Apple Pal wants Valve to provide a lot of information about how much money they make. Will not like the valve. This is my two-line summary of the joint search letter filed yesterday, as part of an ongoing legal tussle with Epic Games over Fortnight and Apple’s App Store fees.
What does Valve have to do with the fight between Val Pal and Epic? Not much, say valve.
Epic and Apple Pal have been preparing to fight each other in court since last August, when Epic added a payment method to Fortnight on iOS that bypassed Apple’s 30% cut in all sales on their service. Apple immediately removed Fortnite from the App Store; The epic immediately published a sarcastic animated short and filed suit; And since then both companies have been preparing the court and then squabbling over each other.
As part of those preparations, Apple wants to share information about their business to Paul Valve. Apple aims to target the “total size of the market for Epic’s available digital distribution channels”, and argues that data for Steam – as a digital distribution channel for games like Fortnite (but not Fortnite) – is essential to the search. The search letter says Apple and Valve have talked on the phone several times and Valve has been helpful, but there are two requests that Valve refuses to answer. This is Request 2 and Request 32.
Request 2, Apple Paul argues, is “too narrow.” Specifically, it states that Apple wants to give Paul Valve “(a) annual sales of applications and in-app products; (b) annual advertising revenue from Steam; (c) annual sales of external products attributed to Steam; (d) annual revenue from Steam; And (e) annual earnings from steam (gross or net). ”
The request asks for 32 documents “Enough to show: (a) the name of each app on Steam; (b) the range of dates when the app was available on Steam; and (c) the price of the app and the product in any app available on Steam.”
“Valve has chosen to remain private in part to avoid the burden of public company advertising.”
Valve, for their part, says that “Apple will place an extraordinary burden on the moment to integrate the demands of the moment, to query, process and create documents on the valve, Apple wants the moment – content that Valve does not make or keep in the normal course of business. – and with more or less value, as Valve does not participate in the mobile app market in the issue. “
Apple Paul apparently wanted “information about all 30,000+ games on Steam in ten years,” but reduced that to “436 games in six years,” but Valve argues that this simply “makes an impossible task a little impossible.”
There is another controversy over the “Volume 5 build”, in which the contents were given to Apple Pal in a partially redacted form by Valve. Apple Paul wants it to be uncontrollable and argues that if “competitive sensitivity is the real issue” without providing an undecided version, then the court’s “defensive order” regarding the material provided for the case should already be taken care of.
Valve says competition is part of his concern. “Valve has chosen to remain private in part to avoid the burden of public company disclosure and reporting requirements that are subject to companies such as Samsung or Google. Valve does not disclose its sales and revenue information and estimates, and Valve receives significant value and considering the confidentiality of such information. , Out of the hands of companies like Epic, which also sells PC games. ”
The case between Apple Pal and Epic is expected to be tried this summer.
