Epic CEO Tim Sweeney calls Valve “assholes” over Steam fees in dug up email thread

Epic CEO Tim Sweeney called Valve “assholes” in an old email thread that's been dug up as part of a lawsuit against the Steam owner.

The email thread, spotted by GameDiscoverCo, was between Sweeney and Valve's head Gabe Newell discussing the economics of the Steam platform. It began in 2017 with an email from Newell to Sweeney pointedly asking “Anything we doing to annoy you?” and referencing a post from Valve's Sean Jenkins about restricting Steam keys given to developers.

Sweeney responded instead on “the economics of these 30 percent platform fees” which he described as “no longer justifiable”. In short, he said the marketing benefits of the Steam storefront is “far disproportionate to the fee” thanks to “the churn of new game releases.”

This email thread was followed up in 2018 after Valve implemented a sliding scale for its royalty payments to reduce its cut on the highest-grossing games to 25 or even 20 percent, citing “network effects” of big games.

Sweeney responded to this in support of smaller developers, but all in the context of Epic's infamous legal battle with Apple. Wrote Sweeney: “Later this week, we'll be escalating a conversation with Apple in which an authoritarian government (not China) is demanding that either Epic alter Fortnite on iOS or Apple block it, and we'll be responding with a memo on the human rights principles that would be violated by either action. We'll be refusing and asking Apple to either continue to carry Fortnite or to allow Epic to distribute it directly to customers through an Enterprise Certificate, and escalating as needed.”

He then continued, taking out his anger on Valve: “Right now, your assholes are telling the world that the strong and powerful get special terms, while 30 percent is for the little people. We're all in for a prolonged battle if Apple tries to keep their monopoly and 30 percent by cutting backroom deals with big publishers to keep them quiet. Why not give ALL developers a better deal? What better way is there to convince Apple quickly that their model is now totally untenable?”

Amusingly, this thread was then internally forwarded by Valve COO Scott Lynch to both Gabe Newell and Erik Johnson saying: “You mad bro?”

All this dirty laundry was filed as part of an antitrust lawsuit between Valve and indie developer Wolfire filed in 2021. The ongoing lawsuit alleging Valve is essentially fixing prices and now it's reached the “discovery phase”, meaning data and emails are being shared.

Whatever the outcome of the lawsuit, it's certainly inadvertently provided insight into communication between CEOs of some of the most powerful gaming companies.

The Apple vs Epic drama is still ongoing, as Epic's plans to launch a version of its Epic Games Store on iOS in the EU were stalled as Apple terminated its developer account.

The EU then intervened, and Epic's developer account has been reinstated.