Gabe - Piracy non issues for Steam.

    Slightly on topic/off topic subject...but i'm kind of biased as the interview was done by my brother. Some of you guys might remember my brother, he hung around in the old days of the core with CTSwin and Hinkey.

    The DRM question/answer has been making the rounds on the net today.

    http://%7boption%7d

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    Digital Rights Management (DRM) is a sensitive issue. Many games have been the subject of boycotts due to a draconian use of DRM. The most extreme DRM forces players to be online, and to stay online, if they wish to play the game. What are your views on DRM?In general, we think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem. For example, if a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after the US release, and can only be purchased at a brick and mortar store, then the pirate's service is more valuable. Most DRM solutions diminish the value of the product by either directly restricting a customers use or by creating uncertainty.

    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. 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.

    edit: it's been picked up by a lot of consumer and industry news website. epically proud of my younger bro.

    I kinda remember your bro, did he have a handle as well? I can't remember that far back properly, I'm getting old Nice article btw, Gabe showing everyone that Valve is king once again!

    Serious question, do you guys still download shit? Movies? Series? Music? Games?

    I have NEVER downloaded a game again, since I started working in the industry. Which was my first job ever, so from there on in I could afford for my shit, before I couldn't.

    I still buy retail and steam, although steam not as frequently cos It's almost always more expensive there (funnly enough)

    As for Music, I don't need to since I listen to a lot of podcasts, I do buy a music album every couple months, not as much as I should tho. I never use itunes becase, again, too expensive.

    Series... well, I do download them. You could still watch them for free on TV, so I could argue it's not exactly piracy, plus germans dub everything so I have no way to watch it, not even on TV. Also, I do buy the series I love to rewatch. (I own all the series of House, 24, lost and... I think that's it)

    I still don't understand how come it's cheaper to order a game from Amazon than it is to buy it from steam, shipping included.

    And same for music, an album on itunes is typically more expensive than if you buy it of amazon, and guess what, you get a shinny CD with it.

    I'm sure there's a perfectly reasonable explanation for that, or more than one, but I don't see the logic in it, you should pay less if you're paying for download. Especially since it's so freaking easy to just warez shit.

    Downloading TV Series is just pirating as well. Then again, it's exactly what Gabe is saying: You only get the good series if you're a US citizen. I'd be more than willing to pay the 8 bucks for Hulu or Netflix but I'm not allowed for some stupid licensing deals.

    The reason Steam is more expensive is that the publishers still stick to retail and have binding contracts not to go below certain limits to keep walmart attractive.

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    ":2hx0rgr1]Serious question, do you guys still download shit? Movies? Series? Music? Games?

    Yes. Well not games, I barely play anything anymore and online play is a must if I decide to play. Steam also made it (too) easy instead of bothering with cracks etc.I have no issues with downloading movies, series or music.. I won't pay $17 to watch a movie at the cinema alone, and I won't rent a movie for $10 for 24 hours. If I could buy a cheap online copy, sure I'd do that, and some DVDs and box sets are just worth owning. Series are downloaded because I want to watch them when I want to (no PVR), and not when they air on TV, which is 5 years after they aired in the US. I buy music if I like it, meaning that I downloaded the album first and evaluate it for a while before I decide to buy it or not..

    Stealing is wrong, but unless laws have changed here, it's allowed to download movies, series and music for private use

    It was getting a job and being able to actually pay for stuff that made me mostly drop piracy. As a bum I couldn't buy the games even if I wanted to and so I'd have just ended up not giving any developers/publishers any money and not getting to play any games.

    But since getting an income I see absolutely no reason to short change those who produce the stuff I love, no matter who it goes to — if it keeps it being created, I'll keep paying. And while I know my contribution is negligible, it's lots of people having the same mentality as me that keeps the developers we love in business. Without us those who pirate would have no games, TV shows, movies, etc to watch. I've not pirated a game since my college days, and while I have downloaded the odd TV show (not really, feds) that's only because I missed it when it was on the premium TV service I'm already paying quite a bit of money for every month. And if it's available on disc — which it usually isn't yet at that point — I'll buy it that way.

