“Is the 30% Steam fee a violation of antitrust laws?” dismissal of the lawsuit

Woolfire Games’ appeal was dismissed against Wolffire Games’ lawsuit alleging that Valve, which operates Steam, is charging unreasonably high store fees to the manufacturer.

The lawsuit settled this time on April 27, 2021, Ulfire Games and two individuals against the Federal District Court for the Western District of Washington, USA, using Steam’s dominance, which has a share of 75% of the PC game market, resulted in Valve being extremely high. It is said that the store fee is being charged to the manufacturer.

According to Ulfire Games, when they tried to sell their products in a store with a lower sales fee than Steam, they tried to set a lower price than Steam by adding a reduced sales fee, but Valve notified that if they did this, they would remove the product from Steam. . In a subsequent inquiry, it is said that Ulfire Games filed a lawsuit because it was announced that it would also be deleted even if it was sold at a discount on the Ulfire Games official site in the form of not using the Steam service such as the download function at all.

Although the issue of whether the 30% Steem fee was unreasonable in this trial, the judge of the Federal District Court for the Western District of Washington who was in charge of the hearing recognized that the Steam store and the Steam platform are a single product, and Steam will use the profits from game sales as a free service on the platform side. They said that the fee of 30% is not unreasonably appropriate because it is being rotated.

The judge argues that Ulfire’s claim is different from Valve’s use of its dominant position in the PC market, and points out that Steam has been charging a 30% fee since the dawn of download sales, that is, when it had a low market share in the PC game market. He said Ulfire Games could not prove that the 30% Steem fee was excess profit.

The judge said that other PC game stores that charge sales fees at lower prices have failed, even with large amounts of freely available resources, so the Steam sales fees are thought to be commensurate with the platform’s value for providing free services to game publishers. We cannot substantiate the claim that Ulfire Games’ monopoly on Valve caused direct harm to the developer, and accepting the claim that Valve’s actions resulted in a decline in production and quality in the industry as a whole cannot provide facts indicating what direct harm was suffered. added that there was no Related information can be found here.