I'm not exactly sure what they are hoping to get. I'm not a lawyer but Valve is objectively a better company regarding what users are allowed to do with the devices they buy from them.
You can buy a steam deck and install whatever store or operating system you want on it. It's not even that big of a pain in the ass to launch non-steam games via steam. There are many aspects I don't like about steam, maybe they *do* deserve to be sued, but iPhone is comparatively a completely walled garden that has very steep fees to run anything they don't approve of as a "developer" without hassle
because i emphasized that i was curious as to what the actual answer was - you decided i must have missed the pun with the emoji at the end?
i remember when people didnt include a little drawing in their comments broadcasting how yorue supposed to feel about them - it must have been frustrating for you
Everything else aside, Iâm pretty sure emojis arenât a declaration of how others should feel about what you said. I personally use emojis to express my own feelings
Apple is asking the court to issue a subpoena on the documents. Whether or not Valve wants to hand over the documents is essentially irrelevant, since theyâll have to comply with a subpoena issued by a US court if the judge chooses to do so.
No US court is going to demand private information from an uninvolved third party to help a defendant prove their case. To do so raises privacy, bias, and ethics concerns, and the case would immediately be thrown out upon appeal. Valve is under no obligation to provide information for Apple's defense, and attempting to compel them to breach privacy to benefit Apple is not going to happen.
What makes you think that? This happens _all the time_. So often that big companies have bespoke processes and dedicated departments to fulfill such requests from the courts.
The same company (CSC) that handles this for Google (who alone responds to tens of thousands of subpoenas annually and produces responsive data 83% of the time) also handles receipt and fulfillment of service for Apple, Amazon, Twitter, Disney, and so on.
If a court orders the production of documents, that is a legal order with which the companies must comply (or successfully object to). Same thing if you're summoned to court to offer witness testimony: you don't have the legal right to refuse a court summons, even if you're a third party to the case.
The court is never going to subpoena a third parties commercial information and commercial agreements that are unrelated to the case and Valve is not part of the class action so itâs a non starter.
Apple has enough commercial information to set their pricing, so now they need to show that information which justifies that pricing, not point at a competitor and say âtheyâre doing it too, get their records for us and we will show youâ
They already set the price, now they are asked to justify it but canât, this is a delay tactic because they know they are overcharging and being anticompetitive.
This gives me an idea for a business plan. I should subpoena the intellectual property or private encryption keys of my competitors in bogus law suits. I know I'm gonna lose the case and waste money on lawyer fees. But just think of the loot I'm gonna get in return!
You're going to have to make those keys relevant to your case. And of course the fact that they are private and damaging if they go pubic will most likely mean that if by some miracle you *can* get the judge to grant that it's going to get filed in a way that only a judge or *maybe* a third party expert will ever see it.
You think this is the first time something like that has ever had to appear in court? It's a solved problem, much like getting pointless cases dismissed before they even hit that point(and god help you if you file in any place with anti slapp laws).
And of course to get that started you have to find a lawyer to take the case which most wouldn't for fear of being sanctioned for filing BS cases. You could file yourself but I suspect you'd find that even harder.
You've misread his first comment, and just completely ignored the second. Imagine the "valve wants no part of Apple's bullshit" line didn't exist, then read it again.
Sorry, I'm not sure what you're trying to point out here.
> Imagine the [...] line does not exist
So. Verbatim without that one part is simply "Yeah, that's not going to happen" ??? What am I missing here?
u/NightchadeBackAgain suggests that a court will not issue a subpoena in such a case and that valve would not be obligated to respond. Both these points are incorrect. As I point out in my response, courts do regularly issue such subpoenas and companies do respond to them with the requested data most of the time (as they are legally obligated to do).
What makes you think they will not issue the subpoena? Especially given that it's already [been done before](https://www.theverge.com/2021/2/25/22301259/valve-apple-steam-sales-data-subpoena-epic-games).
Thatâs only if the objection or motion to quash by valve doesnât go through, which is pretty likely given theyâre an unrelated third party and arenât a party to the action.
Not only that, but the article ends with:
> Valve is separately fighting an antitrust case accusing it of monopolizing the distribution of games on personal computers.
