Valve and Sony Sued for Alleged Marketplace Antitrust Violations
Valve and Sony Sued for Alleged Marketplace Antitrust Violations
THE BIG PICTURE
Valve and Sony have separately been sued for alleged anticompetitive practices of the Steam Marketplace and Sony PlayStation stores respectively. This follows the recent trend of suits against Apple and Google’s marketplaces.
THE VALVE SUIT (WOLFIRE GAMES LLC V. VALVE CORPORATION, CASE NO. 21-CV-00563, (W.D. WASH. 2021))
THE PARTIES
Plaintiffs: Wolfire Games, et al.
Plaintiffs’ Firm: Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP
Defendant: Valve Corp.
Defendant’s Firm: None entered at this time
THE ALLEGATIONS
Plaintiffs allege that Valve’s Steam Gaming Platform has a monopoly over PC game sales and that Valve abuses its position to extract outside fees from developers, as well as stifling competition.
THE SONY SUITS (CACCURI V. SONY INTERACTIVE ENTERTAINMENT, CASE NO. 21-CV-3361 (N.D. CAL. 2021) (CASE 1) AND CENDEJAS V. SONY INTERACTIVE ENTERTAINMENT, CASE NO. 21-CV-3447 (N.D. CAL. 2021) (CASE 2))
THE PARTIES
Plaintiffs: Cacurri (Case 1) and Cendejas (Case 2)
Plaintiff’s Firm: Westerman Law Corp (Case 1) and Joseph Saveri Law Firm, LLP (Case 2)
Defendant: Sony Interactive Entertainment
Defendant’s Firm: None entered at this time
THE ALLEGATIONS
Both suits (filed within two days of each other) are putative class actions that allege that Sony has a monopoly over the PlayStation games market and that it violated antitrust law when it removed retailers’ ability to sell digital download codes for PlayStation games. Both suits point to the price differential to consumers for purchasing games through retailers vs. through Sony directly (see Table 1 from the Caccurri complaint below):
We’ll be keeping an eye on all of these cases as they develop.