MCV/DEVELOP News, events, research and jobs from the games industry
Valve boss Gabe Newell has challenged the notion that software pricing is the driving force behind games piracy.
Instead, Newell insists that piracy can be conquered with a sufficiently strong service offering.
"We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy,” he told The Cambridge Student, as spotted by GameSpy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem.
For example, if a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24/7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country three 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 customer’s 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."
