Valve: Piracy is a Service Issue

Ernesto
October 25, 2011
48
Valve
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Valve co-founder and managing director Gabe Newell has spoken out once again on the issue of piracy.

Newell reiterates what he’s said on previous occasions. DRM doesn’t work and pirates are not per se after free stuff.

“One thing that we have learned is that piracy is not a pricing issue. It’s a service issue,” he says.

“The easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting antipiracy technology to work. It’s by giving those people a service that’s better than what they’re receiving from the pirates.”

“For example, Russia. You say, oh, we’re going to enter Russia, people say, you’re doomed, they’ll pirate everything in Russia. Russia now outside of Germany is our largest continental European market.”

Newell argues that instead of hurting legitimate customers with DRM, you have to give them something that’s superior to the pirated counterpart.

‘It doesn’t take much in terms of providing a better service to make pirates a non-issue,” Newell says.

More at GeekWire

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Lollywaffle

It’s damn true.
Anonymous

Funny, seeing that Steam in itself is DRM.
- Tritonio
  
  Yes but it doesn’t bother most people. And steam is not bloatware. It’s not a DRM you have to bear with just because the company that made the game wanted to put a DRM. It offers a great service and community. It’s no rootkit like other DRM systems (AFAIK)…
  - Anonymous
    
    Yup. Steam is great. And better than EA. The only thing they should work on is improving offline mode – because it doesn’t work anymore when an update is ready :(
  - Rekrul
    
    Yes but it doesn’t bother most people. And steam is not bloatware. It’s not a DRM you have to bear with just because the company that made the game wanted to put a DRM. It offers a great service and community. It’s no rootkit like other DRM systems (AFAIK)…
    
    If they wanted to, Valve could have made Steam completely separate from the games. Instead you HAVE to have Steam installed to play any Steam-crippled game. You HAVE to let the game “phone-home” in order to play it, unless you’ve set it to offline mode first, which requires that the game “phone-home” to get Valve’s permission to do this. Your system HAS to meet Steam’s minimum requirements or you can’t run the game, regardless of the game’s original requirements. When you want to play a game you HAVE to let Steam check for updates and patch it to the latest version, whether you want it to or not.
    
    If Valve ever decides that you’ve violated their terms of service, they can and will deactivate your Steam account rendering all the games you supposedly “bought” through Steam, useless. Do a search for the story about the guy who asked how much someone would be willing to pay for a Steam account full of games. He got his account re-activated, but this hi-lites another problem with Steam; Unlike with a retail boxed copy of a game, you can’t re-sell anything you supposedly “buy” through Steam. Your Steam-crippled games only work as long as Valve allows them to work. If Valve should ever go out of business or get bought by another company that doesn’t want to support all the old games anymore, they’re going to stop working. And don’t give ma that “They’ve promised to release a patch” BS. Unless it’s in writing, that “promise” means absolutely nothing.
    - http://twitter.com/icanhazsake Ninja
      
      That. I got myself thinking. I have many old games. OLD. And they are fun to play even if sometimes I have to install VMs with older windows versions. In 15 years, will you be able to play Steam powered games? I don’t think so. “But who plays 15-yr old crap?” You’d be surprised with how fun 15-yr old crap can be. I own a 20 yr old Mega Drive II. And, wow, I play games in it because they are fun (ok, I do play them on emulators too, specially on my Android phone but it doesn’t change the fact that the games are damn old).
    - Reader
      
      The exact same can be said about other online activation DRM.. how many years til the company goes out of business and we can no longer play the *physical* game we “bought”? :P
    - Danny
      
      @reader
      
      Thank god for the crackers who blow that shit apart!
    - Mcclwill
      
      I really don’t understand this kind of hate towards Steam, Steam has done nothing but good for the gaming market in general and is the ONLY form of DRM that actually works without screwing the customer over. Having to go online ONCE isn’t the end of the world, this is the modern day and if a gamer doesn’t have any access to the Internet at all that isn’t a problem with Steam.
      
      I used to have an old shitbox of a computer, and I played games on Steam that were 2-3 times the specs of my computer just fine. And MAKING a person have the most updated reliable patches for whichever game they happen to be installing? THE HORROR, CALL THE INTERNET POLICE, STEAM HAS BROKEN THE LAW. I don’t think the gaming industry can recover from such a serious injury.
      
