If you click on a link and make a purchase we may receive a small commission. Read our editorial policy.

Gabe Newell shrugs off Microsoft's legal commitment to keep Call Of Duty on Steam

We're all gentlemen here

If you haven't heard, Microsoft are currently trying to buy Activision Blizzard. Competition regulators from the UK, the EU and the US have been questioning the deal, so in an attempt to reassure them last month Microsoft apparently offered Sony a ten-year commitment to keep selling Call Of Duty on Playstation. Today, Xbox Head Phill Spencer announced that they've made a similar 10-year CoD commitment to Steam and, uh, Nintendo, on which no CoD games currently exist.

Nintendo have signed, while Valve CEO Gabe Newell says his company won't bother with a legal agreement, in part because they don't believe in "requiring any partner to have an agreement that locks them to shipping games on Steam into the distant future".

Newell gave that quote to Kotaku, where he further layed out their reasoning:

"Microsoft offered and even sent us a draft agreement for a long-term Call of Duty commitment but it wasn’t necessary for us because a) we’re not believers in requiring any partner to have an agreement that locks them to shipping games on Steam into the distant future b) Phil and the games team at Microsoft have always followed through on what they told us they would do so we trust their intentions and c) we think Microsoft has all the motivation they need to be on the platforms and devices where Call of Duty customers want to be."

It's worth noting CoD actually only recently returned to Steam, after five years of being stuck on Activision's own launcher.

Phil Spencer has said that he'd like to see CoD available on as many platforms as possible, which is exactly what you would say when legal folks are trying to shut down your big acquisition deal on the basis that you might not. Offering legally-binding deals is a different matter, with internal sources at the American FTC already suggesting that strategy might be working.

The new deal with Nintendo also means they can publicly do this, now:

Sony's objections are of course rooted in self-interest, but that doesn't mean they're wrong. Ten years doesn't even strike me as that long when you're talking about Call of Duty, which I fully expect will be available on my total-immersion VR death bed. Here's Alice Bee's piece on why the consolidation of the games industry is bad, actually.


Activision Blizzard are currently the subject of a number of legal actions, labour disputes and allegations of workplace harassment. Rock Paper Shotgun will continue to write about these issues, as well as covering Activision Blizzard games as part of our commitment to cover subjects of interest to our readers. The latest news can always be found under our Activision Blizzard tag.

Rock Paper Shotgun is the home of PC gaming

Sign in and join us on our journey to discover strange and compelling PC games.

Related topics
About the Author
Matt Cox avatar

Matt Cox

Former Staff Writer

Once the leader of Rock Paper Shotgun's Youth Contingent, Matt is an expert in multiplayer games, deckbuilders and battle royales. He occasionally pops back into the Treehouse to write some news for us from time to time, but he mostly spends his days teaching small children how to speak different languages in warmer climates.

Comments