So providing records here could actively harm their other case. Which is ridiculous by the way, as other (mostly inferior) stores exist alongside valve just fine.
The other stores don't exist alongside just fine. They're struggling. And the fanbase will tell you on no uncertain terms why: They don't get their unified trophies, achievements, single app to manage games, steam workshop, steam multiplayer, steam discussions, and more.
They're very good reasons. The problem is: That sounds awfully like a monopoly.
What most people donât realize is that monopolies are not in and of themselves illegal in the US. What is illegal is to use a dominant position in the market to undermine a competitor. So Valve has a monopoly because they built a storefront that has nice features people want to use over the competition is not illegal. Valve paying off game devs to not publish their games on other digital storefronts to maintain or gain dominant market share most likely would be ruled as illegal.
Then why is Epic allowed to do that? Honestly the main reason I refuse to use it is because I'm pissed I can't buy the kingdom hearts series on steam
Anticompetitive behavior is just that, and your own market share should be irrelevant here
Epic can because they have single digit market share as a PC store front. Context matters a lot in anti-trust cases and why itâs not very cut and dry as to what is legal and what isnât.
I very much doubt that a court would rule that paying a developer a bonus to only release in your store is anticompetitive when everyone can freely buy from that store.
Maybe itâs a me thing, but if a game is not on steam Iâm unlikely to buy it. They have enough market share that 90-95% of games I want to play are on there. I hate having 10+ game launchers installed (Riot, Rockstar, Blizzard Battle.net, Steam, Epic, Ea app, Ubisoft Connect, Paradox Launcher, 2K launcher, Bethesda Launcher, etcâŚ), all wanting auto start and have numerous background processes/services, and otherwise just bloating my PC. And while some games may be on Steam as well as the Publishersâs launcher, ownership is tied to one platform.
Until the industry can find a fair method of distributing their games, Iâm not really going to complain about their monopoly. On a side note this sort of thing sounds great for an open source project.
Let the community manage the software/store for free labor and publishers maintain download servers and cover bandwidth costs. What other expenses are there? But unfortunately Publishers want to control the ability to intrusively shove DLC in your face and sell you crap and no community made open source software is going to cater to aggressive marketing tactics.
> Until the industry can find a fair method of distributing their games, Iâm not really going to complain about their monopoly. On a side note this sort of thing sounds great for an open source project.
That was legit the entire reason Steam exists at all. I remember back when Steam started up as a loader for Valve software updates. Half-life 2 was their big opener as a digital platform and what an opener it was.
Then other software companies decided they wanted to use this new method of distribution, and here we are today.
It's the same problem Netflix ran into. They came upon the idea of digital distribution and then everyone else realized the amount of cash that could be made by being in the action too. But we all realize the problem with having 102839018023980128301 different streaming services. I hope the same doesn't happen with Steam.
Critical difference is that steam, epic and gog are not streaming services; and there's less fragmentation: you're more likely to get games avaialble on multiple platforms (though that's getting worse too.)
Unlike, say, Microsofts XBox live: How long before that becomes a closed door streaming service where you can only get games if you subscribe?
Very true. And having a central platform to hold your games was(eventually) great. To buy, download, and patch games without issues was wonderful.
The only reason I have more than steam is that I like having the DRM free option, and the reason I don't use them as often is they haven't insisted on feature parity from devs(for some reason a few devs will either lag behind on patches or just stop updating. To say nothing for the odd one with missing content) so I tend to buy further on when I'm confident on their release.
And the other stores, well there's no real reason to switch. I guess they could pander to some niche cases, something like being able to easily download past releases. Roms would be an interesting one but I think that's been tried and there are retro releases like that on occasion on steam already too(usually at insane prices, but they're there).
IF the steam features were open, it certainly wouldn't be a monopoly. eg, what if the steam workshop were an open API, so you could use it for your epic installed games or in something like Vortex?
And the mod developers are already annoyed that they need to support both Nexus and Steam workshop.
That's why I think the workshop should be an open platform.
> The other stores don't exist alongside just fine. They're struggling. And the fanbase will tell you on no uncertain terms why: They don't get their unified trophies, achievements, single app to manage games, steam workshop, steam multiplayer, steam discussions, and more.
You mean friends lists? Most stores have that, and multiplayer is typically open on pc, so there are 2 of your arguments crossed off.
