To defend itself against Epic, Apple calls on Steam against its will

In recent months, no one has been able to miss the matter:Apple and the creator ofFortniteended up in courtfor transaction fee stories. No need to return to the subject, but in short: Epic Games pays 30% commission on each in-app purchase made from its iOS game, and it doesn't like it. While everyone has been putting up with it for ten years.

In order to remind people of this, the Cupertino lawyers therefore had an idea: to prove, precisely, that platforms like theirs have been working this way for a long time. And who better thanValve, the studio behind the Steam game library, to support their arguments? In any case, this is where the Apple firm seems to have found a new string to add to its bow.

Better to laugh about it

Concretely, the lawyers in charge of the subject therefore ordered Valve to provide acomplete sales history covering almost half a thousand titlesavailable on Steam. 436 more precisely, with prices and many other supporting information. Understandable: in this way, Apple will be able to prove that its competitor practices the same method as the App Store.

But you see it coming: Valve doesn't see it that way. The company of billionaire Gabe Newell estimates that its several hundred employees simply do notnot the weightfaced with data collection of this magnitude. Everyone will judge according to their opinion: although particularly daring in an ultra-competitive market context, the demand remains commendable. All the more feasible when you know that a tech company probably doesn't keep its accounts on paper but rather in a very clean Google Sheets.

Not the first

As US Magistrate Judge Thomas S. Hixson in charge of the case points out, Apple has in fact flooded the sector with requests of this type in recent weeks. “Don’t worry, it’s not just you” he affirms; literally (ironically?):don't worry, it's not just you.

With more than thirty thousand games available on Steam, Valve is now a leader in its sector, far aheadApple ArcadeorMicrosoft et xCloud. He will have to provide data recorded since 2017, two years less than the original complaints made by the Apple defense.