A Dutch consumer base has filed a class action against Valve Corporation, the company behind Steam, seeking more than €220 million in damages on behalf of Dutch PC gamers who have bought through the platform since 2013. The case is conducted by the Stichting Consumenten Competition Claims under the name GameClaim, and if you have a Steam account in the Netherlands, you are looking at possible damages in the Netherlands. he succeeds.
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This is not an isolated story. It’s the latest in a string of legal actions across the board that say a surprising amount about how regulators and consumer advocates view the PC gaming market — and, arguably, how well they understand it.
What the Dutch Case Wants
The fundamental argument is based on several specific principles. Steam has an estimated 85% market share in PC game distribution, a basis that arguably puts it in a dominant position. Valve is accused of using Most Popular clauses that prevent developers from selling games cheaper on rival platforms than on Steam, keeping market-wide prices artificially high. The 30% commission Valve takes on all game sales seems too high and shows selfish behavior. In-game purchases must go through Steam Wallet, with another 30% taken from those purchases, and developers can’t direct players to cheaper options available elsewhere.
No formal charges have been filed yet. The process requires the foundation to engage with Valve first and attempt a settlement before the lawsuit begins. If Valve refuses, a formal trial follows – which is expected to take three to five years. Dutch consumers can register through the GameClaim website now to preserve their strong right to future compensation.
Gabe Newell rejects all of that. Valve told Bloomberg that it does not set prices for third-party sellers, that consumers have real alternatives to consoles, competing stores, and direct purchases from developers, and that Steam’s market position reflects the quality of its platform rather than anti-competitive behavior.
Cases Are Accumulating
The Dutch action joins a number of lawsuits, most of which have not yet been successful. In the UK, the Competition Appeal Tribunal approved a £656 million class action in January 2026 on behalf of 14 million UK Steam users, brought by digital rights campaigner Vicki Shotbolt. If you bought PC games or add-on content in the UK from June 2018 onwards, you are automatically included unless you opt out. In the United States, four game players filed an antitrust lawsuit in 2024 regarding similar charges and commission procedures – the previous US lawsuit in 2021 was dismissed. And between 2021 and 2023, the European Commission fined Valve for geo-blocking practices that limit game distribution based on users’ location within the EU.
PlayStation is in the same boat. UK PlayStation’s claim is for damages of around £2 billion for 12.2 million users, in a case that started in March 2026. Another consumer protection foundation filed a separate case against Sony PlayStation in the Netherlands earlier this year over similar allegations about digital store prices. The pattern is clear – regulators and consumer advocates treat digital stores as a category that warrants serious legal scrutiny, and they pursue multiple goals at the same time.
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Why The Situation Is More Complex Than We Think
The legal theory behind most of these cases is based on Valve’s behavior as Apple did on iOS – a truly closed ecosystem where the owner of the platform controls the only point of entry and can completely block competitors. That comparison doesn’t hold up well here.
Apple’s App Store is the only way to install software on an iPhone without jailbreaking. Steam is certainly not the only way to play PC games. You can buy directly from developers. You can use GOG, which is always a great platform with no DRM and a clear philosophy about consumer ownership. You can use Epic, Ubisoft Connect, the EA app, the Microsoft Store, and itch.io. None of this requires the kind of hardware lock that makes the iOS comparison meaningful. You can download the game executable directly from the developer’s website and run it on Windows without any launchers involved at all.
The Dutch action joins a number of lawsuits, most of which have not yet been successful.
Steam has an 85% market share, but not because Valve has prevented competitors from entering. The competition is in and still not very successful. Ubisoft Connect has been around for almost seventeen years. The EA app has a history of reliability that still produces complaints. Microsoft owns the Windows and Xbox brands – they should have had all the building leverage needed to build a PC storefront. Windows Live games were a real opportunity, but they added too many caveats, didn’t build user trust, and hindered the technical side. The Microsoft Store has improved, but it still lags behind Steam in the features Valve introduced a decade ago.
Epic offers free games every week. Players collect them and buy the same games on Steam anyway. That single fact probably explains Steam’s position more clearly than any legal argument about commission levels. GOG remains a genuine alternative, but it doesn’t really compete with Steam on scale – partly because that’s not what it’s trying to do.
Why Administrators Keep Trying Anyway
Platform marketplaces are attracting regulatory attention. The potential damages in these cases are huge, and a successful prosecution can make jobs. The 30% commission – a number that has become the industry standard but still seems important – is a simple public relations objective even if the underlying legal theory is disputed.
There are some things to keep in mind about how Steam works. Penalties for geo-blocking were guaranteed. The clauses in the Most Favored Nation clause that prevent cheaper prices elsewhere are a legitimate area of concern, if proven correct. Whether the 30% commission is worth the service provided is a fair question.
But “Valve is ahead because it consistently makes better decisions than its competitors and has earned the trust of consumers over two decades” is not a single case. It is an explanation of how markets sometimes work. These lawsuits will drag on for years, Valve will spend a lot of money on lawyers, and the results will depend on the uncertain legal definitions of governance in an open-source context.
The Steam client still performs better than any of its competitors. This is the real reason that nothing has destroyed it, and no case can change that.
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