Tim Sweeney, CEO of Epic Games, insulted Valve in an email sent back in 2018
, by Thibaut
In April 2021, indie studio Wolfire Games took legal action against Valve. The developers of Overgrowth accused the American firm of monopolizing the PC market via Steam. Keep in mind that Valve takes 30% of all revenues generated by a game sold on its store.
In any case, it was in the context of this case that we find a rather... weird email. It was sent in December 2018 by Tim Sweeney, the CEO of Epic Games, to Gabe Newell, the head of Valve. The message in question was written on the eve of the launch of the Epic Games Store, and it's fair to say that Sweeney didn't pull any punches.
To put things in context, Epic wanted to encourage Valve to lower its share by 30% to force Apple to follow suit, which, obviously, Newell had no intention of doing.
"Right now, you assholes are telling the world that the strong and powerful get special terms, while 30% is for the little people. We're all in for a prolonged battle if Apple tries to keep their monopoly and 30% 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?"
It's worth remembering that Epic Games recovers "only" the 12% of sales revenues, leaving 88% to developers.
Source: newsletter.gamediscover.co