Valve to face UK class action lawsuit with proposed damages of £656m

PC games giant Valve has been told it has to face a £656 million lawsuit in the UK, which claims the Steam giant’s revenue share is too high and negatively impacts consumers.

As spotted by Reuters, the company has been told by the London’s Competition Appeal Tribunal that the case will continue to trial after Valve argued that it should not.

The case was filed back in June 2024 by Vicki Shotbolt, the CEO of Parent Zone, who believes that the company takes “excessive commission charges”, which ultimately, she claims, drives up costs for consumers. Valve takes a 30% revenue share from everything sold on Steam.

Lawyers for Shotbolt also claim that, should consumers want to purchase add-on content for a game, they have to do so through Steam, something they describe as “locking in” users to the platform.

The case has been brought on behalf of 14 million Steam users in the United Kingdom, with damages “provisionally estimated” to reach as much as £656 million. Per Shotbolt’s initial filing to start collective proceedings, this would work out at between £8 and £23 for consumers purchasing games, between £14 and £29 on add-on content, coming to £22-to-£44 in total.

“Valve is rigging the market and taking advantage of UK gamers,” Shotbolt said when the lawsuit was initially filed.

Shotbolt has secured over £18.6 million to support the lawsuit, though Valve still queried her funding arrangements as part of its attempt to stop the case from going to trial.

Valve is facing similar legal issues on the same topic in the UK. Wolfire Studios initially filed an antitrust case against the Steam giant back in April 2021, once again focusing on the platform’s 30% revenue cut, which it described as “extraordinarily high”. The lawsuit was initially dismissed later that year, but was refiled the following May after some changes were made to its arguments.

Meanwhile, Dark Catt Studios filed its lawsuit against Valve in June 2021. In July 2022, a court order said that the two cases would be combined into one. In November 2024, the lawsuit was granted class action status.