A recent report by the GameDiscoverCo has uncovered new documents and emails as part of a lawsuit by indie game studio Wolfire Games in 2021. The lawsuit insisted “that Valve stop interfering with pricing on other stores,” following a message from Valve saying that the indie game Overgrowth would be removed from Steam if it offered a lower price on other stores. The email chain included Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney, Valve CEO Gabe Newell, project manager Erik Johnson, and Valve COO Scott Lynch. In the chain, Sweeney expressed his annoyance at Steam’s revenue split, specifically after it changed the revenue to 25% to 20% once games surpass higher revenue thresholds. One of the emails from Sweeney referred to Valve and Newell as “assholes”.
“Right now, you assholes are telling the world that the strong and powerful get special terms, while 30% is for the little people”. said Sweeney. “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?” According to the documents, following this, the next day Valve chief operating officer, Scott Lynch, responded to this by saying: “You mad bro?”
Overgrowth details via the developer:
As a lightning-fast acrobatic ninja rabbit, you can choose how to approach each encounter. Do you want to pick off enemies one at a time like the killer in a slasher film? Dive into the thick of it and fight whole groups in a frontal assault? Steal the most powerful weapon you can find, and turn it on the rest?
If you die, there is never any load time; you can try again instantly! As your skills improve, you’ll see that the game is not about winning. It’s about experimenting to make the coolest action scenes that you can. Every design decision is made with that in mind, from the mouselook camera to the context-sensitive combat controls.
After completing the story modes, you can try out all the mods that players have created with the integrated editor! If you want to play as a human character in a city, or try a whole new campaign, or even fly around as a bat, there’s probably already a mod that makes that happen.
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