A company called Wolfire Games has been leading a class-action lawsuit against Valve since 2021, complaining that “Valve’s 30% cut on Steam sales is harmfully high.”

Recently, Valve CEO Gabe Newell has been ordered to attend the deposition in person. Newell was trying to get permission to attend virtually.

I’m unsure if this lawsuit has much merit, this recent news was actually the first time that I had become aware of the existence of it.

30% tax does seem common in many marketplaces owned by large for-profit companies. Apple, Google, and Amazon all take 30% of sales from their respective marketplaces, to my knowledge. So why is Valve necessarily doing something wrong?

With respect to my favorite video game company GameStop, I believe it is important to keep tabs on players in the gaming industry including GameStop’s competitors.

Personally, I’ve always generally liked Valve and Steam. They deliver products and experiences that people like, and they have been very successful over the last 15 years.

If Valve is having genuine problems with antitrust, that might create a good opportunity for a company like GameStop to step up their presence in PC gaming.

Having said that, as of 2020, PC gaming generates less than half of the amount of revenue that mobile gaming generates.

Valve has been the dominant player in the PC gaming marketplace for some time. Maybe GameStop could get into that market and be successful, but GameStop would be competing against the very successful Valve.

My personal hope is that GameStop and PLAYR can become the Valve / Steam of the mobile gaming market. Currently, Apple and Google are the dominant incumbents of the mobile gaming market because they control the operating systems and the app marketplaces for those operating systems. I don’t know how a potential up and coming challenger, like GameStop, could break into the mobile gaming marketplace and compete against Apple and Google, but that is a big juicy market and I personally think it would be unwise to not try at all.