Valve have become unwilling accomplices in Apple's legal struggles against Epic Games. That's what a California court ruled this Wednesday. The Steam operator will have to give up some well kept secrets to Apple after this ruling.
You must be well aware of the almost year-long legal stand-off between Apple and Epic Games. Now, the case is expanding outside the two tech behemoths and affecting a third: Valve. Despite their well-articulated displeasure at doing so, Valve will have to comply with court ruling and give Apple what they want.
Valve Must Disclose Steam Income to Apple
Apple took Valve to court in order to obtain information on how much the latter is making from Steam via app sales, in-app sales, merch sales, etc. The motivation behind this is to aid Apple in building their case against Epic in the much more bitter court clash that's going on at the same time.
- READ MORE: Sony State of Play: Every Game Announced
With Epic disputing Apple's ways of closing out the market within its App Store with enforced taxes on in-app purchases, it's easy to connect the dots: Valve are of course running a similar business with Steam and Apple are apparently trying to go with the "they're doing it too" defense.
The official ruling of the California court may have gone Apple's way, but not entirely. The initial demands were of documents from as far back as 2015, of every app on Steam. The court saw some sense and spared the pour souls at Valve by limiting the documentation to 436 apps - those that are on both Steam and the Epic Games Store, for a timespan from 2017 until present day.
Despite Apple taking this W the hard way, Valve should be a natural ally for reasons we laid a couple paragraphs ago. Valve and Apple are running similar systems with Steam and the App Store - systems Epic is trying to bring down.
A court hearing of the Apple vs. Epic case in the US is scheduled for May 3. Epic is planning to take this to court in Antarctica if need be, so we're unlikely to be done with this saga anytime soon.
Create a MyEarlyGame account now! It lets you customize our site and enter all our giveaways. You can also follow us on Instagram or join our Discord for a fun chat.