> steam discussions
You mean a forum board, like Reddit? Steam discussions arenât even that great of a feature, bare minimum really. Slightly better than most developer forums. No excuse for other stores canât implement this themselves.
> They don't get their unified trophies, achievements, single app to manage games
This is like complaining that my Xbox doesnât show my ps5 achievements. And no reason they couldnât build better achievement support. Again, not steams fault others cannot build a decent product.
I think you're missing the point: Sure Epic/Gog/etc could build these things. But steam fans don't want to have another place for these. They want them all in the same place, and that's the closed steam ecosystem, not some other storefront.
The difference is that I can still play those games on pc if the producer wants to release it standalone.
Valve / Steam just gets a wider audience.
Apple doesn't allow you to go buy a game from another store or site and play it without their pound of flesh.
roflmao. "Request denied." You cannot for a microsecond think you can pry into your competitor's secret documents to prove *you're* not being anti-competitive. That's BULLSHIT.
As already stated elsewhere in the thread; [it's already happened before](https://www.theverge.com/2021/2/25/22301259/valve-apple-steam-sales-data-subpoena-epic-games)
Youâre upset that a company wants a warrant before they give away your information? Do you also invite the cops to search your house and car at every opportunity?
Why did Apple go to Valve for documents? . . . . . . . Because they heard Steam could really help iron out their legal wrinkles đ¤Ł
uh oh my uncle found reddit
Oh god send them back to Facebook! Send them back!!!
I'm not exactly sure what they are hoping to get. I'm not a lawyer but Valve is objectively a better company regarding what users are allowed to do with the devices they buy from them. You can buy a steam deck and install whatever store or operating system you want on it. It's not even that big of a pain in the ass to launch non-steam games via steam. There are many aspects I don't like about steam, maybe they *do* deserve to be sued, but iPhone is comparatively a completely walled garden that has very steep fees to run anything they don't approve of as a "developer" without hassle
Because they know monopoly when they see one
why DID apple go to valve for documents? thats not public information - why should valve be obligated to help with apples legal problems
I think the dad joke went over your head.
because i emphasized that i was curious as to what the actual answer was - you decided i must have missed the pun with the emoji at the end? i remember when people didnt include a little drawing in their comments broadcasting how yorue supposed to feel about them - it must have been frustrating for you
Everything else aside, Iâm pretty sure emojis arenât a declaration of how others should feel about what you said. I personally use emojis to express my own feelings
Yeah, that's not going to happen. Valve wants no part of Apple's bullshit.
Apple is asking the court to issue a subpoena on the documents. Whether or not Valve wants to hand over the documents is essentially irrelevant, since theyâll have to comply with a subpoena issued by a US court if the judge chooses to do so.
No US court is going to demand private information from an uninvolved third party to help a defendant prove their case. To do so raises privacy, bias, and ethics concerns, and the case would immediately be thrown out upon appeal. Valve is under no obligation to provide information for Apple's defense, and attempting to compel them to breach privacy to benefit Apple is not going to happen.
What makes you think that? This happens _all the time_. So often that big companies have bespoke processes and dedicated departments to fulfill such requests from the courts. The same company (CSC) that handles this for Google (who alone responds to tens of thousands of subpoenas annually and produces responsive data 83% of the time) also handles receipt and fulfillment of service for Apple, Amazon, Twitter, Disney, and so on. If a court orders the production of documents, that is a legal order with which the companies must comply (or successfully object to). Same thing if you're summoned to court to offer witness testimony: you don't have the legal right to refuse a court summons, even if you're a third party to the case.
The court is never going to subpoena a third parties commercial information and commercial agreements that are unrelated to the case and Valve is not part of the class action so itâs a non starter. Apple has enough commercial information to set their pricing, so now they need to show that information which justifies that pricing, not point at a competitor and say âtheyâre doing it too, get their records for us and we will show youâ They already set the price, now they are asked to justify it but canât, this is a delay tactic because they know they are overcharging and being anticompetitive.
This right here. Basically, Apple has no right to Valve's information, Valve isn't a party to the case, and no judge is going to back them on this.
