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Apple requires Valve to produce documents related to sales data in the PC gaming market, and Valve has rejected the lawsuit and is requesting relief from the “burden” of disclosing the data.
Valve is the company behind Steam, a PC and Mac game store that distributes software. The case of Apple and Epic has pointed to the company as a relevant entity for Apple’s defense, although Valve says otherwise.
A new court filing in the Apple vs. Epic case describes the complaints from Apple and Valve, as requests for documents are not satisfactory to both parties. Apple has requested specific data related to the sale and distribution of video games since 2015, and Valve says providing the data is onerous.
Apple position
Apple’s complaint relates to the documents called Application 2, Application 32 and Volume 5 Production. These documents are stated to be relevant to the case and are necessary to show the competitive market in which Epic participates.
Request 2
Request 2 would show Valve’s total annual sales of in-app products and applications, Steam’s annual advertising revenue, Steam’s annual external product sales, Steam’s annual revenue, and Steam’s annual earnings. Apple requested this data in a specific format, although Valve says the format Apple requests would cause an undue burden on the company.
Apple says Request 2 is crucial in calculating the total market size for Epic’s available digital distribution channels, which the Court finds highly relevant. Apple notes that Samsung was ordered to provide the same information and has done so.
Request 32
Request 32 requests documents showing the name of each application on Steam, the range of dates that application was available, and the price of the application and the product embedded in the application. Apple says this information is necessary to determine the scope and breadth of the digital distribution market.
Volume 5 production
Volume 5 production is a historical document showing sales data related to games sold on the Steam market. Apple says Valve provided production volume 5 but with great rewrites. The redactions appear to cover any information that could potentially be useful to the case.
Apple requested the documentation to observe how commissions are handled in the market. Valve states that the information is confidential and must be redacted.
Valve position
Valve states that it does not manufacture or sell phones, tablets, or games for mobile devices. Steam is a digital store that operates on PC platforms and does not sell Fortnite.
There are 30,000 games available on Steam and more than 99% of those are not made by Valve. Most of these games can be purchased elsewhere and Fortnite It is not available due to Epic refusing to sell it on the Steam platform.
Valve load
Apple gave Valve a list of 436 games that are available on Steam and the Epic Game Store and demanded sales data outlined in Request 2. Valve says this information is technically available in some form on different systems, but compiling it would be great. load.
Apple’s Request 2 would require:
- Identify all versions and items on Steam since 2015 for all 436 games
- Determine the selling prices for each version and item of the game at specific times, which would require consulting two separate databases
- extract unit sales information from a third database and payment rules from another database
- Consult another database for games sold in packages
- View and separate your income sharing information to determine your income related to each sale.
The presentation describes this as an overwhelming amount of work for a single version of an article. Apple’s lawsuits would require Valve to repeat this process thousands of times.
While this information is available for public companies like Samsung, it is not for private companies like Valve. Valve states that this type of data is not created or maintained in the normal course of business.
The Steam store is only available on desktop platforms and is not present in the mobile market, therefore Valve is not part of the conversation, says Valve. Apple says the relevant market is any video game sold, but the counterargument is that Apple has not provided adequate evidence that this is the case.
The court has repeatedly demanded that Apple and Epic must mutually define the market for the case to proceed. Apple sees the line as the entire gaming market given the similarity of App Store prices to console game store prices and Valve prices, and Epic wants a narrower definition.
Valve argues that the legal argument at the core of Apple versus Epic only pertains to video games and mobile apps, not to distributors of desktop PC games. Providing confidential sales and revenue information does not help Apple’s case, according to Valve, and only provides data that would not otherwise be available to competitors like Epic.
