A federal judge in Seattle has ruled that the antitrust litigation case against Valve Corp. will move forward. The lawsuit claims that Valve’s dominance in the video game marketplace allows it to create policies that inflate game prices both on and off the Steam platform.
On May 6, Judge John C. Coughenour ruled that case will proceed. “According to the SAC, [Valve] relies on provisions within Steamworks Documentation to impose conditions on how non-Steam-enabled games are sold and priced. Defendant also threatens game publishers with punitive action, including removal of their Steam-enabled games, if they sell non-Steam-enabled versions of those games at lower prices,” wrote Coughenour.
Developer Wolfire Games filed suit against Valve over these policies in April 2021. “Most developers have little or no choice but to sell on Steam and do as they’re told by Valve,” explained Wolfire Games CEO David Rosen. Judge Coughenour dismissed this initial suit back in November but included a provision that allowed Wolfire Games to refile within 30 days if it addressed certain issues in the initial filing.
Similar antitrust lawsuits have been filed against both Amazon and Apple. The case against Amazon, which alleged that the merchant used “most-favored-nation” policies to hike prices on goods sold in the US, was dismissed back in March. In September, a judge sided with Apple in the tech giant’s much-publicized feud with Epic after the Fortnite app was removed from Apple devices.