There are lawsuits that make you sit up and go, “yeah, fair enough.” And then there are ones where you read the claims and genuinely wonder who thought this was going to land. Valve is currently facing a $900 million (roughly £656 million) Valve Steam monopoly lawsuit in the UK, backed by legal firm Milberg London LLP, and based on everything most PC gamers know about how Steam actually works, it is difficult to look at this without raising an eyebrow.
The case was initially filed in 2024, led by claimant Vicki Shotbolt, who stated that Valve is “rigging the market and taking advantage of UK gamers.” The suit has since been given the go-ahead, and it makes a few specific allegations that are worth looking at one by one, because some of them are genuinely puzzling when you hold them up to reality.
What the lawsuit is actually claiming
The core of the Valve Steam monopoly lawsuit comes down to a few distinct accusations. First, it claims that Valve is using what it calls “Platform Parity Obligations” to prevent publishers and developers from selling their games and add-ons on other storefronts at lower prices than those listed on Steam. The argument is that this restriction stifles competition and ultimately leads to consumers paying more.
Second, the lawsuit argues that Valve effectively locks users into making in-game purchases through Steam, because DLC purchased via a game’s Steam listing cannot be used if you access the same game on another platform. The implication is that Valve has engineered a situation where you have no choice but to spend money within its ecosystem.
Third, and this is the claim that is really raising eyebrows, the lawsuit accuses Valve of “imposing excessive commission charges which amount to an unfair price which is then passed on to consumers.”
Those are the three pillars. And when you actually know Steam as a product, each one of them starts to look a bit shaky.
The platform parity argument does not hold up well under scrutiny
Let us start with the Platform Parity Obligations claim. The idea that Valve is suppressing competition by requiring games to be sold at the same price elsewhere as they are on Steam sounds concerning on paper. But when you look at which platforms this criticism could more fairly be aimed at, it quickly starts to feel misdirected.
Sony and Nintendo lock their first-party titles to their own platforms entirely. You cannot buy a PlayStation exclusive on GOG or a Nintendo game anywhere but the Nintendo eShop, regardless of how long the game has been out or how much it has aged. Microsoft’s Battle.net launcher still lists Call of Duty titles at full price years after launch, with no alternative place to buy them cheaper. These are platforms that genuinely limit consumer choice in very direct ways.
Steam, by contrast, supports a wide open ecosystem. The same games on Steam are available on GOG, the Epic Games Store, the Ubisoft Connect store, Humble Bundle, and various key sellers. Nothing stops publishers from running sales exclusively on other platforms, and the PC gaming market is arguably the most competitive digital storefront environment of any gaming platform. The parity requirement that the lawsuit references is common across platform marketplaces and is not unique to Valve.
The claim that Steam is restricting competition also bumps directly into the reality that timed exclusives, a practice where platforms like Epic Games pay developers to keep their games off competing stores for months, is far more disruptive to consumer choice than anything Valve is accused of here.
The DLC cross-platform claim is a stretch
The argument that Valve locks users into its ecosystem through DLC that cannot be used cross-platform is a curious one, and not just because of Steam specifically. This is simply not how any storefront works, on any platform.
If you buy a game on PlayStation and the same game on Xbox, your save data and purchased add-ons do not automatically transfer between the two. If you buy a game on the Epic Games Store and then want to play it on Steam, you are starting fresh. This is the standard. It is not a Valve invention. Cross-platform DLC compatibility between different storefronts for the same game on PC is not a feature that exists anywhere at scale, not on Epic, not on GOG, not on Ubisoft Connect.
Pointing at Steam and calling this practice unfair without applying the same standard to the entire industry makes the argument feel selective at best.
The “excessive commission charges” claim is where things get genuinely strange
Of the three allegations, the one about Valve imposing excessive commission charges that get passed on to consumers is the most puzzling, particularly given Steam’s actual reputation in the market.
Steam is known within the gaming community for having one of the best discount cultures of any major digital storefront. Its seasonal sales, including the Summer Sale, Autumn Sale, and Winter Sale, are events that the wider gaming community actually looks forward to. Older titles routinely drop to very low price points. Bundles and deals are frequent. The platform’s refund policy allows players up to two hours of playtime to decide if they want their money back, which is genuinely generous compared to most storefronts. By many accounts, it is the most flexible refund system in PC gaming.
The commission structure Valve uses is 30% on the first $10 million in revenue from a game, dropping to 25% on revenue between $10 million and $50 million, and further to 20% on everything above $50 million. This tiered structure was introduced in 2018 specifically to give larger-revenue games a more favorable rate. A 30% baseline cut is the same figure that Apple charges on its App Store and what Google charges on the Play Store, both of which have faced far more pointed regulatory scrutiny than Valve has.
It is genuinely hard to make the case that Steam is screwing over consumers on price when the platform’s sales culture is what it is.
What the gaming community thinks
The reaction from PC gamers has been largely skeptical of the lawsuit’s claims. Reddit threads discussing the case have seen users come to Valve’s defense fairly quickly, with the general consensus being that Steam has done more for consumer-friendly pricing and flexibility than almost any other major gaming storefront. The idea that the most discount-happy, refund-generous, multi-platform-supporting storefront in PC gaming is somehow the villain in a consumer protection story does not sit easily with the people who actually use it every day.
That is not to say Valve is beyond criticism. No company is. And it is worth noting that this case is still proceeding, which means a court will ultimately assess the merits of the claims rather than public opinion. The specifics of competition law are more nuanced than what we can evaluate from the outside, and it is possible that some elements of Steam’s commercial arrangements with publishers have technical legal angles that are not obvious to end users.
But taken at face value, as a case about whether Steam is treating UK gamers unfairly, the claims feel misaligned with the experience of actually being a Steam user. The platform’s flexibility, discount frequency, refund generosity, and genuine openness to a competitive PC storefront ecosystem make it a genuinely unusual target for a consumer-protection lawsuit of this kind.
Valve has not commented publicly on the proceedings at this stage, and the case is ongoing. Whether $900 million worth of claims can survive contact with the actual evidence will be interesting to watch.
