Draft:”steam you owe us” UK class action: Difference between revisions

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A UK class action lawsuit against steam

The “steam you owe us” campaign[1] is an opt-out class action lawsuit in the UK against the video game distribution platform Steam and its parent company Valve for 656 million pounds ^[1] (around 900 million US-dollars) that was opened in 2024 and made public in the beginning of 2026. ^[2] The lawsuit issued by Viki Shotbolt ^[3], famous for peddling the UK online privacy act, and Milberg London LLC ^[4] accuses Steam of using their predominant market position to overcharge and treat their customers unfairly.^[1][2][5]

Notably, the overall reception of the international audience of this alleged consumer protection lawsuit was more than negative, multiple media outlet’s and social-media channels accused the campaign as well as the “United Kingdom Competition Appeal Tribunal” ^[6] to use inappropriate methods and having either a subpar media and technological competence, if not using outright misleading practices for a monetary goal. ^[2][5]

Shortly after the accusations went public in early 2026, Viki Shotbolt’s ^[3] and Milberg London LLC’s ^[4] campaign was heavily criticized and ridiculed on social media, YouTube and other media outlets ^[2][5] for their outrageous and allegedly consumer friendly claims. Shortly thereafter, a change.org petition was opened for UK consumers to oppose the lawsuit.

One of the campaigns driving points is that steam is allegedly using its monopoly in the gaming market to overcharge consumers, this claim was ridiculed on the internet, as the website is regarded as a “Natural monopoly“, meaning that there are plenty of alternatives, but nobody want’s to use them for different reasons, like bad UI or customer support, meaning that Steam’s predominant position comes from good service rather than predatory market behavior. ^[2][5]

Much of the public views Steam as somewhat of a gold standard in customer support and user-friendliness, famous for their regular and generous sales, strict and consumer benefitting return policies, ^[7] and genuinely helpful customer support. So many people were unpleasantly surprised when the class action went public, and accusing Milberg London LLC ^[4] to not care about consumers rights and simply about the money.

Viki Shotbolt ^[3] and Milberg London LLC ^[4] accuse Steam of forcing consumers to buy DLC’s for games they bought on Steam on Steam as well. ^[8] This was one of the reasons the public accuses Viki Shotbolt ^[3] and Milberg London LLC ^[4] as lacking technical competence and not understanding how the technology works, or even outright malice.

Another claim of their class action is that Steam is taking an unreasonable 30% commission on every game purchase on the platform, ^[8][9] ignoring the fact that this rate is widespread, Game stores like GameStop, the Microsoft store, Apple, GOG, and Amazon all have a cut of 30% themselves. ^[2]

Furthermore, they claim that Steam is forcing Developers to not undercut prices on other platforms, ignoring that this, known as a price-parity clause, is a common market practice in retail.^[10]

One accusation of the public is the misuse of the UK’s rules for class action lawsuits which operate on an Opt-out basis rather than an Opt-in one, which automatically includes all UK based steam users into the class for the lawsuit to create an artificially bloated consumer base, even if they don’t feel wronged by Steam and potentially don’t even know about the lawsuit, leading to the alleged 14 million wronged consumers in the lawsuit.

It is also speculated that while the Milberg London LLC law firm ^[4] will receive a large percentage of the claimed compensation as commission, and that most consumers will receive little to none at all, as the precedence of other such opt-out lawsuits suggest. A UK consumer portal, Consumer Voice, speculates that consumers could expect a payout of 44 British Pounds ^[11] (around 60 US-dollars).