Valve Has Been Sued Just After Sony Due to Steam Monopoly

The Epic Games and Apple lawsuit keeps impacting the gaming industry. First Sony, now Valve. The company is being sued due to the monopoly of Steam.

Is Valve really the monopoly?

The Epic Games vs. Apple lawsuit can change the gaming industry once and for all. Because there are antitrust laws. Antitrust laws are in place to protect consumers from companies owning a monopoly over their given market, as well as protection against predatory financial practices. This means that Valve is practically under investigation as many of us know, the only big rival of Steam is the Epic Games Store.

“Valve abuses its market power to ensure game publishers have no choice but to sell most of their games through the Steam Store, where they are subject to Valve’s 30 per cent toll,” said indie game developer and Humble Bundle creator Wolfire Games, in the lawsuit against Valve. (Reported by Ars Technica)

The suit for Valve is about the company controlling 75 per cent of the PC gaming market. When we think that Steam owns 75 per cent of the market, we can easily see that no company can compete with Steam easily. The biggest rival of Steam is 3-4 times smaller than Steam. Due to this monopoly, Steam can take a huge 30 per cent cut from the developers. That is a huge number and many developers think that this needs to change. But if there isn’t any rival to Valve, no one can change that easily. Unless Valve loses the lawsuit.

No one can guess what will happen now. But we all know that the Epic Games vs Apple lawsuit has a massive impact on the gaming industry. Maybe this recent lawsuit will be another example that end-users will win. We will have to wait and see. Most probably there will be more news to come about this one.