The UK specialist competition tribunal has certified the £656m legal claim against Valve brought by children’s rights campaigner, Vicki Shotbolt. This marks a significant first victory for the class of around 14 million PC gamers against Valve – the owner of popular gaming platform, Steam.
The claim alleges that Valve has abused its dominant position in the PC gaming market under UK competition law by imposing excessive commission charges and anti-competitive restrictions on game developers selling gaming titles on the Steam platform.
These excessive commission charges are passed onto consumers by way of increased prices for PC games and in-game content.
Ms Shotbolt, the class representative, asserts that Valve’s conduct has increased the prices of games across the entire market. Therefore the class is not limited to Steam users but also includes purchasers of PC games and downloadable content on other gaming platforms and distribution channels.
Fuck this title. Pc gamers are not in a battle against valve. We willingly gave them the pseudo-monopoly they have because they’re the only company that treats us right. All the competition has to do to break it is be decent but they all fail at the bare minimum.
I think it’s less of a monopoly and more of the fact that they won the market share game. I could buy all my games somewhere else but I don’t know why I would do something so stupid.
„PC Gamers“ are not a monolith. I buy games on Steam if they are not available anywhere else. It’s not like I have an option, I‘d prefer a non-US, DRM-free alternative, like GOG.
You’ll have to convince those other developers to release on GOG. It’s not Valve preventing them from doing so.