Epic Games’ legal battle against Apple over App Store rates it continues to crawl towards increasingly strange and esoteric fronts. The latest development? Apple is actively trying to cite years of detailed information about Valve’s sales on all games listed on Steam, to show that Epic has many other places to examine Fortnite goods.
“Apple and Valve have participated in several meetings and conferences, but Valve has refused to produce information that responds to requests 2 and 32,” he says. a new joint letter of discovery seen by PC player which was introduced earlier this week. Application 2 includes complete annual data, such as sales, revenue, and other financial information of the “total annual sales of applications and in-app products.” Application 32 is a complete list of all Steam apps, the years it was available, and the price. You know, just take a quick look at the vital blood of Valve’s business.
The main issue in the current dispute between Epic and Apple is whether the latter has a monopoly position within the world of smartphone application distribution and, as a result, is abusing this position to charge commissions. unfair and unjustified to all applications sold through platform. To try to prove that the App Store is not monolithic and that Epic has other options, Apple wants to collect data from other competitors to prove that Fortnite maker can go well anywhere else.
“Valve admits that the requested information exists in some easily accessible and undisclosed format, but states generically that it will not produce the information because it is confidential or too heavy to meet in the manner that Apple requested,” says the Apple’s side of the joint statement. Valve already provided information to Apple, but the iPhone maker decided it was insufficient. He is now appealing to the court to force the digital gaming showcase to comply, as he had previously done with Samsung.
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“As this court acknowledged with respect to Samsung, this information is‘ relevant to show the extent of competition ’between the digital distribution platforms available for distribution Fortnite, including Apple’s App Store, “Apple argues. However, the Samsung Galaxy Store is not as big a market as the App Store or Steam.
For its part, Valve argues that getting all this information from Apple would be a big job, because, unlike Samsung, it is a private company and does not participate in the same detailed level of record keeping, and also that Steam does not have nothing to do. do it with the biggest piss contest. “Somehow, in a dispute over mobile apps, a PC game maker that doesn’t compete in the mobile market or sell‘ apps ’is represented as a key figure,” his part says. “It’s not.” (Valve seems to have forgotten released automatic combat Dota Underlords last year on both iOS and Android).
I don’t necessarily buy into this argument that Valve is just a secondary player in these ongoing market discussions monopoly, but it’s also extremely entertaining to watch virtual hat seller get a hit with the ninth company in the world. We’ll see what the court decides.