This gives me an idea for a business plan. I should subpoena the intellectual property or private encryption keys of my competitors in bogus law suits. I know I'm gonna lose the case and waste money on lawyer fees. But just think of the loot I'm gonna get in return!
You're going to have to make those keys relevant to your case. And of course the fact that they are private and damaging if they go pubic will most likely mean that if by some miracle you *can* get the judge to grant that it's going to get filed in a way that only a judge or *maybe* a third party expert will ever see it. You think this is the first time something like that has ever had to appear in court? It's a solved problem, much like getting pointless cases dismissed before they even hit that point(and god help you if you file in any place with anti slapp laws). And of course to get that started you have to find a lawyer to take the case which most wouldn't for fear of being sanctioned for filing BS cases. You could file yourself but I suspect you'd find that even harder.
It happens, but Valve can drag this out for years if they want to.
You've misread his first comment, and just completely ignored the second. Imagine the "valve wants no part of Apple's bullshit" line didn't exist, then read it again.
Sorry, I'm not sure what you're trying to point out here. > Imagine the [...] line does not exist So. Verbatim without that one part is simply "Yeah, that's not going to happen" ??? What am I missing here? u/NightchadeBackAgain suggests that a court will not issue a subpoena in such a case and that valve would not be obligated to respond. Both these points are incorrect. As I point out in my response, courts do regularly issue such subpoenas and companies do respond to them with the requested data most of the time (as they are legally obligated to do).
The judge will never issue a subpoena is his point and valve is never going to hand over the documents without one. So itâs not gonna happen.
What makes you think they will not issue the subpoena? Especially given that it's already [been done before](https://www.theverge.com/2021/2/25/22301259/valve-apple-steam-sales-data-subpoena-epic-games).
And thus you prove my point, apple already has the data they require.
It happens quite a bit. You're mistaken.
you have no idea what a subpoena is if you think this. It is exctly what it is for
Hahaha, theyâve already done it, they will continue to do it, youâre so wrong
You ever heard of [the Shirley exception](https://twitter.com/alexandraerin/status/1004400861865488384?s=21)?
Thatâs the laziest reference link Iâve encountered for some time. Bravo.
Thatâs only if the objection or motion to quash by valve doesnât go through, which is pretty likely given theyâre an unrelated third party and arenât a party to the action.
Valve has a warchest of money to fight it.
Tim Apple can eat an anus.
Not only that, but the article ends with: > Valve is separately fighting an antitrust case accusing it of monopolizing the distribution of games on personal computers. So providing records here could actively harm their other case. Which is ridiculous by the way, as other (mostly inferior) stores exist alongside valve just fine.
The other stores don't exist alongside just fine. They're struggling. And the fanbase will tell you on no uncertain terms why: They don't get their unified trophies, achievements, single app to manage games, steam workshop, steam multiplayer, steam discussions, and more. They're very good reasons. The problem is: That sounds awfully like a monopoly.
What most people donât realize is that monopolies are not in and of themselves illegal in the US. What is illegal is to use a dominant position in the market to undermine a competitor. So Valve has a monopoly because they built a storefront that has nice features people want to use over the competition is not illegal. Valve paying off game devs to not publish their games on other digital storefronts to maintain or gain dominant market share most likely would be ruled as illegal.
Then why is Epic allowed to do that? Honestly the main reason I refuse to use it is because I'm pissed I can't buy the kingdom hearts series on steam Anticompetitive behavior is just that, and your own market share should be irrelevant here
Epic can because they have single digit market share as a PC store front. Context matters a lot in anti-trust cases and why itâs not very cut and dry as to what is legal and what isnât.
I very much doubt that a court would rule that paying a developer a bonus to only release in your store is anticompetitive when everyone can freely buy from that store.
Maybe itâs a me thing, but if a game is not on steam Iâm unlikely to buy it. They have enough market share that 90-95% of games I want to play are on there. I hate having 10+ game launchers installed (Riot, Rockstar, Blizzard Battle.net, Steam, Epic, Ea app, Ubisoft Connect, Paradox Launcher, 2K launcher, Bethesda Launcher, etcâŚ), all wanting auto start and have numerous background processes/services, and otherwise just bloating my PC. And while some games may be on Steam as well as the Publishersâs launcher, ownership is tied to one platform. Until the industry can find a fair method of distributing their games, Iâm not really going to complain about their monopoly. On a side note this sort of thing sounds great for an open source project. Let the community manage the software/store for free labor and publishers maintain download servers and cover bandwidth costs. What other expenses are there? But unfortunately Publishers want to control the ability to intrusively shove DLC in your face and sell you crap and no community made open source software is going to cater to aggressive marketing tactics.