    As for music, I buy pretty much everything on CD as I dislike the variable quality you get through online services. If what I want isn't available I'll usually obtain uncompressed rips, which hilariously enough you can only often do via illegal means as iTunes, Amazon, Spotify, etc only offer compressed MP3s (which is something they need to sort the fuck out, kind of goes with Gabe's notion of pirates offering a better service than the retailers).

    Related to the topic of piracy:

    http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/10/07/opini ... of-reason/

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    Recently, Ubisoft called its “always-on” DRM a success, claiming “a clear reduction in piracy.”In terms of actual sales, however, the results seem decidedly mixed. Michael Pachter told Eurogamer that Ubisoft’s “PC game sales are down 90% without a corresponding lift in console sales.”

    Pachter framed the problem in terms of piracy, as I’m sure Ubisoft frames the problem, but a 90% decline in PC sales is a catastrophic number. If piracy were the problem, then their “successful” DRM policy should have prevented such a free-fall.

    Instead, PC gamers have stopped buying Ubisoft games. In fact, the decline of sales even calls into question the decline in piracy rates. All we know for sure is that Ubisoft have stopped people from playing their games. Full stop.

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    ":1taakv5x]Serious question, do you guys still download shit? Movies? Series? Music? Games?

    Music from time to time, but even that is a rarity nowadays. Movies and TV are pretty much covered by Netflix, and free Hulu.

    Steam is in fact a better service to me than game pirating, Gabe is right. I can buy the game and it's authed to all my computers, cloud saving, centralized community, etc.

    Also, stuff on Steam is cheap as hell, which is what confused me about your post HP, is pricing inconsistent across regions? I do mostly stick to buying when something is on sale, but even when its at full price it's normally cheaper than a retail copy from Amazon.

    I do buy used games still, which apparently is just as bad as pirating them.

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    ":2l5wgc49]I still don't understand how come it's cheaper to order a game from Amazon than it is to buy it from steam, shipping included.

    Speculating on it, I'd say that having a 24/7 reliable digital distribution server capable of peak download speeds along with a plethora of other services does not come in cheaply! Since Amazon sells a whole lot of other services and products, their costs are further diluted along that, as well as the actual CD production/distribution costs that are diluted in other, more established businesses (bulk product distribution chains, CDs are printed for all kinds of media).

    As much as we like to think that anything on the internet should cost less/close to nothing, there are costs associated to delivering digital content, hosting it and keeping it reliable. You mus also account for the fact that it's a relatively new venture and there are always new systems to be implemented, usually with very high costs due to their exclusive nature.

    But all that is speculation non my part trying to make sense of that fact =P

    As for the interview, was a nice read, and as much as Gabe must be tired of hearing this, your brother deserves points for bringing HL3 up =P

    Buying games on steam is very expensive for Europeans. I can usually save a few euros by buying from amazon or the like. (Its the whole 10$ = 10€ thing that goes wrong, because it essentially costs 25% more in Europe because of this).

    But if I can buy a game, then just insert the cd-key in steam I'm fairly happy.

    Back to the question, I do download games. I pirates BF3 because it came out earlier on torrent and was actually easier to install than the real thing (didn't need origin and download was very quick). But I had already purchased the full game so EA can only blame themselves for using an inferior distribution model than hackers and crackers can provide. I also downloaded MW3 and tried that, because I was so in doubt about if I should buy it or not and I'm glad I didn't. I got to the hamburg part and stopped playing because it was just so boring, and I have no idea how they can defend the 60$ price tag for that.

    Warby has also been telling me how great zelda wind waker is, so I downloaded the dolphin emulator to try and give that a go, but it proved to be too much of a hassle so I haven't really gotten to play it. I think I'll just skip it altogether and play the zeldas on the wii if I can borrow it from a friend sometime.

