Court Orders Data From 436 Steam Games to Apple

Apple is asking a group of companies to provide confidential information on how much money each company will raise from the sale of Fortnite skins on the iPhone in its ongoing legal battle with Epic Games. Yesterday, a Californian judge ordered Valve to comply with one of these requests and hand over financial data on hundreds of games sold on Steam over the past few years.

Apple’s original demand was broad, Law360 reported, but the jury lowered it down to data on 436 specific games sold through Steam in 2017, rather than all 30,000 games sold in the last six years. Valve was struggling with the demands, calling them troublesome for a Valve-sized company (employing a few hundred people compared to Apple’s roughly 147,000 people) and saying the information had nothing to do with Apple’s battle with Epic.

According to Law360, during a virtual trial yesterday, Judge Hixson told Valve’s attorneys, “As far as I understand, there is no better word, Apple has salted the world with subpoenas, so don’t worry, it’s not just you,” according to Law360. Samsung was also ordered to hand over sales data in the Galaxy app store as part of the ongoing dispute.

Valve has until mid-March to comply with the order and deliver the data. Meanwhile, Epic and Apple will appear in court for a pre-trial conference in April, and then the case will officially begin in May. Fortnite is not available on iPhones via the App Store since it pulled Epic to bypass Apple’s payment system. Epic tried to take the game back until the legal issue was resolved, but it was hit multiple times.

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