Valve is once again under legal fire, and this time the allegations are spicy enough to make any PC gamer's skin crawl. According to a report by Kotaku, court documents from an ongoing antitrust lawsuit claim that Valve threatened to delist games - including big names like Rainbow Six Siege and Middle-Earth: Shadow of War - if publishers dared to sell them at lower prices on competing storefronts.
The lawsuit describes Valve's alleged behavior as "supracompetitive," which is fancy lawyer-speak for "yeah they were basically running a monopoly speedrun." The core accusation is that Steam's pricing parity rules essentially forced publishers to keep prices equal across all platforms, or risk getting yeeted from the world's biggest PC gaming marketplace.
Think about what that means in practice. If a publisher wanted to run a sale on Epic Games Store or GOG without matching it on Steam, Valve could theoretically pull the game from Steam entirely. For most developers, losing Steam visibility is basically a game-over screen - the platform commands such a dominant market share that getting delisted is less of a "tough business decision" and more of a "please don't destroy us."
The bigger picture
This isn't Valve's first rodeo in the antitrust arena. Steam has faced scrutiny for years over its 30% revenue cut and its grip on the PC gaming market. But the alleged use of delist threats as leverage against specific, high-profile titles is a significant detail that could level up the pressure on Valve considerably.
Kotaku notes that games like Rainbow Six Siege and Middle-Earth: Shadow of War are specifically called out in the court documents, suggesting these weren't just vague policy warnings but allegedly targeted enforcement actions against publishers who tried to play the pricing game differently.
Valve has not publicly responded to these specific claims at the time of writing. Whether this lawsuit eventually lands a critical hit or gets parried in court remains to be seen - but it's the kind of legal boss fight that could have serious implications for how PC game pricing works across the entire industry. Stay locked in, because this one is far from a final boss kill.
