The head of Valve believes that players have more options on both console and PC, which means there is no question of Steam holding a monopoly.
Valve’s digital storefront and the true home of PC gamers, Steam, is currently the target of several lawsuits. One focuses on the microtransaction practices used in games such as Counter-Strike, while the other two – one filed in the United Kingdom and the other in the United States – target the 30% margin Valve takes from every purchase made on Steam. We now have fresh news about the latter, as testimony from company head Gabe Newell shows how he is trying to refute claims that Steam is a monopoly, arguing that players have enormous choice when buying PC games.
Bloomberg took a deeper look at the class-action antitrust lawsuit filed by Wolfire and Dark Catt. The site also uncovered cases in which Valve allegedly threatened other developers if they tried to sell their games for less than on Steam. One high-profile case involved Valve allegedly threatening to remove Rainbow Six Siege from Steam if Ubisoft did not stop offering the game’s Starter Pack at a lower price on its own Ubisoft Connect launcher. Newell, however, denies that Valve has such practices or policies.
“Valve does not have a policy or practice of dictating prices to third-party software developers on other platforms. Customers have enormous choice. They can purchase products wherever they want: on an Xbox, on Steam, on the Epic Games Store, or directly from software developers” – Newell said in a 2023 deposition that Bloomberg has only now made public.
Whether or not we believe Steam holds a monopoly in the PC market, its biggest competitors know that after years of dominance, Steam can no longer be defeated easily. If this lawsuit and the ongoing UK case do not go in Valve’s favor, the result could mean massive changes for the industry and for how players buy games. Considering how deeply many players are embedded in the Steam ecosystem, however, it would be interesting to see how many would remain with Steam even if that meant slightly higher prices.