      You’re acting like Steam will go out of it’s way to screw over the common customer, you’d have to have do something pretty serious for Steam to actually lock your account, if someone is using a hacked account of course they’ll close it down. (Or anything of the like)
      
      And I don’t see the lack of Reselling as a problem, it can be a pain, sure, but devalues the gaming market as a whole. Again, Steam isn’t some Evil Genius bent on conquering the world, if for some reason they close down they wouldn’t just tell everyone they have no access to their games anymore, any lazy programmer could throw up a release patch in about an hour, stop being an idiot, it’s almost guaranteed that games bought over ANY online game retailer will outlast the hard versions, you can’t go back to the store to get another copy of the game for free like you can in Steam.
      
      Steam has done nothing but breath life into the PC gaming market, it hasn’t done any cheap undercuts like almost ALL their competitors have and has EARNED it’s place in the world, Steam is almost as big as the console markets alone, that’s because it’s a good service, that unlike consoles isn’t restrictive and annoying.
      
      —-
      
      I think Gabes thoughts are right on the dot, retailers are trying to FORCE people to use them, they refuse to increase their service standards to match those who are successful, I can walk down to a brick a mortar store right now and I’ll find games that released up to 2 years ago at full price, ridiculous. Piracy has become nothing but an excuse, should some company release a shoddy game, it will inevitably fail and when it does the company will instantly release an bitchfest article whining about how horrible piracy is, when in fact the reason the game failed is because the game sucked.
      
      Gabe wasn’t trying to say that steam wasn’t DRM, he’s making the point that his DRM is superior to pirating for the service that it gives, which in my eyes is true. (Espically considering how much money the steam sales have saved me, along with many others, awesome stuff).
    - medpak
      
      I’m just sayin, Gabe N has said they programmed a “big red button” that unlocks every steam (or just valve) game 100% in case they do go out of business or whatever.
    - djnforce9
      
      Yeah, Valve isn’t going to disable your account on a whim. You would have had to something seriously wrong (phishing, credit card fraud, etc). The ONLY questionable practice they have is in regards to VAC. Fair enough that someone who cheats gets punished but if your account is hijacked and then the hacker cheats, the ends result is still the same and your account is tainted forever (i.e. yes you only get banned for the specific game or engine cheated on (and this only applies to VAC protected servers) but many dedicated servers auto-kicks any accounts that are VAC banned from ANYTHING including totally non-related games because there is just no way of knowing).
    - http://www.smallperturbation.com Connor Behan
      
      I can’t say whether the advantages to steam outweigh the DRM because I’ve been out of the gaming scene for years now. The thought of there being a “big red button” is reassuring but the programmers who work for Valve in 30 years might not remember about it. Or maybe a company that buys out Valve will have a different opinion and do away with the button.
      
      About the claim that games purchased online outlast the physical copies, I have to disagree. All my games from the 90s still work. I can install them from the CD on an infinite number of computers and I can burn the CD to even play them from all those computers at the same time. And that’s not even considering daemon tools and all the cracks out there. The burning step probably won’t work for games these days due to ROM marks on the disc. But this doesn’t include game content. Even if the data you burn is unusable without the ROM mark at the moment, it can be backed up for as long as it takes for someone to make a crack that works.
      
      And yes, there are legitimate reasons for not always wanting a patch. Some patches change the content of games like removing shots of the World Trade Centre or naughty easter eggs.
  - Durr hurr hur
    
    >Yes but it doesn’t bother most people.
    >but it doesn’t bother most people
    >but it
    
    Theres no “if’s” or “but’s” about it. Either its DRM or it’s not. Steam is DRM. Valve is contradicting its self by saying any of this BS.
    - Nikolai
      
      You are correct. However much I love steam, and I do, it is still DRM. There have been times where my net has dropped out for days, and I’ve been unable to play any of my steam games because the steam client would not go into offline mode for whatever reason. This pisses me off immensely. Enough to get me to stop using steam? Probably not, because (for me) the pros outweigh the cons.
      Very hypocritical of Valve to act so holier-than-thou.
    - Anonymous
      
      It’s DRM, there’s no denying that; the difference is that Steam adds value to the game whereas most (e.g. SecuROM) are just a pain in the arse,
      
