A Potential Lawsuit Against Valve Might Have You Rethinking The Value Of Steam Sales
If you play PC games, odds are you own several titles through Steam. Valve's digital storefront is the biggest and most successful PC gaming platform, so much so that Valve has the scratch to fund its own peripherals (good luck getting your hands on Valve's new Steam controller). However, one consumer group believes this success was the result of nefarious practices, and is threatening to sue the company.
Stichting Consumenten Competition Claims (literally the Consumer Competition Claims Foundation) has filed a class action claim against Valve. This Dutch nonprofit organization alleges Valve is restricting competition in the PC gaming market and, more importantly, driving up game prices. According to the claim, Valve keeps prices on a short leash thanks to several practices. The biggest accusation is that Valve allegedly uses a mix of contracts and peer pressure to "prohibit" companies from selling games cheaply through rival platforms such as the Epic Games Store (i.e., price-parity). This practice, combined with a 30% commission on every sale, prevents studios from setting their own prices, thus artificially inflating prices under the threat of lost profits. And if the base cost increases, so too do sale prices. Sure, Valve's legendary Steam Sales shave plenty off the costs, but lower initial prices would drive these savings even lower.
The CCC made several other allegations regarding Valve and how it (allegedly) unfairly controls game prices. These include forcing all microtransactions to go through the Steam Wallet, which tacks on another 30% commission, and region locking keys bought from countries with lower prices from being activated in another. All in all, the CCC is seeking €220 million (a little over $255 million) in damages for Dutch players.
The plan of attack
It's important to note that the CCC isn't (yet) actively suing (or trying to sue) Valve. The CCC isn't pursuing formal legal proceedings at present, but the nonprofit definitely isn't ruling out exercising that option, either.
The CCC states that it wants to settle things without involving a court if possible. The nonprofit wants to "sit down with Valve" and ideally get the company to "stop imposing price-parity obligations on publishers and developers" — which could lead to fairer game prices — as well as provide compensation for PC gamers. Failing that, then the CCC would take Valve to court.
As the CCC is a nonprofit, it's asking for people to donate their support but not their money to the cause. You can sign up at the GameClaim website (the name the CCC is using for the lawsuit) to show Valve that you support the cause of "fair game prices." More importantly, signing up can indicate that you believe you're entitled to damage reimbursement from paying too much money for Steam games, but only if you live in the Netherlands. If the CCC is victorious, participating Dutch gamers will be provided some of the CCC's winnings as compensation for buying overpriced games. They don't even need to have purchased PC games through Steam; the CCC alleges that Valve's practices basically poisoned pricing across the board. Even if you tried to save hundreds of dollars by purchasing off alternative storefronts such as Humble Bundle, you're entitled to a piece of the €220 million pie — again, so long as you live in the Netherlands. You might have to wait several years for the payout, though.
Does a lawsuit have any chance?
Obviously, it's way too early to determine whether a potential lawsuit will result in any money for Dutch PC gamers. Plus, none of us are lawyers, so we have no idea if a lawsuit would stand up to the scrutiny one can expect from court battles. But what's the track record of the CCC? Well, it's complicated.
The CCC has a history of taking big-name companies to court over "unfair commercial practices." These include numerous Dutch energy suppliers and online gambling sites, Samsung, LG, and Booking.com (a source for cheap hotel rates). However, many of these suits are recent, and they're all high-profile, so it's slow going. Furthermore, some third parties doubt such lawsuits have any chance of success. For instance, when the CCC sued Booking.com over allegedly misleading customers with "fake discounts" and "fabricated scarcity," a Professor of Private Law at Erasmus School of Law, Xandra Kramer, stated that only one such lawsuit ever reached a final court ruling, and it was a denial of claims.
Of course, it takes two to tango in a court of law, and Valve is no stranger to lawsuits. However, the company doesn't have much luck when it comes to similar lawsuits. In 2016, the Federal Court of Australia ruled that Valve had to pay a $3 million penalty because it "made false or misleading representations about consumer guarantees." And while more recent lawsuits alleging Valve "abused and unlawfully maintained its decades-long dominant position in the PC game platform market" are ongoing, movements to dismiss them have been denied. While the odds of the CCC's lawsuit succeeding are low, they're not zero.