Valve is currently embroiled in a US antitrust lawsuit with Wolfire, a developer that alleges the Steam platform holder uses its position to unfairly crowd-out rivals and control game prices. Valve tried to have the suit dismissed, but in May 2022 the court ruled it could go ahead with some changes and enter the discovery phase: the juiciest part of the legal process where, among other things, plenty of internal correspondence from the companies involved is made public.
Among these documents are a couple of spicy exchanges between Epic CEO Tim Sweeney, and Valve's CEO Gabe Newell, COO Scott Lynch, and project manager Erik Johnson (first spotted by Simon Carless at GameDiscoverCo). The context for both exchanges is broadly speaking store pricing and specifically the commission that Valve takes on Steam sales, which are some of Sweeney's favourite topics. The first chain in 2017 is sparked specifically by a leaked comment from Steam's developer forum, in which Valve's Sean Jenkins mistakenly said Steam may start restricting the keys it gives to developers:
