Valve’s attempt to have courts dismiss a legal action brought against it for allegations of overcharging and anti-competitive practices has failed, as reported by the BBC. A judge’s ruling is allowing the case brought by lawyer Vicki Shotbolt to go ahead on behalf of 14 million Steam users in the UK.
First filed in 2024, Shotbolt’s claim (with its own fancy website) is an attempt to prove that Valve’s policies on Steam violate UK laws on “anti-competitive prices” and “unfair trading conditions that prevent or hinder others from competing with them.” The argument concerns Valve’s demand that games sold on Steam not be made available at a permanently lower price on rival stores, and that once you buy a game on Steam, the only way you can buy further content for that game—be it DLC, expansion packs or cosmetics—is also via Steam. This, Shotbolt claims, allows Valve to “hold a dominant position in the PC gaming market” and “that it may have used this position in ways that violate UK competition law.”
Class action lawsuits are not a commonplace event in the UK, where the mass litigation is known as a “collective action claim,” and works on an “opt-out” basis. Basically, Shotbolt and her law firm are going to sue Valve on behalf of British Steam users unless they specifically say they don’t want in. That’s how it’s able to claim to be suing on behalf of 14 million people.
Valve, obviously, objects to the claims, and filed to have the case thrown out. A ruling filed January 26 by the Competition Appeal Tribunal says that Valve opposed on the basis that the “PCR” (the shorthand for Shotbolt’s group) “had not put forward an adequate methodology” before venturing all manner of peculiarly specific fiddly details about “determining the effect of the alleged PPOs [Platform Parity Obligations]” and that the “class definition was inadequate” and so on. The latter was seemingly based on lots of kids using Steam, and how they couldn’t opt in or out of the action. It all seemed to amount to “They didn’t cross their Ts sufficiently,” and the tribunal was having none of that.
Shotbolt’s team promised to double-check their punctuation, and that seemed to be enough to have Valve’s concerns overturned. “The PCR proposed revisions to the proposed class definition which substantially diminished the concerns raised by Valve,” says the ruling, which appears to mean they rejigged things to ensure it was just representing over 13s…I think? “In light of that development,” says the ruling, “the Tribunal rejected Valve’s challenge in this respect.”
All of that basically amounts to “Yup, this action can go ahead,” which will mightily annoy Valve. Those who don’t want to be included in the entire PC gaming population of Britain will have the option to opt out pretty soon, given the site’s FAQ stated it was waiting for this very certification before offering the option. Given 99.9 percent of Steam users will never even know this action is taking place, that sounds impressively farcical.
Should the PCR win, it’ll mean everyone in the UK is entitled to some money back, which will likely be fairly meaningless amounts to all involved except for Valve. The claim is looking for £656 million, which at the time of writing is $904 million. Given that when we first covered this story in 2024 that figure converted to $838 million, Valve will likely hope for a quick resolution before Trump manages to tank the dollar even further.
