Valve has been required by a California court to provide sales data on more than 400 Steam games to Apple and possibly also disclose the annual sales, revenue and profits to Apple. The iPhone maker sued Valve for the data as part of its ongoing dispute with Fortnite developer Epic Games.
According to a Wednesday order by Judge Thomas Hixson, Valve will have to provide annual sales and pricing data on 436 games available on both its PC distribution platform, Steam, and the Epic Games Store. Apple has requested the data so that they can define the video game market in the case against Epic.
In a documentary published on February 18, Valve argued that Apple’s demands were too great. Apple asked for even more data in its subpoena, including the annual revenue from Steam, the name of each app on Steam, and the date range for the time the apps were available. Valve argued that the claims would place an extraordinary burden on the company.
Valve has also been forced to share ‘composite data’ about how much it’s earning from Steam, though it’s not clear exactly what that’s going to entail. Apple asked the following:
RFP 2 asks for documents sufficient to account for Valve’s total annual sales of apps and in-app purchases from Steam since 2008, (b) annual advertising revenue attributable to Steam, (c) annual sales of external products attributable to Steam, (d) annual revenue from Steam, and (e) annual earnings, revenue or profits from Steam. Apple requests this information per app if available. During the meeting and conference, Apple limited the relevant period to 2015 to present.
In his ruling, Judge Hixson largely took care of Apple. “In the letter assignment, Valve said it would be an overwhelming amount of work, but other than the use of adjectives, it did not in any way substantiate or quantify the burden,” Hixson said.
“Apple has shown that it has a material need for this information to obtain evidence in support of its arguments regarding market definition and the effects of competition, and they cannot obtain this information elsewhere without undue burden,” he added. “Valve offers several reasons why Apple does not meet this standard, but that no one is convincing.” Valve is the largest computer game store in existence and usually offers no sales data, although you can find simple, unordered lists of top-selling games every month.
Hixson did limit the amount of information Valve had to provide. While Apple asked for data dating back to 2015, Hixson ruled that Valve only needs to produce data from 2017 to date.
Epic sued Apple in August after Apple removed Fortnite of the App Store for setting up an in-app payment system that he says violates the App Store rules.