(Note: Originally posted on November 28, 2011 for Press2Reset)
Valve managing director Gabe Newell has said that piracy is a service problem and not a pricing problem, according to an interview in The Cambridge Student.
Newell said that value of the product is what causes people to pirate game, adding, “Most DRM solutions diminish the value of the product by either directly restricting a customer’s use or by creating uncertainty.”
Newell’s viewpoint is a unique one given other developers’ and publishers’ stance on the subject. Publishers such as Ubisoft have adopted stronger measures such as their always-on DRM, which requires a game to have a constant connection to the internet in order to play both the single-player and multiplayer campaigns.
Newell added, “Our goal is to create greater service value than pirates, and this has been successful enough for us that piracy is basically a non-issue for our company.”
As evidence of this view, Newell cited Valve’s push into the Russian market where it is estimated that there is a 93 per cent piracy rate. “For example, prior to entering the Russian market, we were told that Russia was a waste of time because everyone would pirate our products. Russia is now about to become our largest market in Europe.”
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