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Credit: Valve / Gabe Newell
Valve boss Gabe Newell defended the openness of PC gaming and denied punishments the company allegedly levied against studios selling games cheaper on non-Steam platforms, according to new comments from a lawsuit claiming the company commands an illegal monopoly.
Bloomberg unearthed new deposition from the US lawsuit – a class action mirror to a $900 million UK suit which likewise accuses Valve of abusing its market position.
The US suit heavily skewers a purported unwritten rule that games receiving discounts at stores competing with Steam faced action from Valve. Newell denied the practice entirely in his deposition, apparently reiterating this point, “at times verbatim, again and again,” according to Bloomberg.
“Valve does not have a policy or practice of dictating prices to third-party software developers on other platforms,” Newell said.
Asked how Valve would respond to a developer selling their game on Steam but cheaper on another store, Newell apparently responded, “I’m confused by your question,” and later said, “Many of our partners and many of our customers are quite happy with the service that we’re providing.”
This tone returns in Newell’s comments regarding Valve’s alleged monopoly. Essentially, the company says it’s done nothing illegal and has won the PC gaming store wars through innovation and by adding new features that draw players in.
“Customers have enormous choice,” Newell testified, adding that gamers can choose “where they purchase their products, 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.”
Steam’s dominance in PC gaming has been a hot topic for years, and discussion only intensified following a November 2025 survey, published by game distribution platform Rokky, which reported that 72% of respondents – 306 “managers in the games industry”, with 67% from the US and 33% from the UK – “see Steam as a monopoly.”
US analyst Mat Piscatella pushed back on the verbiage, agreeing that Steam is a dominant presence but arguing that “market share isn’t what defines a monopoly, folks.” Rather, Piscatella said at the time, “A monopoly is where there’s a single seller for a particular service or good with no substitutes and the ability to charge excessively high rates because of this.”
The aforementioned lawsuits essentially reason that Steam holds enough of a monopoly to enforce the unfair fees and pricing restrictions associated with illegal monopolies, which Valve has repeatedly denied. The case against Steam in the US suit is that it is “not economically feasible” for PC game devs to skip the store, leaving them “forced to comply” with whatever Valve says. Valve’s 30% base cut of Steam sales is, unsurprisingly, also a major sticking point.
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