“It needs to cooperate fairly, and it’s clearly not.” Why Valve is facing a £656m day in the UK courts

The economics of platforms and storefronts have become an increasingly significant talking point in the last decade, driven in large part by Epic’s Tim Sweeney. His long-standing complaints about revenue share on digital sharefronts resulted first in the launch of the Epic Game Store, which charges developers 12% of sales revenue, and then broadly successful lawsuits against Apple and Google which compelled them to support alternative storefronts for games on their platforms.

Valve, meanwhile, has persisted in its 30% charge on games sold on Steam, which remains the largest PC storefront, despite Epic’s efforts. In the United States, developers Wolfire Studios and Dark Catt Studios separately filed antitrust cases in 2021 alleging that 30% was excessive; the following year, they were consolidated into a single case, which was granted class action status in November 2024.

Meanwhile, in the United Kingdom there is a similar case, led by class representative Vicki Shotbolt, CEO of digital safety firm Parent Zone. The case, brought by law firm Milberg, asserts that Valve is in violation of competition law. Last month, a court ruled it had to go to trial, despite the company’s objections.

Despite leading the case, Shotbolt respects Steam and the service it offers consumers. “It’s a fantastic platform from a gamer’s point of view,” she says. “But the reason I became involved in the case is that my work is all about digital.”

“It’s about how you use digital in positive ways, and how you unlock, enjoy, and embrace opportunity. Games are such a vital part of that ecosystem. It’s an important industry. It’s important for young people who enjoy it and play in it. It’s important for the adults who have spent an enormous amount of time socialising, playing games, and so on.

“Steam is a big and important platform for a big and important ecosystem – it needs to cooperate fairly, and it’s clearly not.”

“Games is a really important sector, and therefore it needs to operate fairly and not overcharge, fundamentally. Steam is a big and important platform for a big and important ecosystem – it needs to cooperate fairly, and it’s clearly not.”

There are a few core points at the heart of Shotbolt’s case. The first is whether Valve is harming consumers by charging a 30% revenue share to developers and publishers. In court filings, lawyers describe this as “excessive commission charges” and claim this drives up costs for consumers. The second main point concerns Valve’s price parity requirement, which means that companies cannot sell Steam keys on other storefronts for less than they do on Valve’s.

Per the company’s own Steamworks documentation: “You should use Steam Keys to sell your game on other stores in a similar way to how you sell your game on Steam. It is important that you don’t give Steam customers a worse deal than Steam Key purchasers.”

“That really made a case that’s very compelling for me,” says Shotbolt. “That’s the thing that means that these games cannot be sold cheaper elsewhere. And that instantly means that the market is skewed.”

One of the sentiments in the lawsuit is that Valve’s revenue share is putting up prices for consumers. What conviction, then, does Shotbolt have that if the Steam giant were to reduce its slice of the pie, developers would reduce costs for gamers?

“None. They may not,” she admits. “That is out of my control. You can put a stake in the ground and say developers should not be being charged that 30% – that it is too high and not a reasonable amount of money. What you’d hope would happen is that some developers will bring their prices down, and they’ll pass that on to the consumer. I believe it will happen, because that’s how markets look. But it can only happen if that price parity obligation also goes away.”

“Of course, it’s possible that developers would get together and make greater profits from their games. But one would hope a market would respond by saying it’s in my interest to cut my price now and pass that on to the customer.”

“If you want to develop a PC game, you want it on Steam. It’s not like developers have ten other options.”

Another issue that Shotbolt raises with Valve is its market dominance; developers feel like they have no other alternative than to list their game on Steam as it is by far the biggest platform in PC games.

“It isn’t right for the developers who put in hours of work and creativity to develop these games then have to pay Valve such a hefty fee to get their game on the platform that dominates the market,” she says. “If you want to develop a PC game, you want it on Steam. It’s not like developers have ten other options. That’s what makes the case, I think, so important, because Steam has had market dominance for a long, long time, and it shouldn’t be exploiting that.”

The majority of Shotbolt’s work to date has been in digital safety, on how kids, in particular, can stay safe online via her organisation, Parent Zone.

At a time when Steam and similar platforms are coming under fire for the content they host – even losing access to massive payment providers – it is slightly surprising that Shotbolt has engaged Valve over how they price games, rather than issues of online safety. She sees it as simply one route to improve the online experience.

“Online safety is important to us. It’s important to us because if something isn’t safe, parents lose confidence in it, and then we end up in situations like the one that we’re in now, where people are talking about banning social media – that’s not something that we support,” Shotbolt says.

“Safety is important because we want people to use digital. There are lots of things about the Steam platform that I would say are problematic, including its links to things like skin gambling. Competition law is just one lever we can use to improve the digital world. Competition law is more interested in financial topics than those topics.”

“”A market operates best when whoever’s producing the product can price it at whatever they want to price it as”

If the class action wins at trial, Milberg is demanding up to £656 million in damages to be paid out to UK consumers affected by Valve’s practices on Steam. Beyond that, Shotbolt would like to see a “more equitable” relationship between Valve and its developers when it comes to profit sharing.

“A market operates best when it’s possible for developers – or whoever’s producing the product – to take it elsewhere and discount it, and price it at whatever they want to price it as,” she explains.

“This is probably going to be a terrible analogy, but imagine if you’re the manufacturer of baked beans and the only place you’re allowed to sell them is Waitrose. You can choose to sell them in Aldi, but you’re not allowed to do that at a lower price. It’s fine that Waitrose give customers a nicer shopping experience and that they’ve got more staff and all of that stuff. If they want to add bells and whistles, then the consumer can expect to pay more for the product. But if the consumer chooses to go to a warehouse and buy the product without the bells and whistles, they should be able to do that. I acknowledge that Steam does offer bells and whistles, but that shouldn’t mean that you can’t sell your product elsewhere for less.”