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Apple says it needs business records from Valve to challenge ongoing consumer antitrust case over Store app and went to court to achieve this.
Game developer Valve is not involved in the antitrust case brought by consumers against Apple. But Apple has now filed a subpoena asking a federal judge to force Valve to turn over data it says is “essential” to its defense.
Apple is accused in a class action lawsuit of inflating app prices due to a 30 percent price cut and the way it manages its App Store. The case is also unrelated to Apple's previous case against Epic Games, but the company is citing that legal battle as the reason it wants Valve's data.
“In Epic, the court found that Steam's commission rates were a 'clear illustration' of the impact of competition on prices,” Apple said in its lawsuit (see full text below). “And plaintiffs sought and received class certification based on an expert report that explicitly identified the ‘Windows PC gaming’ environment as the ‘benchmark’ for the world ‘except for’ Apple’s alleged anti-competitive conduct.”
Apple says it has asked Valve for specific “aggregated information determining Steam's effective commission rate by year.” It says that providing this data is “significantly less burdensome to Valve than the detailed data it has previously provided, and less commercially sensitive,” but Valve “has not agreed to comply with this narrow request.”
For its part, although Valve has previously provided information, it does not believe it is obligated to “add to” this preliminary disclosure. Additionally, Valve's lawyer reportedly told Apple that its demand for business records “imposes a significant and unreasonable burden.”
This is not the first time Valve has refused to provide Apple with business records. In 2021, the company also refused to provide sales data in the Epic Games v. Apple case.
Subpoena to Valve Corporation from Mike Wurtele
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