Apple falls through the basket, demands a laughable amount of data from Valve

Apple seems to be redefining “unreasonable” by demanding a laughable amount of data from Steam’s Valve. And all that to win from Epic Games.

Epic Games (Fortnite) and Apple are in a fierce battle and the latter needs Steam’s parent company Valve to win. But Valve is questioning the reason for Apple’s cry for help. The game company therefore refuses to help Apple and that makes a lot of sense. Apple wants an absurd amount of information from Valve and promises with a ‘trust me bro’ that that information will not be used for anything else.

Valve is leaving Apple out in the cold

The lawsuit between Apple and Epic Games has been running since the fall of 2020. Epic Games introduced a new payment system in Fortnite, which meant that Apple no longer received any commission. Apple found this breach of contract because they offered Fortnite on the App Store. Epic Games then claims that Apple is abusing their position of power.

So what’s Steam got to do with this? Well, actually nothing at all. Still, Apple feels they need data from Valve to get a feel for the gaming industry. Apple needs some information from the company, PC Gamer writes. The App Store operator wants:

The name of each App on Steam, the dates when the App was available on Steam and the price of the App and each in-app product on Steam. That applies to all digital content and items, its sales data, every price change from 2015 to now, the revenue of every version of every game broken down by version and all revenue earned by Valve from it.

Valve finds the subpoena that Apple throws on the mat a bit exaggerated, to say the least. Aside from the fact that Apple is actually asking for absurd amounts of data here (which Valve claims it doesn’t even keep track of itself), there is an even more embarrassing aspect to the requirements.

This has nothing to do with the lawsuit at all. Epic Games and Apple are at odds because of the mobile App Store. Valve doesn’t even have a finger in the pie. Yes, Steam and Epic Games are competitors on PC, but that has nothing to do with Apple’s dispute with Epic!

Now the question remains: why does Apple think it needs all this information? In their own words, there is ‘no risk of unfair competition’ if Valve changes tack. But the latter clearly does not believe in that. And it would also take irresponsibly many man hours to cough up the data that has not already been collected.

In short, nobody knows exactly what Apple is doing. In any case, Valve doesn’t have to have anything to do with it.

Also read: PC game platform Steam sets a gigantic new record