Overview
Cohen Milstein has been appointed Interim Lead Class Counsel representing consumers who purchased personal computer (“PC”) video games from third-party game publishers via Valve, Inc’s online retail platform Steam. The consumers allege Valve has abused and unlawfully maintained its decades-long dominant position in the PC game platform market, forcing consumers to pay higher prices for fewer and lower-quality games – all in violation of federal and state antitrust laws.
A similar suit on behalf of game publishers and developers has already passed a motion to dismiss and been certified as a class action. Consumers were only recently able to pursue their suit after Valve amended the arbitration clause in its user agreement.
Important Rulings
- On May 2, 2025, The Honorable Jamal N. Whitehead of the U.S. District of Washington for the Western District appointed Cohen Milstein sole Interim Lead Class Counsel for the consumer class.
Case Background
In 2005, Valve launched the Steam Store, an online platform where consumers can purchase PC games from third-party game publishers, and quickly became the dominant player in the industry. Valve maintains this dominance today. With an estimated market capitalization of $10 billion in 2019, roughly 75% of PC game sales, industry-wide, run through the Steam Store, making it—by far—the largest game store both domestically and globally.
Plaintiffs allege that due to Valve’s controlling position, it unfairly restrains trade, monopolizes, and maintains it monopoly in the PC game distribution market, directly overcharging consumers who pay Valve inflated commissions when buying games.
Plaintiffs allege that due to Valve’s dominance in the PC video game market, game publishers have little choice but to list their games on the Steam Store. This leverage allows Valve to extract a commission of 30% on almost every game sold. Consumers pay Valve’s inflated commission and the remainder goes to publishers, who must charge higher prices than they would otherwise.
Plaintiffs further allege that Valve maintains a monopoly in the PC video game market and restrains competition by forcing game publishers to agree not to sell their games for lower prices on other games platforms. This “Platform Most Favored Nation” contract clause (“PMFN”) prevents game publishers from offering reduced prices to consumers on game platforms that charge lower, non-monopolistic commissions. The result is that competing platforms have almost no ability to compete with Valve—and the significant network effects that come with its dominant position—on either price or quality.
Valve’s PMFN—and its continued anticompetitive steps to impose, enforce, and punish attempts to avoid its PMFN—have rendered competition on the merits impossible. As a result, two decades after its founding, Valve continues to enjoy its monopoly position and profits, despite well-financed attempts to break into the market by serious competitors like Epic Games. Consumers, meanwhile, are left holding the bag, in the form of higher prices and decreased output and quality.
Competing games platforms have charged much lower commissions on games sales in the range of 10-20%. Absent Valve’s anticompetitive conduct, much of the savings associated with lower, competitive-market commissions would be realized in lower prices to consumers.