Valve, creator of the popular Steam game distribution platform, will be forced to deliver to Apple the aggregate history of sales, prices and other information of 436 games hosted in the store, as part of the Apple vs. antitrust case. Epic Games.
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As reported in a paid access report by Law360, during a virtual discovery hearing on Wednesday, Judge Thomas S. Hixson ordered Apple’s subpoena for the data to Valve to be valid, however, noted that Apple “salted the land with subpoenas”, telling Valve “Don’t worry, it’s not just you.” Apple’s original subpoena requested Valve data on Steam dating back to 2015, the judge’s decision, however, will require Valve to produce data limited to as early as 2017.
“Epic Games” is in a fierce legal battle with Apple over the App Store and claims that the Cupertino tech giant holds developers in their ecosystem and forces them to pay a “30% tax” for in-app purchases. Apple’s subpoena to obtain data from Valve is one of many that Apple has presented in trying to prove its view that the “App Store” as a software distribution platform is no different than the others.
Gavin W. Stok, a lawyer who represents Valve at the discovery hearing, urged Judge Hixson to reject the subpoena and not force his company to produce the data. Stok says that Valve is run by a small team and that collecting all the data that Apple is requesting would require it to “dedicate several employees working full time” and that it would not be able to guarantee that the order would be fulfilled on time .
Apple attorney Jay P. Srinivasan says the request is doable and points out that Apple could have requested data on all 30,000 games on the Steam store, but instead is only requesting data on 436 games. Apple continued to defend its subpoena, calling Valve a “prominent player” in the full picture of relevant markets like the “App Store”.
Before what must be a close hearing scheduled for July 2021 between Apple and the The Olympic Games, Valve has until mid-March to produce the data. We will contact Valve for a comment on the judge’s decision and will update the page as soon as we receive a response.