Apple may position itself as the proponent of privacy when it comes to personal data, but court reports have shown that the company has demanded extremely sensitive data from the game distribution service Steam to help fight Epic Games.
The reason? Epic had earlier criticized Steam’s result of game developers, accusing platform owner Valve of sucking out a large portion of the profits from games. ‘Apple wanted to know more about Valve’s business model with Steam in order to make its own case for the App Store. The data that Apple demanded from Valve – which is not even a party to the case – was pretty insane …
PC player reports that Valve has denied Apple’s claim, and that a court must now rule on the matter. Here is the information Apple wanted, which its lawyers somehow described as a ‘very narrow’ request:
Valves: (a) total annual sales of apps and products in the app; (b) annual advertising revenue from Steam; (c) annual sales of external products attributable to Steam; (d) annual revenue from Steam; and (e) annual earnings (whether gross or net) from Steam.
And in an additional request:
“(A) the name of each app on Steam; (b) the date the App was available on Steam; and (c) the price of the program and any in-app product available on Steam. ”
Apple wants Valve to provide the names, prices, configurations and dates of each product on Steam, as well as detailed versions of exactly how much money Steam makes and how it is distributed […]
Apple apparently initially demanded data on 30,000+ games before reducing its focus to about 600. Request 32 becomes incredibly fine, Valve explains: Apple claims information on each version of a given product, all digital content and items, sales dates and each price . changes from 2015 to today, the gross revenue for each version, set out separately, and all of Valve’s revenue therefrom.
Valve not only says that the data is incredibly valuable commercial information, but that it does not even capture the level of detail that Apple wants – and in any case is not remotely involved in the dispute between Apple and Epic.
Valve says it does not “in the ordinary course of business preserve the information that Apple seeks for a simple reason: Valve does not need it.”
Valve’s argument further explains to the court that it is not a competitor in the mobile space (it is, after all, a dispute that started with Fortnite on iOS), and states the point that ‘Valve is not Epic, and Fortnite is not available on Steam. It further states that Apple uses Valve as a shortcut to a large amount of third party data that rightfully belongs to the third parties.
The conclusion of Valve’s argument calls for the court to drop Apple’s subpoena. ‘Somehow a computer game maker that does not compete in the mobile market or sell’ apps’ is portrayed as a key figure in a dispute over mobile applications. It is not. The extensive and highly confidential information that Apple has about a subset of the computer games available on Steam does not require the size or parameters of the relevant market, and it will be very difficult to work with. Apple’s claims for further production must be rejected. ”
It seems pretty hard to imagine that Apple could succeed here, but the legal world and common sense do not always agree.
The Not Jony Ive parody account has a proposed compromise.
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