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A U.S. investigating judge ordered Valve to provide sales data to Apple in response to a subpoena as Apple continued to fight Epic Games.
In addition to some aggregate sales data for all of Steam, Valve will only need to provide specific price and sales data by title for “436 specific apps available on Steam and the Epic Games Store”, depending on the order. . . That’s a significant decrease from the more than 30,000 Apple titles for which Apple initially requested data.
By resisting the subpoena, Valve argued that its Steam sales data was irrelevant to the questions regarding the purely mobile app markets at issue in the case. Refocusing demand only on games available on both Steam and the Epic Games Store makes it more directly relevant to mobile competition issues in the case, Judge Thomas Hixson writes in his order.
“Remember that in these related cases, [Epic] allege that Apple’s 30% commission on sales through its App Store is anti-competitive and that allowing iOS apps to be sold through other stores would force Apple to reduce its commission to a more competitive level, “writes Hixson in the command.” … out of 436 specific games sold in both Steam and Epic stores, Apple is investigating whether the availability of other stores is in fact affecting commissions. [Epic] allege. “
Just put it back
Valve’s attorney, Gavin Skok, also argued that responding to the subpoena would be too burdensome on the company, forcing multiple full-time employees working hours to compile data from multiple sources for each game ( as indicated by Law360). In his order, Justice Hixson said the data collection “didn’t seem so cumbersome.” That said, Hixson did agree to limit the response to data from 2017 (rather than 2015, as Apple requested) because the Epic Games Store only existed in 2018.
Hixson also rejected arguments that Apple should subpoena individual developers for their price and sales data, saying the potential effort would be an “undue burden” on Apple. The judge added that this sales information is not confidential to the developers involved and that “Valve runs a store and how much it sells from its own information.”
In 2018, Valve decided to effectively block services like Steam Spy or Ars’ Steam Gauge from creating public estimates of Steam game sales based on sample data from individual public user accounts. Valve said in July 2018 that it was working on a “more precise” replacement for this Steam Spy data, but only released sporadic and incomplete summaries of the Steam market in the years that followed.
Valve’s decision to remain private means it avoids public company disclosure and reporting obligations, but it does not immunize the company from [legal] “Hixson continued.” The protection orders in these actions allow Valve to designate its documents as confidential or highly confidential to address competition concerns, and that protection is sufficient.
Valve will have 30 days to provide the requested data to Apple.
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