- Court documents show that Apple is trying to summon Valve in its fight against Epic Games.
- Valve has refused to provide certain information about its revenues and the games it hosts.
- Valve says Apple is asking for too much information, as it is not a mobile platform.
- Visit the Business section of the Insider for more stories.
Apple’s struggle with Epic Games is apparently dragging other video game companies onto its network.
A joint letter presented on Thursday and identified by Ars Technica reveals that Apple is trying to summon Valve, the company behind the popular Steam game store, for information.
Apple has been fighting a legal battle with Epic Games, the studio behind the popular “Fortnite”, since August. The fight revolves around Epic Games’ refusal to comply with Apple’s App Store rules on in-app payments on its iOS version of “Fortnite”.
Apple requires application developers to use their own payment system, which charges an automatic 30% tax on in-app purchases. Epic Games says this is anti-competitive and, in August, decided to implement its own payment system, after which Apple kicked “Fortnite” off the App Store.
Epic Games subsequently sued Apple, and the two companies have been fighting ever since – with Apple CEO Tim Cook, scheduled to give a seven-hour deposition before the case goes to court in May. Epic Games kept up the pressure, this week filing an antitrust complaint in the EU.
Valve is not directly involved in the legal dispute between the two companies. Apple said it is asking for documents showing Valve’s annual sales and revenues, as well as information about each application on Steam, including its prices, as a way to gain an understanding of the market in which Epic Games operates.
Apple complains in its letter that Valve resisted meeting some of its requests for information and that when it delivered the information, it was heavily edited.
Valve says Apple is asking for too much information, since Valve is not concerned with its struggle with Epic Games and is not a mobile platform. More broadly, Valve also claims that, as a PC game distributor, the information it can provide is irrelevant to the fight between Apple and Epic Games.
“Valve does not manufacture or sell phones, tablets or video games for mobile devices, nor does it compete in any other way in the cell phone market,” says the letter. He added that Apple’s orders would impose an “extraordinary burden” on Valve to collect all the data that Apple wants.
“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 extremely difficult to collect,” said Valve in its letter.
Apple argues that Valve should be forced to offer the information because Samsung has responded to similar requests. Valve’s counter-argument is that Samsung is a publicly traded company, so it usually keeps records of this type of information, which could be produced much more quickly and easily.
“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 isn’t, ”said Valve.