The UK's Performing Right Society (PRS) has launched legal action against Valve Corporation, the US company behind Steam, one of the world's largest PC gaming stores, alleging that music by its members has been made available on the platform without a licence. The filing, made on March 4, marks the culmination of a dispute that PRS says it has attempted to resolve through negotiation since the platform's launch in 2003.
The tension centres on a legal distinction that most players won't have noticed. Game developers and publishers typically secure sync licences to cover the embedding of music in their titles. However, in the UK, those sync deals do not extend to the making available of that music when games are subsequently distributed via download or streaming platforms. The 'communication to the public' right — the making available right — sits with PRS, not individual music publishers, meaning Valve requires its own separate licence as the platform operator distributing games that contain PRS members' works.
It's a structural problem built into how UK copyright law divides musical rights. With the way song copyrights are managed in the UK, making available rights can only be licensed by PRS, not the music publishers. This stands in contrast to arrangements PRS has already reached with other major players. PRS has made efforts across many years to come to an agreement with the games platform similar to the ones they have in place with Sony Interactive Gaming and Microsoft Gaming, despite the alleged absence of appropriate engagement from Valve.
The dispute lands on Valve at a moment of unusual legal pressure. In late February, Valve was sued by New York with allegations that their loot box mechanics promoted illegal gambling and could get children addicted to gambling. In late January 2026, the greenlight was given for lawyer Vicki Shotbolt to sue Valve on behalf of 14 million Steam users in the United Kingdom. That third lawsuit alleges anti-competitive practices around pricing. The music licensing case is the fourth major legal action in three months.
Valve's likely counterargument—that the publishing and development side has already secured the necessary rights—carries some surface logic. Why should the distributor need a separate licence when the creator obtained sync permission to embed the music? Yet the UK legal framework divides these rights deliberately. The case is being brought under Section 20 of the UK's Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988, which covers the "making available" right. That means the right to communicate a work to the public via download or streaming.
The case has real-world bite. Steam commands around 75% of the PC gaming market, with 147 million monthly active users. PRS says games sold on Steam that feature music by its members include popular titles such as EA SPORTS FC, Forza Horizon, and Grand Theft Auto. The catalogue at stake runs into tens of thousands of titles.
PRS says the litigation will progress unless Valve Corporation engages positively with discussions and takes the necessary license to cover the use of PRS repertoire, both retrospectively and moving forwards. That retrospective component is significant. If PRS prevails, the damages could extend back more than two decades.
The dispute illustrates a broader problem in digital entertainment. Rights frameworks were designed when music distribution meant physical goods moving through clear commercial chains. Digital platforms have fractured that chain. A single game travels globally, subject to different copyright regimes in each territory. A developer secures US rights through one channel, UK rights through another. A distributor operating in 100 countries may owe different clearances in 100 different places. The licensing infrastructure hasn't yet caught up to the scale and speed at which digital content moves.
For indie developers and smaller publishers, the practical question is acute: who tracks compliance across all these territories and rights frameworks? Between multiple rights holders impacting timelines and steep up-front fees, many game developers find it far easier and more fiscally prudent to commission music in-house. If anything creates more cost in ways that aren't really driving what a game is going after, they tend to think, 'We probably shouldn't be spending time and resources on that.'
PRS represents more than 180,000 songwriters, composers, and music publishers. For them, this case is about ensuring that creators are compensated whenever their work reaches an audience, regardless of the distribution medium. The alternative—treating a global download platform the same as a brick-and-mortar retailer moving physical copies—would erode the economic foundations that enable music creation in the first place.
The court will eventually decide whether UK copyright law requires a separate licence for what Valve does. The broader question, though, is whether rights frameworks designed for analogue media can scale to the economics of digital distribution—or whether they need to be reimagined altogether.