Back in April, Overgrowth developer Wolfire Games filed an antitrust lawsuit against Valve. The judge has now dismissed the lawsuit, ruling that the lawsuit “does not present sufficient facts to reasonably allege an antitrust injury.”
Wolfire’s lawsuit alleges that “Valve abused its market power to ensure game publishers had no choice but to sell most of their games through the Steam Store, where they had to subject to Valve’s 30% fee.” Valve responded in July by filing for dismissal, argumentative that the lawsuit “cannot allege the most basic elements of an antitrust case.”
Judge John C. Coughenour agreed. His judgment, available via CourtListener, saying that Wolfire did not provide enough evidence for their claims.
A large portion of the initial filing focused on Steam’s key Price Parity Clause, under which Steam requires developers and publishers not to sell their games for less than elsewhere. the rates they are offering on Steam. This has prevented other stores from competing on price, says Wolfire. They also argue that a 30% cut in Steam game sales is more than can be calculated in a competitive market.
The judge’s decision addresses these claims in two ways. First, by pointing out that, as Wolfire’s lawsuit states, a number of competitors have made smaller sales cuts but have been unsuccessful. “Therefore, it appears that the market reality, at least as one might claim, is that Defendant’s fees are commensurate with the value of the Steam Platform to game publishers.”
Second, the judge felt that Wolfire had failed to demonstrate “antitrust injury” – that they, or the industry, had been harmed by Valve’s practices, which led to the date There are fewer quality games available. “If anything, the data provided by the CAC, at least in terms of output, shows the opposite – a consistent increase in the number of games available on the market and on the Steam platform. […] And finally, the CAC does not provide data describing how Wolfire directly suffers from the alleged reductions in production and/or quality. ”
Wolfire has 30 days to file a Second Amendment complaint, if they so wish. I’ve reached out to Valve and Wolfire for comment and will update this story if I get a response.
