Valve/Steam is being sued for his monopoly

[Noctosphere]

Valve/Steam is being sued in United Kingdom for abusing of their position and setting their prices too low.
In this lawsuit, it is noted that they prevent customers from buying DLCs for games they bought on Steam, on other plateform (I.E. Buying The Sims on Steam, and being unable to buy Sims DLCs on EA app)
The lawsuit also note that Steam charges up to 30% to editors.
The lawsuit is settled at 656MGBP (900MUSD)

 

[False_Hope]

900 million USD or 900 USD?

 

[Noctosphere]

900 million USD or 900 USD?

fixed, my bad

 

[SaberLilly]

The only reason why Steam is being called a monopoly is because the only other online video game distributors are Epic Game Store, and EA Origin, and both of them suck massively in comparison, my favorite argument is the whole "oh the 30% commission charge is too much" 30% is literally the high end of the industry standard, but its still within the industry standards! I'm 100% certain that if Valve charged less, we'd be hearing of another UK lawsuit for unfairly undercutting the competition or some nonsense like that.

 

[Noctosphere]

The only reason why Steam is being called a monopoly is because the only other online video game distributors are Epic Game Store, and EA Origin, and both of them suck massively in comparison, my favorite argument is the whole "oh the 30% commission charge is too much" 30% is literally the high end of the industry standard, but its still within the industry standards! I'm 100% certain that if Valve charged less, we'd be hearing of another UK lawsuit for unfairly undercutting the competition or some nonsense like that.

exactly. I wonder what percentage is charged by other apps. Not that there really is any other app outside EGS. I would guess that in order to sell your game on EA App, you have to hire EA as an editor. Same goes with Battle.net or Ubisoft app.

 

[Reiten]

The only reason why Steam is being called a monopoly is because the only other online video game distributors are Epic Game Store, and EA Origin, and both of them suck massively in comparison, my favorite argument is the whole "oh the 30% commission charge is too much" 30% is literally the high end of the industry standard, but its still within the industry standards! I'm 100% certain that if Valve charged less, we'd be hearing of another UK lawsuit for unfairly undercutting the competition or some nonsense like that.

Also, you have to remember that for the 30% cut you get access to the whole steam ecosystem - distribution, forums, workshop, cloud saves and all the rest. Given all this I'd say the 30% cut might even be rather cheap.
And I agree, it's not like there are no other option(the ones you mentioned, and also GOG), it's just that Steam is the superior one.

 

[inf]

Okay, I guess it apparently violates UK competition law. But come on, there is no alternative to Steam and I believe that won't change anytime soon.

 

[Noctosphere]

Okay, I guess it apparently violates UK competition law. But come on, there is no alternative to Steam and I believe that won't change anytime soon.

EGS, GOG, EA App, Ubisoft App, Battle.net, etc. There's a lot of alternative. Steam sure is the best of them all and has a much larger catalogue.
I would guess that this lawsuit was not started by a bunch of unhappy gamers, but more likely by a bunch of unhappy companies.

 

[Bladexdsl]

this will be gabe in court

 

[inf]

EGS, GOG, EA App, Ubisoft App, Battle.net, etc. There's a lot of alternative. Steam sure is the best of them all and has a much larger catalogue.

Maybe for buying/playing games. But Steam offers way more than that.

 

[The Catboy]

I bet Epic has something to do with this or will throw their hat into this. They will do anything, besides making a good shop, to try and kill Steam

 

[Ondrashek06]

...again with this "Steam is a monopoly" crap?
Corporations are free to create any launcher or storefront they want. See EGS, uPlay, Origin, BattleNet, GOG...
The reason why Steam is the biggest storefront is simply the amount and quality of services they provide. For example, filters that let you get rid of slop in the store, a decent review system, discussion forums, an achievement system, or an entire marketplace for in-game items.

Meanwhile Epic is providing subpar services while constantly whining about Steam's "mOnOpOlY", so no one wants to actually use them except for the free games.

And while GOG is an actually popular marketplace, it doesn't try to compete with Steam. It just appeals to the niche of players that want actual game ownership and care about preservation.

 

[linuxares]

Not just that Steam is a great platform but they forget how lazy people are. Everything is already there. So people rather not change for no good reason

 

[tech3475]

Maybe provide a source OP?

Going by the OP, I think it's BS with possible exception to price parity restrictions, but I'm also not surprised, I recall hearing a similar lawsuit for Sony years ago where they claimed the 30% is harming consumers and acting like cutting this would lead to cheaper prices, which I doubt, as opposed to say forcing Sony to allow digital game sales via third party retailers.

Post automatically merged: Jan 29, 2026

And while GOG is an actually popular marketplace, it doesn't try to compete with Steam. It just appeals to the niche of players that want actual game ownership and care about preservation.

I still find it weird that they don't officially support Linux on Galaxy, I'd imagine there's allot of crossover between the users.

I'm obviously aware of Heroic launcher, but I'd still expect something a bit more official.

 

[Noctosphere]

Not just that Steam is a great platform but they forget how lazy people are. Everything is already there. So people rather not change for no good reason

100% correct. Unless another competitor offers something attractive to gamers, and not just a "Steam reskin", nobody is gonna leave Steam for them. That's not a monopoly thing, it's just how humans work.

 

[Reiten]

Going by the OP, I think it's BS with possible exception to price parity restrictions, but I'm also not surprised, I recall hearing a similar lawsuit for Sony years ago where they claimed the 30% is harming consumers and acting like cutting this would lead to cheaper prices, which I doubt, as opposed to say forcing Sony to allow digital game sales via third party retailers.

According to some of the stuff I read about it, and assuming it's the same Sony case, it might even be the same group of lawyers. Also, I'm not sure how law works, but it seems the lawyers made a company with the purpose of suing Steam, which seems a bit suspicious, but maybe someone more law savvy can chim in on that.
It's also fun that, at best, if they win, the consumer might not even get 50 pounds.
In any case, here's a youtube video which summarizes it quite nicely:

 

[ZeroT21]

Steam should just outright remove them from it's storefront and not use it's services. I doubt those game devs could even earn/amass enough sales to be viable on any other storefront

 

[Noctosphere]

According to some of the stuff I read about it, and assuming it's the same Sony case, it might even be the same group of lawyers. Also, I'm not sure how law works, but it seems the lawyers made a company with the purpose of suing Steam, which seems a bit suspicious, but maybe someone more law savvy can chim in on that.
It's also fun that, at best, if they win, the consumer might not even get 50 pounds.
In any case, here's a youtube video which summarizes it quite nicely:

If this lawsuit is won and everone of these "gamers" get 50 pounds, what do you think they are going to do with this money?
Yup, you got it, get another game on Steam.

 

[Viri]

Maybe if Tim Sweeney wasn't a dumb ass, and actually made his store good, instead of bribing devs to be exclusive to his dead store, there would be competition. I can't even play Epic games on Linux, because he refuses to support Linux. I would say Windows is more of a "monopoly" for PC OS than Steam is for game stores. lol

 

[tech3475]

Maybe if Tim Sweeney wasn't a dumb ass, and actually made his store good, instead of bribing devs to be exclusive to his dead store, there would be competition. I can't even play Epic games on Linux, because he refuses to support Linux. I would say Windows is more of a "monopoly" for PC OS than Steam is for game stores. lol

I think if he had just done the free games and made regular discount vouchers instead of paid exclusivity, people would have been more receptive of EGS even when it was lacking 'basic' stuff like a shopping trolley or cloud saves, the latter of which still doesn't seem as widely supported when I look compared to Steam.

I have multiple systems and cloud saves are a very nice QoL feature.