Valve understands software pirates

By David Hollingworth
11:17 Jan 19, 2009 | 15 Comments
Tags: Valve | understands | pirates

Essential linkage: "Pirates Are Just Underserved Customers" - game developer Valve's Jason Holtman.

While speaking at the Game Business Law summit in Texas a few days ago, Valve's Jason Holtman had some interesting things to say about the state of the PC gaming market, and his own company's views on piracy and how to combat it.

"The reason people pirate things in Russia," said the director of business development and legal affairs, "is because Russians are reading magazines and watching television - they say 'Man, I want to play that game so bad,' but the publishers respond 'you can play that game in six months...maybe.'"

And since Valve started making sure its games were available in Eastern Europe at the same time as the United States, piracy has dropped off significantly.

For the full story, check out Games Daily.

http://www.gamedaily.com/articles/news/valve-pirates-are-just-underserved-customers/?biz=1&page=1

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15 Comments

Genisis X Jan 19, 2009 11:36 AM	Dear god. A publisher with common sense? What is the world coming to... -X
Lord-Ezekiel Jan 19, 2009 12:06 PM	shocked Haven't us gamers been saying this for bloody years now? How bout some more developers/publishers clean out the old ear wax & listen to the people with the moolah...US!
sm1ddy Jan 19, 2009 12:31 PM	Well they might understand that but their security in combating piracy is poor. Steam is a very exploitable system, well it was at least a while back. I've seen people show me how you used to be able to circumvent security by getting a mac address from a net cafe, installing the steam cafe software and playing all games online free of charge. The other things I've seen were cracked/hacked steam clients that also allowed similar online playability and downloads. I've always been interested as well to hear of valve beta software leaked long before release including half life 2, red orchestra etc... very odd. I think they've come along way with their security though but I still hear of people out there downloading all games free and playing them on legit servers. No idea how it's actually done, quite interesting though.
sirsquidness Jan 19, 2009 1:23 PM	Now, I don't have any figures or evidence to prove anything I'm about to say.. buut... I reckon half the reason Valve games do so well is because they're easy to pirate and valve understand this. So as they've shown a few times, they give everyone a reason to buy it. eg, get the demo early for purchasers of L4D, public betas, releasing everywhere in the world within a day of each other, etc. The DRM on the games doesn't get in the way of playing (except when offline mode doesn't work as it should), but it prevents you from just copying the games over to another PC. you have to know what you're doing or at least where to look to crack the games, and even then it can be hit and miss as to whether it works. (the other half of why valve games do so well being that they are just plain awesome). As Sm1ddy said, it is [i]really easy[/i] to pirate Steam games. I do it at LANs quite often, as Steam in offline mode often causes me significant problems (often caused by me forgetting to go offline while I'm still online...)
smadge1 Jan 19, 2009 4:31 PM	Meh, now I have a job, legitimately buying games is now easier. I'll support Valve as long as they support me.
heydude Jan 19, 2009 5:39 PM	I have mates who even though having jobs still pirate games! There reasoning is why buy it when my mate can buy it and burn me a iso copy, even using there serial numbers. An exception was crysis warhead, it was cheap, hence people didn't mind spending a small amount to get the game. And there in lies the dilema, making games $100 and selling 1 copy to a gamer, who then burns 3 copies for friends, company loses money. If the company made the game half that price then more then likely those people would have just bought the game legitimately, equals $200 instead of $100. When you put that into a really large scale of millions of sales the numbers add up really damn fast.
orcone Jan 19, 2009 7:07 PM	I won't buy a game for over $10. No really. Especially anything digitally distributed.
MedicineBaby Jan 19, 2009 8:49 PM	Valve has done a very good job and has spent time and money (both ways) into researching ways to curb piracy and turn the pirates legitimately. Even though, I have not used digital distribution as of yet, as I am personally one for having a hard copy of the game in question in my sweaty palms.
MagnumXY Jan 19, 2009 9:00 PM	i bought crysis warhead THE FUCKING DRM! what the HELL are these publishers thinking i can imagine in the EA boardroom "hey i have a good idea for CR protection lets make it so no one can play this game that should stop piracy for ever" I dont mind paying $80 for a new game but DRM is just ridiculous. Its time they started treating gamers like responsible adults/teenagers.
fredzfrog Jan 19, 2009 11:08 PM	I like my games. Love em! Sometimes tho, i dont have the $$ for a new one, and im bored. But if i like it, i'll buy it. quite a few of my hard earned have gone to valve, but also for standouts like ut and c&c (i think i hve 3 legit keys for ra2 now, lol!) if the game doesnt grab me tho, it gets deleated quickly. its like a extended demo.. :P DRM tho, shts me, my battle with installing c&c is documented somewhere in pc games. :P +1 to the halfing price of games... i'd buy more if i had cheeper games to buy...
Girvo Jan 19, 2009 11:18 PM	I haven't pirated a game in a long time. If I don't have the money... I don't play it. I buy second-hand 360 games to keep costs down.
drago13666 Jan 20, 2009 1:45 AM	Girvo and thats the irony, consol sales do alot better, and i certainly have bought more games in the past 6 months for my xbox than in the past 5 years for my pc but it comes down to cost, second hand the publishers don't see any of the money either but eb and jb can tell them the statistics of how well a game sells. i don't think cosol gaming is necissarily becoming more popular than pc gaming, its just that you can't buy second hand pc games as easily, you don't get bundles of pc games and consol games are more likly to go on sale.
elvenwhore Jan 20, 2009 10:44 AM	There are a few devs/publishers out there who are doing good things, who do get it and who are trying to work with their fanbases, rather than against them. As a gamer who is utterly sick and tired of being treated like I'm a criminal, like I'm gullible or like I will take any old piece of garbage and be happy with it because I'm told to, I really do appreciate those who get it right. We had Eidos and their TR review shenanigans recently - we need to hear more about those devs/publishers who are getting it right :-)
gotek Jan 21, 2009 8:58 AM	They should sell the game cheap. I know that in thailand you can get game for cheap like $25-30 aus, why cant we pay for the same price? I know Vale have Ban CDKeys that came from thailand if your country is not of thailand.
orcone Jan 21, 2009 11:51 AM	I thought they backflipped on that? In fact I'm sure they did. People went nuts about that.

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