Valve Ordered to Give Apple Information on 436 Steam Games As Part of Epic Games Legal Case

[twistedpixel8]

Your argument seems to be that Epic can make a claim and Apple are not allowed to use Epics argument to prove they are wrong.

No, you’re missing his point. His point is that Apple should not receive the data as it’s private company data. A third-party should receive it and make an assessment which would then be made available to each side and the judge. Why should Apple be able to just demand another company’s data?

 

[cmaier]

No, you’re missing his point. His point is that Apple should not receive the data as it’s private company data. A third-party should receive it and make an assessment which would then be made available to each side and the judge. Why should Apple be able to just demand another company’s data?

Once again, Apple doesn’t get to see the data. The outside counsel does and expert witnesses do.

 

[gnasher729]

How is that legal? Why involve a company that has nothing to do with a legal battle of two other companies exposing their own company data? Seems messed up to me

The problem is they _are_ involved. Epic is suing Apple, and parts of their arguments are that Apple supposedly has a monopoly, and that Apple is supposedly overcharging. If Apple can say that Valve charges the same or similar to Apple, then the overcharging argument can go away. It's quite unfortunate for Valve, and they haven't done anything wrong, but quite legal as well.

It's like there's a traffic accident near your shop and you get a subpoena for all your security footage. It's unfortunate for you, it costs you money when you have done nothing wrong, but you still have to supply the data.

 

[gnipgnop]

And epic’s theory is that if it is allowed to have its own store on iPhones, then prices for apps will decrease. That’s what they claim in their complaint. Apple is entitled to defend itself by showing that when epic created and App Store on PCs that the price of apps on PCs did not decrease. And to show that they need information on what happened to prices and sales on PCs (eg Steam).

That's probably the most ridiculous aspect of Epic's lawsuit. $.99 wasn't a common pricing strategy for software prior to mobile platforms.

 

[cmaier]

The problem is they _are_ involved. Epic is suing Apple, and parts of their arguments are that Apple supposedly has a monopoly, and that Apple is supposedly overcharging. If Apple can say that Valve charges the same or similar to Apple, then the overcharging argument can go away. It's quite unfortunate for Valve, but quite legal as well.

That’s not really the argument Apple is making about this data (though they do argue that valve has a similar price structure, that’s not why they wanted this particular information).

In this case, epic claimed that if they are allowed to have an App Store on iOS, that prices will go down. That’s sort of fundamental to any antitrust complaint - there is some argument that competition is being hurt and prices are inflated. Here we have a situation where epic did enter an established market, and started competing against valve. Apple wants to show that when that happened, valve did not lower its prices. Therefore it won’t happen on iOS either.

 

[cmaier]

That's probably the most ridiculous aspect of Epic's lawsuit. $.99 wasn't a common pricing strategy for software prior to mobile platforms.

Nor was “free.”

To be fair, they are also talking about prices to developers (eg the 30 or 15 percent, though these are also low)

 

[diamond.g]

They are games that appeared in both the valve and epic stores. That way Apple can see the effect on prices by comparing the price before and after epic entered the market.

Ah, I assume they are also getting the sales (as in discount) data, cause Steam and the Epic store always be having sales (as in discounts) on games, or how Epic gives games away for free (Steam doesn't really have an equivalent).

 

[mi7chy]

Apple's monopoly will get shaken up like Qualcomm's.

 

[cmaier]

Ah, I assume they are also getting the sales (as in discount) data, cause Steam and the Epic store always be having sales (as in discounts) on games, or how Epic gives games away for free (Steam doesn't really have an equivalent).

Yes they are getting price information as it varied over time, including bundles, etc.

 

[PBG4 Dude]

I hope Apple wont buy Valve in future. Trought it could happen, money is no question here.

Valve is a private company. Apple can wish to purchase it all it wants, but since it isn’t a public corporation, there is no hostile takeover possible.

 

[Hoyboy]

No competitor sees valve’s data. There is a protective order in place. Only outside counsel can see it. Nobody who works at Apple or epic will ever know about it.

So can they claim costs back from apple for providing this data, as it will require dedicating multiple employees working full time to collate this whom have better things to do?

 

[baryon]

At least Valve and Apple can do something together for once, probably for the first and last time ever.

 

[playtech1]

I do wonder whether bringing Steam data into the mix will help or hurt Apple.

I can see it would be helpful for Apple to show that Epic's entrance into the market didn't lower prices for consumers (albeit Epic's Dev pricing is lower, so you could infer an indirect impact over time, as the middleman is taking less).

But I can also see two dangers for Apple. One, for the exact same game PC prices are usually significantly cheaper than consoles, suggesting that closed platforms tied to hardware leads to higher prices for end users.

