Gabe Newell, founder, owner, and CEO of Valve, also known to gamers as Lord Gaben, forgiver of scam and deliverer of Daily Deals, has been instructed to appear in court, in person. The order is over an ongoing antitrust lawsuit against the company.
The lawsuit was initially filed in 2021 by Wolfire Game, a US-based independent video game developer, who claims that Valve abused its position in the gaming market to command a large share of sales from any game sold on its platform: the digital distributor takes 30% of all item sale up to US$10 million (~RM46.72 million), 25% if sales of the game hits US$50 million (~RM233 million), and 20% for all sales that exceed that figure.
Not that we say initially, as the original lawsuit was dismissed the same it was filed, with the presiding judge finding that the Wolfire Games’ complaint against Lord Gaben did “not articulate sufficient facts to plausibly allege an antitrust injury based on that market.” The company then filed another complaint the following year of May 2022.
Our Lord Gaben initially requested for his deposition to be done remotely, due to fears over COVID-19 and claims that he would be at risk of developing a serious illness if were to be infected. Alas, the court simply wagged its finger at him, said no, told him that there was insubstantial evidence to his fears, and then told him that he had to be physically present at court.
While fears over COVID-19 aren’t what they were just a few years ago, Lord Gaben’s fears are somewhat understandable. When the pandemic broke out at the start of 2020, the man had was living in New Zealand for several months as “COVID refugee”. He returned to the US in 2021.
It wasn’t all doom and gloom for Lord Gaben – the court said that it was willing to accommodate his fear by having all participants in the court to wear N95 or compatible masks during his deposition. However, he would have to remove his mask when it would be his turn to answer questions.
(Source: Techspot, GameIndustry.biz)
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