Gameguru Mania

[ggrobot]

Valve CEO Gabe Newell explains why piracy is a result of bad service rather than high price, and how Valve expanded Steam into Russia without rampant piracy resulting and grew it into their biggest region in Europe:

\uot;We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy,\uot; Newell said. \uot;Piracy

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Source: GGMania headlines
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[Koogle]

Steam diminishes a product, its why I no longer buy games from it..

and the games I do have on it, sit there for months because I can't be bothered to sign in to use DRM spyware shit.

Games were good when just a server cdkey was required to play online, tying a whole bunch of games to an account is dangerously stupid, especially in todays degeneration of legal shit heads, you've got to be a dumb fuck drone to ignore it and think its good for you, its only good for the corporate scum who are screwing you out of you rights a little inch at a time.

It's also creating a monopoly which forces actual game developers/publishers into having to use it aswel. So yeh nice PR speech Gabe, means fuck all to me because your 'service' is no service I want being the middle man with my games at all!!!

[Kompressor]

Valve apparently doesn't have any customer service you can call. If you have a problem, you need to email them.

[Baconnaise]

I agree that it's a little nuts to buy games and have them eternally associated with an account. Service could all of sudden disappear and then you're screwed. It hasn't happened yet though and Steam is fairly reliable in that it won't go away tomorrow.

The bad news for you guys is Steam is more of what PC and gaming are on the PC and even console. Middleware clients are how things are being done and will be done for the near future. I don't see things changing much if at all besides PC games being almost always a direct download or through these clients from now on anyways. Internet connection required is it for now so get used to it.

[baal]

I love steam

[gx-x]

piracy comes from various reasons, not just this one or that one. You can't pinpoint it.
Gabe seems to miss the concept of it entirely when it comes to "price". Price of a pirated copy (for normal, smart and able "pirates") is just the price of internet connection that they pay for each month. I would never buy a bootleg copy of a game from some shady guy or whomever because it is against every principle of a modern "pirate".

what always amazes me is how the companies managed to go from Box + printed manual + physical media with it's covers + shipment to stores then sell the game for 59.99 to digital distribution, straight of a server for the same price?! I mean, box, cover, manual, shipping costs are deducted and they are not small expenses to a company. So they just got greedy and instead of saying "hey look! we can all avoid this stuff if you don't want it, here is the game, download it for ~12$, that's what we were making on it in the first place when we deduct the price of physical distribution and printing"

And people still choose to pay that price because they can't be bothered to wait for a few days or to get up and go to store and buy a physical copy of the game.

Remember, companies can only do to you what you allow them to do / get away with.

[Tom]

Piracy imo occurs for the following reason:

- people don't like the demo or there is no demo
- reviews appear to be biased based on a persons beliefs of a game and people don't want to take the risk and pay for a shit game
- price, people like me believe games should be priced based on their content, time to play. A RPG for example that only has 10 hours of play and is prices 59.99 or 69.99 is not worth it
- the game is small and an easy download
- protection used. Starforce games were especially pirated and pirates were challenged to crack them which also increased interest

Steam is great in my opinion as a delivery mechanism. I don't mind downloading them but I hate the fact that if I am done with a game I can't trade it or give it to someone else. It sucks that I have a lot of games I finished and I doubt I will ever play again when I know my Dad or brother would like the game. I should be able to backup the game and give it and then relinquish my ownership to the game, signing it over to someone else.

Gabe is doing nothing more than just trying to push his Steam service.

[tride]

Well, he is right there from his company point of view.
Piracy has some other reasons to be present in different regions on the globe. We all have our reasons to pirate products, some dont like the way companies enforce them products on us, other dont like how they sell shit to us AND there is aways people that just will make any reasont not to give money - just because they can afford to get what they want for free!
Its complicated but i believe that all the companies in the game industry or movies get their fare share and even more!

I personally dont mind having games on steam, even the fact that i cant sell them after i finish them... This is because i only buy something worth the money!

[-=WolverinE=-]

[Tom]

[Csimbi]

Steam is an ok distribution platform, no doubt.
But, it should stop there.
Requiring a client to be running in order to run a game is the worst kind of DRM; same as StarForce was (that installed a ring0 driver):
- you cannot play/update offline (say, on a plane; which I happen to do very often: load all files to a stick and do the installation/patching on the go)
- you simply have no idea what's going on in the background (security and privacy concerns),
- you cannot hand over the S/N on a gift card to a friend (as a gift)
StarForce is very bad, but at least I can play/patch offline and I can give it to a friend in need once I am done playing - and in that sense, it is way better than Steam ever was.
Hence, I have never bought any products on Steam, and never will until they solve those issues above.
The rich guy next door buys nearly all games on Steam that I am interested in as well, so I go over and play the games there.
So, what did Steam achieve here, really? I do not buy a copy (for myself, or, for a friend). That's about it. Good job, Steam!
So, no, it's not about the price. Not entirely, at least. I am happy to pay 10-25$ for every title (depending on value). Anything more is a robbery, and you, Steam, know that very well.

[Baconnaise]

[gx-x]

i am glad but companies still don't care. They are charging for ones and zeroes these days as much as they were charging for full boxed games and content inside. They are actually in haven as far as profits go, they just bitch about it because they can and they know they will get media attention .
It seems to me that they are using piracy for some sort of media war. Lke, if you like ubisofts statement better you will buy their game and not Epic's and so on.
Are we seeing an era of DRM competition?

[Ozieo]

piracy these days is all about system stability and keeping unnecessary crap from your system, nothing more.

[Csimbi]