      The advantages of using Steam (for me) far outweigh the disadvantages. I’ve only bought one game from Steam and had buyers remorse – Duke Nukem Forever. I don’t see not being able to re-sell games on Steam an issue, because you can’t on any download service, and you can’t return games to IRL stores unless the disc is actually defective or still virgin. I wouldn’t buy a used PC game on ebay because of the activation code minefield for newer games.
    - http://pulse.yahoo.com/_PKT22OQHZAZ2HG7IVVT4KNV5CY husher5142
      
      Actually a lot of places will give u trade in credit towards new places with older games, once you’ve played them out. EB Games for one, and some of the buy back options are pretty significant. So as a new user to steam the very first thing I considered was what will happen if this company goes out of business => I cant play my games anymore. That and I’ve always been a fan of a hard copy.
Guest

“One thing that we have learned is that piracy is not a pricing issue. It’s a service issue,” he says.

Well for me, the game prices are still way too high (seems like I’m the only gamer who has this issue? :D). But mehhhh, there are other options too, like Free-2-Play games (or the ones where you can pay to get better weps or membership, etc).
- http://twitter.com/rabbitkillrun Sean Gordon
  
  I don’t buy games that are over 20 quid, unless I really really want them (Portal 2 for instance).
  This does not mean I pirate anything else however – I just wait until they’re a year or so old.
  - http://twitter.com/icanhazsake Ninja
    
    I download and buy after the prices go down. Too bad for you =)
    - http://pulse.yahoo.com/_IZ5BM5GNLA54OADSWGSXAMA7SY Jay
      
      Actually, there’s plenty of places that have lower prices. If you’re wanting just Steam though, I’d say look at Green men gaming, where their games are compatible with Steam.
    - http://pulse.yahoo.com/_IZ5BM5GNLA54OADSWGSXAMA7SY Jay
      
      Actually, there’s plenty of places that have lower prices. If you’re wanting just Steam though, I’d say look at Green men gaming, where their games are compatible with Steam.
    - http://twitter.com/icanhazsake Ninja
      
      Nah, I mean games generally speaking, never used Steam. Believe me, even in cheaper places new releases are stupidly expensive here where I live. $100 is not unusual in new releases but if you wait an year or two you can get for $60, not much better but I’ll pay that for a few titles.
      
      Then I went to the US and bought new games (older releases) for $20. Great.
7th_Guest

Unfortunately, these days Gabe’s (more) sane approach to games’ copy protection and services quality is nothing newsworthy anymore. What would be is more producers (EA, Ubi, Sony and M$) coming ’round to that POV, which we’re a long way away from as things stand ATM. Sad but true.
- http://pulse.yahoo.com/_IZ5BM5GNLA54OADSWGSXAMA7SY Jay
  
  EA? Being sensible?
  
  One word:
  
  Spore.
  
  They still haven’t learned with their Origin problem.
- http://pulse.yahoo.com/_IZ5BM5GNLA54OADSWGSXAMA7SY Jay
  
  EA? Being sensible?
  
  One word:
  
  Spore.
  
  They still haven’t learned with their Origin problem.
Randy

“Steam” may be a great service, between creators and consumers, but is fast becoming too powerful in the area of control. My latest adventure with purchasing a product off a local retail shelf and then wasting over four hours trying to get the “Steam” application to run, so to load the actual game is totally wrong. My option in the end was to load the game through one of my grand kids account, which now means I can only run the game when he is not on. The few attempts to run the program, have met with long and lengthy updates, and numerous other problems arising after installing the “Steam” client on the computer. Now I sit here looking at a packaged software disc program that for the most part is now totally useless, except that it is a physical item which is proof that I actually have something.
“Steam”, for the most part is actually good for both consumer and creator, yet what is to be seen is the danger of absolute control over the creators and the consumers.
- http://pulse.yahoo.com/_IZ5BM5GNLA54OADSWGSXAMA7SY Jay
  
  … What?
  
