Valve gets dragged into Apple and Epic’s legal fight over Fortnite

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Apple's bitter legal dispute with Epic Games over the distribution of Fortnite on iOS has now managed to rope in Valve. Apple has subpoenaed the Steam maker for a wide range of PC game sales data it says is crucial to its case. But Valve is fighting back against that subpoena, saying its information is proprietary, not relevant to Apple's case, and would be costly and difficult to generate.

As discussed in a joint letter from Apple and Valve filed with the Northern District of California court this week, Apple's November subpoena seeks two large categories of information that Valve is refusing to provide:

• Documents sufficient to show Valve’s: (a) total yearly sales of apps and in-app products; (b) annual advertising revenues from Steam; (c) annual sales of external products attributable to Steam; (d) annual revenues from Steam; and (e) annual earnings (whether gross or net) from Steam; as well as
• (a) The name of each App on Steam; (b) the date range when the App was available on Steam; and (c) the price of the App and any in-app product available on Steam.

While Valve has responded to some other parts of Apple's subpoena, Apple says that information has been "so heavily redacted that Apple cannot discern what information they might contain."

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