    Last couple of games I bought was RAGE (havent completed it, because everyone told me the ending was shit), Total War Shogun 2 (back when it was first released, I've played it for 101 minutes. So not worth the money), Amnesia Dark Decent (played it for maybe 10 minutes and grew bored when I was just running back and forth and had no idea what to do. Ambience was great, level design not so much).

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    ":1lc5hx12]I still don't understand how come it's cheaper to order a game from Amazon than it is to buy it from steam, shipping included..

    That has been explained before, but the publishers are the ones that set the prices on steam, so it's not entirely valves fault, except for that policy they have (had?) that dollars=euros, so a 50$ game costs 50€ when it should cost around 35€.

    As to why the publishers charge as much (or more) for a digital copy as for a retail copy, I believe it's made so that the perceived value of the product doesn't change (which is also one of the reasons I think the latest COD games are doing so well). Basically, if you give a uninformed consumer two similar products the one with the highest price will always be perceived as being better, so if your digital copy costs less than the retail copy the consumer might think that he is buying an inferior version of the product. It's also the reason why a indie game costs much less than a AAA game. If you put the indie label on the game it's perceived value drops, so most buyers expect it to have a much lower price even if the actual quality of the game is on par with many pricier AAA games.

    You can see how the perceived quality of a product changes it's price by looking at the humble indie bundle. The average price of the bundle is around $3, but there are people willing to pay more than $100 for the same product.

    About piracy I still download must of my music, but that's because there are no real good music stores around here, and most online stores suck. I used to buy from a Portuguese online store, but after receiving a few albums with broken cases i started doing it less.

    On the other hand my ISP provides a music streaming service for 8€ a month that I love and use. Basically you have thousands of songs that are provided via streaming. You can add them to playlists that you can then listen to on your TV, computer/laptop and smartphone. You can also download 10 musics for free each month, but if you want more you have to pay for each song. I never felt the need to dowload any songs tough because their steaming quality is great.

    Where broadband goes and language barriers come down, online gaming and digital game distribution follow. Sure, piracy follows, but also does legit digital game sales. I've seen the underlying data for years in countries that develop the infrastructure where content creators localize for language. China/Korea = poster child for this but so are emerging gaming markets like Brazil.

    Anyway, more on topic it is all about access. Here in Los Angeles we have a Redbox everywhere and I can rent a movie for 24 hours for $1. I rent way more movies now and I don't mind if what I choose ends up sucking. I have zero incentive to pirate a movie because the service for new movies has improved greatly when I combine redbox with iTunes/Hulu or whatever other digital service there is.

    So yeah, I basically agree with Gabe. Great interview.

    Gabe and Valve continue to do the right things and think in the right way. Love em

    I may or may not pirate TV-shows because of the current distribution BS (wait 1-2 years for Swedish release... MAYBE), but everything else I do pay for. I haven't pirated a game since I was perhaps 16-17, and then it was mostly for LAN's. I go to the cinema for movies and I pay for spotify for most of my music needs (the rest I buy digitally usually).

    The reason I avoid piracy is not only "ethical", so to say. I actually like that a game purchase is a decision that needs to be thought about and that not ALL content is so easily available for free at all times; it dilutes things imho. And there's always a risk that the pirated version may disrupt or interfere with the intended experience/functionality of a game which I dislike a lot. And online play is usually good to have too.

    When it comes to steam, I only buy games when there's a sale. I have Webhallen nearby, which sells games, and it's usually a lot cheaper.

    Quote from CrazyMac

    Slightly on topic/off topic subject...but i'm kind of biased as the interview was done by my brother. Some of you guys might remember my brother, he hung around in the old days of the core with CTSwin and Hinkey.

    Ax0r black / Mayco / George?! !!

    I download Doctor Who because I don't know of any station I get with my RCN package that airs the current episodes, especially not on time. I've actually downloaded some of the older stuff, like the 2006/7 seasons, even though I have legit access to them through Netflix streaming, so I can put them offline on my ipod

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