The Dutch Stichting Consumenten Competition Claims argues that Valve used Steam’s market power to push PC game prices higher, and the group is now talking about €220 million in consumer damages.

Valve is facing yet another legal battle. This time, the Dutch consumer foundation Stichting Consumenten Competition Claims, or CCC, has accused the company of using the market practices built around Steam to create inflated prices across the PC gaming market. According to the organization, the damage suffered by consumers could amount to €220 million, which would equal roughly €130 per affected Steam account.

According to the CCC, the core of the problem is Steam’s 30 percent commission. In an explanatory video, the organization says gamers are “paying too much for PC games” and that Steam is to blame. The video directly anticipates the obvious reaction: “I know what you’re thinking. ‘But Steam is cheap, right?’ Well, it seems that way. But Valve, Steam’s owner, is cheating.” The CCC argues that if a developer wants to earn €35 from a game, the high commission can push the final consumer price up to around €50.

The Complaint Is About More Than the Commission

The Dutch foundation is not merely objecting to how much Valve charges on games sold through Steam. The CCC argues that the larger issue is that the company prevents developers and publishers from selling the same products more cheaply on other digital stores. The Epic Games Store, for example, charges a 12 percent fee, which could theoretically allow lower prices if publishers had more freedom to move. In the CCC’s view, Steam’s practices mean that “games become more expensive everywhere, and you pay the price.”

This is not a completely new accusation against Valve. Documents tied to an antitrust case recently described a tense situation involving Ubisoft: the French company was allegedly promoting an exclusive Rainbow Six Siege bundle at a lower price outside Steam, specifically through UPlay, and Valve reportedly threatened to remove all editions of the shooter from its store. Those documents have so far been presented as evidence in a closed-door proceeding and have not been made fully public, so every detail cannot be independently checked, but the episode illustrates the kind of market pressure critics of Steam are pointing to.

For now, the CCC is not necessarily trying to take the matter straight into court. The organization’s stated goal is to reach an agreement with Valve, and only if that fails could the case proceed to trial. Even so, the scale is already serious: a €220 million collective damages claim is not a minor inconvenience for a digital marketplace of this size, but a real legal and business threat.

Valve Is Facing a Growing Mountain of Lawsuits

The Dutch complaint is only one of several legal problems gathering around Valve. The company is already facing an open case in the United Kingdom, where it is accused of abusing its dominant position to overcharge 14 million PC gamers. In New York, it has been targeted over allegations related to gambling-like loot box mechanics, while a British rights management organization has also accused the company of distributing music through games sold on Steam without the proper licenses for each track.

A large part of the gaming community still defends Valve. Many players argue that Steam’s dominant position does not come from crushing rival PC stores, but from earning trust by offering the most complete and convenient system on the market, with a huge catalog, community features, cloud saves, mod support, and services competitors have only partially matched. That does not end the legal debate, though. Valve must now prove in several jurisdictions that Steam’s practices do not distort competition, while the number of attacks against the company continues to grow.

Source: 3DJuegos