Gabe Newell on Steam monopoly accusations: Gamers have ‘enormous choice’ about where to buy games

Back in 2023, a court ordered Valve chief Gabe Newell to testify, in person, in the long-running antitrust suit filed by Wolfire Games in 2021. A new report by Bloomberg runs down some of what Newell had to say during that testimony, including a denial that Steam holds any kind of monopoly on PC gaming. Or is even an overly dominant force.

“Customers have enormous choice” about where they purchase their games, Newell testified, including “whether they buy the game on an Xbox, whether they buy it on Steam, whether they buy it on Epic Games Store or whether they buy it directly from software developers.”

Newell also denied the existence of an alleged ‘unwritten rule’ that prevents developers from offering their games at lower prices on non-Steam storefronts. That’s one of the central complaints behind Wolfire’s lawsuit: Founder David Rosen said in 2021 that when he asked Valve about offering his studio’s game Overgrowth at a reduced price on other stores,”they replied that they would remove Overgrowth from Steam if I allowed it to be sold at a lower price anywhere, even from my own website without Steam keys and without Steam’s DRM.”

Asking about this rule, Newell repeatedly denied it exists, even when shown internal communications seemingly showing Valve employees enforcing it: “Valve does not have a policy or practice of dictating prices to third-party software developers on other platforms.” When asked how Valve would react if it ever happened, Newell initially said he was confused by the question and then added, “Many of our partners and many of our customers are quite happy with the service that we’re providing.”

That’s certainly true, as far as it goes. Games aren’t getting any cheaper and there’s a good likelihood that Grand Theft Auto 6 will usher in the era of the $80 videogame, but Steam sales remain massively popular because holy cow, there’s a ton of good stuff and you can get it dirt cheap. Steam has also helped break the grip that major publishers had over conventional retail sales, opening the door to real fame and fortune for lucky indie devs.

At the same time, Steam is, if not a monopoly, awfully close to one: It is so deeply entrenched that Epic Games has spent years literally giving away its games, and has barely made a dent—in fact, New Blood boss Dave Oshry said earlier this year that Epic freebies were great for sales on Steam. The Epic launcher is admittedly not an optimal experience, but a big challenge Epic Games faces is simply that an awful lot of gamers don’t seem to want an effective Steam competitor: Steam rules the roost, and they like it that way. A big majority of game developers, meanwhile, reckons that Steam really does hold a monopoly on the PC games market.

Newell’s deposition is especially interesting because the outcome of the Wolfire case has potentially big ramifications for Valve, which is facing serious legal challenges on multiple fronts—most notably, a $900 million lawsuit filed in the UK accusing the company of using Steam to overcharge for games and muscle out competing storefronts. That lawsuit too alleges the existence of that unwritten rule (which, again, Newell denies even exists), and that Valve uses it to forbid lower prices on other storefronts.

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