Apple has recently subpoenaed Valve as part of its ongoing lawsuit along with Epic Games. It now demands that Valve provide a huge amount of its own commercial data about the Stream sales and operations that date back a number of years. This could be seen as part of the dispute between both Epic and Apple that started back in August of 2020.
Apple vs Epic Games
According to the story by PCGamer, the dispute started when Epic decided to add a new payment system to the reported Fortnite iOS version in order to bypass Apple's whopping 30% fee. Apple then retaliated almost immediately by totally removing Fortnite from the company's App Store.
Epic then replied by rolling out a new Nineteen Eighty-Fortnite promo that was based on Apple's previous 1984 Macintosh ad. Just a few minutes later on the same day, Epic then filed a lawsuit against Apple over the removal of Fortnite. Apple has just subpoenaed Valve under the official argument that there was certain Steam information that could be crucial in building the company's case against Epic Games alleging competitive practices.
Apple subpoenas Valve over Steam games
Yesterday, a new joint discovery letter was then filed to the official District court in North California that was relating to the particular subpoena. The letter contained a summary of certain behind-the-scenes tussles that happened so far as well as both sides' arguments regarding where to go from there.
The subpoena was reportedly initiated by Apple last November 2020 under the reported argument that had information about Valve's reported digital distribution service known as Steam, which would be reportedly crucial to building its said case against Epic Games. Apple had reportedly requested that Valve would provide certain documents that would show yearly sales of apps as well as in-app products, annual revenues from advertising, annual sales coming from external products, and even annual revenues and earnings coming from Stream.
Apple building case against Epic Games
There are also reportedly more granular requests for the said name of every single app on Steam, the date range when every particular app has been made available, and also the price of all of the apps as well as the in-app purchases. This would apparently involve the given demand for information on well over 30,000 games initially.
Apple, however, has then narrowed the focus towards just about 600 games. Nevertheless, Apple is now still insisting on receiving documents about every particular version of a given product as well as a large amount of official financial information coming from Valve's business. Apple also believes that Steam is actually a dominant digital game distributor on the whole PC platform and is also a "direct competitor" to the known Epic Games Store.
Information regarding the digital marketplace's operations and sales can actually show the extent of the market that the known Epic Games store is currently competing in. Apple also argues that Valve should openly provide the information since it is not actually available anywhere else and also "does not risk" any type of competitive harm.
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