And two, I don't believe either Valve or Epic take a 30% cut on DLC purchased outside of the store, or force developers to use them as the payment provider, so they already incorporate a big part of Epic's position as to what needs to be done to correct the situation.

Sony and MS will say they are not in the same dominant position as Apple and that they subsidise hardware so need to make it up with software, but I would imagine they and Valve will be watching this case very very carefully.

 

[Captain Trips]

It's like there's a traffic accident near your shop and you get a subpoena for all your security footage. It's unfortunate for you, it costs you money when you have done nothing wrong, but you still have to supply the data.

This. It is part of living in a society and abiding by the rules of the society you live in.

Sometimes you benefit (hopefully most of the time), sometimes you pay a price (like being called for a jury trial in the US).

 

[thei3ug]

just go with cmaier’s explanation.
Don’t worry, believe it or not most lawyers don’t get this stuff either.

news bite tells us virtually nothing without reading the filings, or attending a hearing. Any analysis based on a news article is like reading yea leaves.

Apples legal team has a pretty good idea of what it’s asking for, and how it might affect its argument. Err, it should. Again, lawyers... standard normal curve... I’ve seen incompetence in high places that would make you weep.

 

[Wowfunhappy]

Even though Epic and Valve are competitors on PC, I bet Valve would love for Epic to win their lawsuit. They’d probably be delighted if they could create Steam for iOS.

 

[Hattig]

So the PC (and Mac) marketplace, which was already open before Steam came into being (i.e., competition (physical retail and other download sites) already forced game prices on Steam to be competitive, so Epic creating their own game store was not the first instance of competition), can be used as a comparison to a closed marketplace on iOS?

On the other hand any BI solution could generate these reports in minutes so I find Valve's argument about it taking significant time for them to be rather odd - unless it's showing they have very poor visibility into their own sales data?!

 

[playtech1]

Even though Epic and Valve are competitors on PC, I bet Valve would love for Epic to win their lawsuit. They’d probably be delighted if they could create Steam for iOS.

I think Valve will be terrified of a ruling that Apple must set its prices for app store services on a reasonable / cost plus basis. It's not much of a leap from that kind of judgment to Valve having it used against it to batter down it's margins on PC.

I love that Apple make great products, but their App store approach feels like it's going to end up poisoning the well for Valve, Sony, MS, et al. and might even risk its breakup.

 

[EvilEvil]

I don’t think developers, big or small, will be winning this unless they stand together for what they think they deserve, and consumers understand the whole picture.

If you were a developer, would you rather Apple take a 30% cut or 12% cut? I would easily go for Apple to only getting a 12% cut.

 

[lionsy]

The problem is they _are_ involved. Epic is suing Apple, and parts of their arguments are that Apple supposedly has a monopoly, and that Apple is supposedly overcharging. If Apple can say that Valve charges the same or similar to Apple, then the overcharging argument can go away. It's quite unfortunate for Valve, and they haven't done anything wrong, but quite legal as well.

It's like there's a traffic accident near your shop and you get a subpoena for all your security footage. It's unfortunate for you, it costs you money when you have done nothing wrong, but you still have to supply the data.

That is absolutely not the reason for requesting this data, if they wanted to prove that they'd set up a developer account and download the developer agreement which states all of the charges involved - no need to request data from Valve that is already publicly available.

In my opinion the reason they're doing this is because of Epic's argument that having an open market and multiple app stores on one platform decreases the price of the product for the end user, this is provably false by looking at how costs of individual games on both platforms haven't gone up or down since Epic's PC store opened.

 

[dabi]

Knowing Valve, and how slowly they work, this will take a while. Lol.

 

[rp100]

The only reason I ever made a purchase on Epic’s PC Store is because they offered free money towards a purchase (specifically Epic issuing a credit towards any purchase, not the developer discounting a game).

 

[Suckfest 9001]

Terrible business practices. Not a good look for Apple across the gaming industry

 

[macintoshmac]

If you were a developer, would you rather Apple take a 30% cut or 12% cut? I would easily go for Apple to only getting a 12% cut.

Sort of what I implied.

 

[[AUT] Thomas]

No competitor sees valve’s data. There is a protective order in place. Only outside counsel can see it. Nobody who works at Apple or epic will ever know about it.

In that case fair enough (as long as valve gets compensated for their efforts), but the article IMHO is misleading then.

Yet, Steam is a plattform that one can voluntarily use (both developer and customers), whereas Apple represents the App-Store which depending on market represents 50% of the mobile-phone market WITHOUT a way for developers to reach the same customers. As such whatever Valve delivers here is only a nice reference but can hardly be compared to the App-Store 1:1. However, and I hope that fires back for Apple, is that Valve doesn't necessarily make money with IAPs as that might be handled by the original publisher directly. And that was one of the major issues in the case IIRC.