Law 360). In his order, Judge Hixson said that data collection “did not seem so expensive”. That said, Hixson agreed to limit the response to the data from 2017 (instead of 2015, as requested by Apple) because the Epic Games Store did not exist until 2018.
Hixson also rejected arguments that Apple should subpoena individual developers for their pricing and sales data, saying the potential effort would represent an “undue burden” for Apple. The judge added that this sales information is not confidential to the developers involved and that “Valve is running a store, and how much it sells which is its own information.”
In 2018, Valve decided to effectively block services like Steam Spy or Steam Gauge from Ars himself from creating public Steam game sales estimates based on sample data from individual public user accounts. Valve said in July 2018 that it was working on a “more accurate” replacement for Steam Spy data, but has only released sporadic and incomplete summaries of the Steam market in the years since.
“Valve’s decision to remain private means that it avoids the public company’s disclosure and reporting requirements, but does not immunize the company against [legal] discovery, “continued Hixson.” Protection orders in these actions allow Valve to designate your documents as confidential or highly confidential to address competitive issues, and this protection is sufficient. “
Valve will have 30 days to provide the requested data to Apple.