A profile of Valve, which PrivCo estimates generated $5.2B in revenue and $1.5B in net income in 2025, as lawsuits allege its Steam store abuses market power
Lawsuits in the US and the UK allege the company's Steam store is abusing its market power. Valve disagrees.
Bloomberg
Context & Ripple Effects
Steam’s scale has continued to deepen: related coverage says it reached 42M peak concurrent users in February and that 5,863 games cleared $100K in sales during 2025. That commercial reach makes challenges to its store rules consequential for a large developer and player ecosystem.
The claims also sit in a longer competition-policy arc. Valve previously faced EU scrutiny over geo-blocking and regional pricing, while its 2024 subscriber-agreement change removed mandatory arbitration, making direct gamer litigation more accessible.
First-order effects
Valve must defend allegations in both the US and UK while maintaining that Steam has not abused market power.
Steam’s store practices and commercial terms become subject to legal scrutiny; the allegations do not establish wrongdoing.
Second-order effects
The cases could increase pressure on Valve to justify how its store rules affect game publishers, developers, and users, particularly given the platform’s growing sales and audience footprint.
Other digital game-distribution platforms may face closer comparison with Steam’s practices as the litigation develops, even without an immediate change to their policies.
Third-order effects
If challenges across jurisdictions gain traction, game storefronts may increasingly be treated as competition-policy gatekeepers rather than simply retail channels.
The combination of larger platform reach and easier access to litigation could shift disputes over distribution terms from private contracts toward courts and regulators, though outcomes will depend on the facts established in each case.
The trend: Steam’s expanding role in PC game distribution is being accompanied by more sustained legal scrutiny of the power and terms of major digital storefronts.
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@TimSweeneyEpic Bribing third party developers into non-profitable exclusivity deals just to stick it to Valve isn't “fair competition” either you dipshit. The EGS offers nothing of value as an alternative to Steam other than exclusive rights to games they had no hand in making.
@TimSweeneyEpic This is the same crap places like Walmart pulled on us in the 90s. We had the rights to sell boxed copies of our games direct, but were also in retail via a publisher. So on something like Duke or Shadow Warrior we were offering a $5 discount buying directly from …
@TimSweeneyEpic Or the publisher can have the same sale on both storefronts? When are you going to understand that we like Steam because it works. Other stores lack the polish and basic usefulness we need. How many years has Epic store been out? And yet it's never gotten better.
Very similar to the allegations against Amazon for taking high fees while retaliating against product makers who offer better prices on lower-fee stores. Price competition is the #1 opportunity for new market entrants to compete! https://x.com/...
Is this the “fair competition” praised by recent articles? If a store with dominant market share taking a 30% cut can bully developers into not passing on savings to customers on competing stores with lower fees, then competition doesn't stand a chance. [image]
Newly revealed court documents from an ongoing antitrust lawsuit claim that Valve once threatened to remove Rainbow Six Siege from Steam after Ubisoft tried selling the game at a lower price on its own storefront, Uplay. According to the reports, Ubisoft introduced a cheaper [ima…
@Pirat_Nation Valve was in the RIGHT. This sort of thing happens all the time in every commercial industry. A manufacturer undercuts its distribution in an attempt at higher profits. And it's BS. This is why MAP pricing agreements exist in distribution contracts. It protects ever…
Why are people framing this as a good thing? Uplay is terrible dont get me wrong but. This is a bad thing? People (inlcuding me) has been given the impression that the Steam monopoly is mostly becuase Steam is just the best platform to host your game on, in like 99% of cases.