That statement alone is hilarious, but you can add to that the reaction within Valve!

Valve is currently facing an antitrust lawsuit from Wolfire. The developer claims that Steam is being used by the Gabe Newell-led company to use its position to squeeze out competitors and control the price of games. In May 2022, the lawsuit was not dropped, and now we have internal communications from the companies involved that have been made public. The interesting part is the communication between Tim Sweeney (CEO of Epic Games), Gabe Newell (Head of Valve), Scott Lynch (Chief Operating Officer of Valve) and Erik Johnson (Project Manager of Valve).

The main topic was pricing and Valve’s profit margin on sales. In 2017, the first exchange of messages started from a false comment by Sean Jenkins (Valve developer said that Steam could restrict the code that developers could make available). On August 12, 2017, Newell asked Sweeney what Valve had done to upset him, asking if Jenkins’ public stupidity played a role. Sweeney responded to Newell and Johnson by writing that he had never heard of Jenkins, and then went on to say that Steam’s 30% “platform fee” was understandable in the early days, but that the cost of running it is lower now, and that the percentage is disproportionately high because of the large number of games that are released or the little marketing that goes into them. Sweeney said that if you take Steam’s top 25 bestsellers off the list, Valve makes more from the 1,000 games that follow than the developers make. 30% to Valve, 30% to marketing, 15% to server/engine costs, so 75% goes to the system and 25% goes to making the game, which is worse than the store distribution of the 90s, Sweeney claims. The answer (if any) was left out of the document…

In December 2018, Epic’s CEO was in an even spicier mood after Valve changed its royalty system: the company’s profit margin on top-selling games could drop to as low as 20%. Sweeney then prepared for an antitrust lawsuit against Apple and the launch of the Epic Games Store. In his message to Newell and Lynch, he outlined his problems with Apple and then mentioned the launch of the Epic Games Store (EGS). EGS has a profit margin of only 12%. Sweeney’s message, however, is blunt:

“Right now you *ssholes are telling the world that the strong and powerful get special deals, while 30% is for the little people. We’re all in for a long fight if Apple tries to keep its monopoly and 30% by making backroom deals with big publishers to keep them quiet. Why not give ALL developers a better deal? What better way to quickly convince Apple that their model is now completely unsustainable?” wrote Sweeny. The next day, Lynch relayed the message to Newell and Johnson with this brief comment: “Are you crazy bro?

Where did Wolfire get the money to sue?

Source: PCGamer, GameDiscoverCo