  I’m having a hard time following what exactly the problem is. The game didn’t load on Steam so it’s getting too big for its britches? It’s like saying Google is too large and yet the market is filled with alternative distributors for games.
  - John
    
    I think what he means is that if he buys a physical copy of the game, but can’t load it only because of Steam, then there’s a problem. Hopefully he’s already tried to figure out if there’s some other error causing it, but if he has it narrowed down to being a problem with Steam, then I have to agree. I understand that Steam is supposed to be some kind of piracy protection, but when it interferes with ANY legitimate users, it is, to use your words, too big for its britches.
    - Anonymous
      
      It seems a bit odd that it works on the account of one of his grandchildren, but not his own account; it doesn’t seem very likely, but that’s what Steam Support are there for.
Blah bla and Blah

I think Gabe Newell was referring to the recent EA decision to leave STEAM and create their own service to distribute and host their new title Battlefield 3. And the potential of other big name publishers with their own big name titles doing the same.

I still think in the future, many gamers will only be renting out games instead of purchasing them with or without DRMs and playing it on a PC or any consoles. Some kinda of a interactive box where you play the game hosted on their server without you having the sole possession of any of the physical core files.
Pun

@Randy

Welcome to the future, all future games have to either be registered via steam/EA or any other up coming providers. Owning a physical copy isn’t what it was like 5/10 years ago. Everyone now is connected to the internet via one form or another.
- Superheltenroy
  
  GoodOldgames.com drops the DRM. I love them just because of that.
- Mwhahaha
  
  “Everyone now is connected to the internet via one form or another.”
  
  - I’m not!
http://twitter.com/ToeyParinya ??????????????

I hate DRM, and valve make it easy for me :)
Anonymous

http://tinyurl.com/4skyaqr
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tiny.cc/qcfnd
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Gregg Barnes

Steam pisses me off. Its DRM. I have to have it running to play a game. I dont generally play online games, so I dont always need to have an always on connection. But, if you dont have Steam running, you cant play the games linked to it. I visit my family, and they live in an area where there is no dsl service (except satellite), Im out of luck if I want to play Rage, or Fallout New Vegas.And if Steam is down, I am doubly screwed. I dont like Origin either. I bought the game, I own it, why the hell do I need to have a third party piece of software to run something I own.
- Anonymous
  
  Conveniently, you don’t need to always have Steam running online, there’s an offline mode too.
Steamer

I don’t get the gate on Steam.

I did not want to install Steam when I bought the physical copy of HL2. I thought it would be too invasive. That having an internet connection for a single player game is awful and cumbersome. But it does provide for many legitimate uses.

A physical copy of a Steam game is no big deal, especially if it is a multi-player game. It’s your matching system, your server browser, your friend browser and auto-updater. I understand that for a single-player (on principle), Steam ‘is not needed’. And that’s well and good. But it does work to your benefit,

1) You buy a physical copy of a Steam game that’s been out. Well you don’t have to install and then patch. You can simply put in your cd-key and download the latest version of your game.
2) You reinstall Windows. You need to reinstall your games. With Steam, you don’t have worry about finding your installation discs. You don’t need to follow some esoteric patch path. It just patches.
3) You can easily join games on your friends even if you don’t have the game booted up or even if the game does not use Steam service as it’s server browser.

I play the Battlefield series from EA, and all three of those points are problems with EA. Gee, I have to re-install 2142, but remember you gotta follow a specific patch order before you play the game.

Never you mind EA forcing me to install Origin to play BF3. Which I suppose is fine, whatever. But their friend and server browser is now web browser-based. So, even if I add all my friends in Origin I still have to add them on the Battlelog plugin for Firefox? And keep Firefox open with all it’s memory issues.

Steam, in the strictest sense maybe DRM, but so far it is the most seamless way to play multi-player games. Nevermind that it IS a marketplace for indie games galore and that they have kick-ass sales ever week.
Taalen

The day Steam changes their service so you only need the client to download the game’s install package, or preferably makes using the client completely optionary, I will become a client. Not a day before.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Taysseer-Kadri/100001312551990 Taysseer Kadri

I love Valve. I love Steam. But I dont get why we can’t re-sell old games, or games we dont want anymore. Why not allow us to resell through Steam, while allowing us Steam to take a cut of the selling price?
Anonymous

http://tinyurl.com/4skyaqr
Sumguy

Yeah nice one Gabe, now , where the Fuck is Half-Life2 Ep3? before we die?
I will buy from Steam, as I do all my games, just produced the fucker will ya before we forget what half-life is!
- Derpface
  
  ep3 is in development. ;)
Anonymous

http://tinyurl.com/4skyaqr
Anonymous

tiny.cc/qcfnd

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