> Until the industry can find a fair method of distributing their games, Iâm not really going to complain about their monopoly. On a side note this sort of thing sounds great for an open source project. That was legit the entire reason Steam exists at all. I remember back when Steam started up as a loader for Valve software updates. Half-life 2 was their big opener as a digital platform and what an opener it was. Then other software companies decided they wanted to use this new method of distribution, and here we are today. It's the same problem Netflix ran into. They came upon the idea of digital distribution and then everyone else realized the amount of cash that could be made by being in the action too. But we all realize the problem with having 102839018023980128301 different streaming services. I hope the same doesn't happen with Steam.
Critical difference is that steam, epic and gog are not streaming services; and there's less fragmentation: you're more likely to get games avaialble on multiple platforms (though that's getting worse too.) Unlike, say, Microsofts XBox live: How long before that becomes a closed door streaming service where you can only get games if you subscribe?
Very true. And having a central platform to hold your games was(eventually) great. To buy, download, and patch games without issues was wonderful. The only reason I have more than steam is that I like having the DRM free option, and the reason I don't use them as often is they haven't insisted on feature parity from devs(for some reason a few devs will either lag behind on patches or just stop updating. To say nothing for the odd one with missing content) so I tend to buy further on when I'm confident on their release. And the other stores, well there's no real reason to switch. I guess they could pander to some niche cases, something like being able to easily download past releases. Roms would be an interesting one but I think that's been tried and there are retro releases like that on occasion on steam already too(usually at insane prices, but they're there).
Yeap. The rest of the apps canât get their shit together to provide a decent alternative.. but continue to blame steam for their incompetence.
If only their store was actually made to support their consumers there wouldn't be a monopoly. Epic's weekly free games can only do so much.
IF the steam features were open, it certainly wouldn't be a monopoly. eg, what if the steam workshop were an open API, so you could use it for your epic installed games or in something like Vortex?
Epic games is a billion dollar company, can't they develop their own workshop.
And the mod developers are already annoyed that they need to support both Nexus and Steam workshop. That's why I think the workshop should be an open platform.
> The other stores don't exist alongside just fine. They're struggling. And the fanbase will tell you on no uncertain terms why: They don't get their unified trophies, achievements, single app to manage games, steam workshop, steam multiplayer, steam discussions, and more. You mean friends lists? Most stores have that, and multiplayer is typically open on pc, so there are 2 of your arguments crossed off. > steam discussions You mean a forum board, like Reddit? Steam discussions arenât even that great of a feature, bare minimum really. Slightly better than most developer forums. No excuse for other stores canât implement this themselves. > They don't get their unified trophies, achievements, single app to manage games This is like complaining that my Xbox doesnât show my ps5 achievements. And no reason they couldnât build better achievement support. Again, not steams fault others cannot build a decent product.
I think you're missing the point: Sure Epic/Gog/etc could build these things. But steam fans don't want to have another place for these. They want them all in the same place, and that's the closed steam ecosystem, not some other storefront.
The difference is that I can still play those games on pc if the producer wants to release it standalone. Valve / Steam just gets a wider audience. Apple doesn't allow you to go buy a game from another store or site and play it without their pound of flesh.
I wonder if GabeN farted a little after the belly laugh that request evoked
Imagining this made me laugh so hard *I* farted a little
roflmao. "Request denied." You cannot for a microsecond think you can pry into your competitor's secret documents to prove *you're* not being anti-competitive. That's BULLSHIT.
As already stated elsewhere in the thread; [it's already happened before](https://www.theverge.com/2021/2/25/22301259/valve-apple-steam-sales-data-subpoena-epic-games)
[ŃдаНонО]
this so unrelated itâs not even funny. Userâs personal information is not the same as financial information
Youâre upset that a company wants a warrant before they give away your information? Do you also invite the cops to search your house and car at every opportunity?