A digital rights campaigner named Vicki Shotbolt has filed a lawsuit against Valve Corporation, accusing the company of anticompetitive practices and overcharging 14 million customers.
She’s getting backed by legal firm Milberg London LLP, which specializes in handling class action lawsuits against large companies.
Valve is yet to respond to the complaint.
Valve Corporation, the owner of Steam (the world’s largest digital distribution platform for PC games), is getting sued for a whopping £656 million, which is roughly $830 million.
The lawsuit is being filed at the Competition Appeal Tribunal in London by digital rights campaigner Vicki Shotbolt. This is a collective action lawsuit, which means one person goes to court on behalf of a much larger group of plaintiffs.
Shotbolt says that Steam is using its market dominance to overcharge 14 million customers in the UK and that this has been going on for at least six years.
“Valve is rigging the market and taking advantage of UK gamers,” she added. Shotbolt also accused the company of intentionally shutting down smaller competitors so that it could continue to maintain its market dominance.
According to her complaint, Steam forces game publishers to sign up to price parity obligations. This means they cannot sell their titles on other platforms at a cheaper price. This process allows the company to get up to 30% extra commission, which, at the end of the day, comes out of the customers’ pockets.
It’s well worth noting that Shotbolt is not alone in this battle. She’s getting backed by legal firm Milberg London LLP, which specializes in handling class action lawsuits against large companies.
Addressing the lawsuit, Natasha Pearman, a partner at the law firm, said that there’s a reason why we have competition laws—it’s to protect the interests of consumers and ensure that the market is running properly.
When companies like Valve try to get a monopoly over the market (something Apple has also been accused of), it’s the customers who are hurt.
Natasha Pearman says that this is why it’s important to take collective action and be the voice of those countless customers who suffer due to the growing greed of such companies.
Steam’s Performance in the Last Year
To give you an idea of how big Steam’s market really is, here are some numbers from 2023 (according to VG Insights):
Steam enjoyed record-breaking sales, generating over $9 billion (£7.1 billion) in global revenue.
Over 580 million games were sold, and 14,000 new titles were released in the entire year.
The top 10 best-selling games accounted for 61% of the sales, and the top 100 games accounted for nearly 91% of the sales.
It’s clear from these numbers that Steam is a huge gaming platform, and if the claims made by Shotbolt are indeed true, it truly might have been heading to slowly monopolize the market, which must be stopped.
A Similar Case against PlayStation
Interestingly, Steam isn’t the first one to be accused of disrupting market rules in the gaming space. A similar case was filed against PlayStation (which recently laid off 900 employees) in 2022 for ripping off 8.9 million UK customers.
PlayStation was sued for £5 billion, which means that each customer could get up to £560 each.
Furthermore, any user in the UK who purchased digital games or made in-app game purchases since August 19, 2016, has been automatically included in this. This means they don’t need to sign up separately to get a share of the compensation.
The lawsuit was filed by consumer rights champion Alex Neill, and he’s being backed by the same law firm that’s helping Shotbolt (Milberg London LLP), and Natasha Pearman is leading this case as well.
The complaint says that Sony charged a 30% commission on every digital game or in-game purchase, meaning customers had to end up paying much more than they should have.
PlayStation is also accused of using anti-competitive strategies that are adding to the amount customers have to shell out to enjoy video games.
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