Gabe Newell isn't worried about piracy, and responds to Ubisoft's "95%" quote

[Skizzy]

Clicky

As always, kudos to Gabe Newell and Valve.

<insert obligatory ep3 comment>

 

[Sycraft]

Not at all a surprise. While some people pirate games because they flat out can't afford them, and others because they are cheapskates, still others do it because it is easy. Well, make being legit even easier and better and they'll spend the money.

 

[Sickb0y]

great article this is why I love Steam & Gabo
thanks for link op

 

[nobody_here]

i don't buy his argument

the person who would pirate a game would not give a damn about ease of access, price, availability, or anything else.....they will pirate it regardless

they have one goal, play the game without paying, end of story, Gabe is delusional

 

[Thuleman]

they have one goal, play the game without paying, end of story, Gabe is delusional

Reality disagrees with you.

 

[That's_Corporate]

he fat

 

[limitedaccess]

Well the funny thing about this is Valve's focus will be more and more on online connectivity, based on statements from company officials and the direction they are taking, which is currently the best deterrent to piracy than DRM solutions.

 

[NKDietrich]

Of course Gabe isn't worried about piracy. Multiplayer-centric games that require Steam login authentication aren't exactly high risk.

 

[nerdydesi]

You rock Gabe and Valve.

Yet if guys like CliffyB of Epic, Cevat Yerli of Crytek and John Carmack of ID piss all over the PC, the platform which made them what they are today and abandon it for consoles, I fear its only a matter of time before Valve and company follow suit. I feel like its only a matter of time.

 

[Frito]

Well the funny thing about this is Valve's focus will be more and more on online connectivity, based on statements from company officials and the direction they are taking, which is currently the best deterrent to piracy than DRM solutions.

i agree, the best way to combat piracy be it PC or console is to make games online pretty much exclusively or at least make it so the main reason you want the game is to play online (BF3 anyone?) sure smart pirates might get around checks and end up playing pirated software online but eventually they will get caught and banned and if you make the consequence big enough (loose all your unlocks and stats on a char or in the case of xbox get the console itself banned) then all but the most brave and the stupid won't even try it.

also i love how developers/publishers try to use piracy as an excuse to not cater to the PC market and act like every console out there isn't hacked because they are and pirating games for them once you've hacked the console is no harder than it is pirating a PC game.

 

[Entertainer]

Gabe already has the money, no reason to become a turncoat.

 

[Shockey]

Well the funny thing about this is Valve's focus will be more and more on online connectivity, based on statements from company officials and the direction they are taking, which is currently the best deterrent to piracy than DRM solutions.

a lot of my recent purchases have been through steam. Weather it be a 50% off sale (Arma 2) or full blown left for dead price at launch. I purchased it through steam due to convince. No running to store. No disc to worry about or CD key. Whenever i format or upgrade to a new gaming pc i just start steam and let my download go overnight and while at work. Wonderfully convenient for me.

Router does QOS to control the downloads when i want to use hte internet too

 

[nobody_here]

Reality disagrees with you.

really? have you asked your neighborhood pirate lately? last time I checked the vast majority of people who pirate games don't do it because they can't afford to buy the games. They do it because it's the "free option". Why pay for it if you don't have to. They give a damn how the content is delivered. It's delivered by torrent. LOL

 

[jiminator]

gabe is laughing at the idiots all the way to the bank while they are scratching their heads and wondering wtf they are doing wrong

 

[defiant007]

i don't buy his argument

the person who would pirate a game would not give a damn about ease of access, price, availability, or anything else.....they will pirate it regardless

they have one goal, play the game without paying, end of story, Gabe is delusional

So how is life in black and white land?

 

[Plague_Injected]

i don't buy his argument

the person who would pirate a game would not give a damn about ease of access, price, availability, or anything else.....they will pirate it regardless

they have one goal, play the game without paying, end of story, Gabe is delusional

Your sweeping statement is just as inaccurate and shallow as those made by anti-PC developers such as Ubisoft and Epic.

The type of pirate you outlined exists but it's only one section of the actual population that pirate games. Some do it to check the game out in lieu of any demo or legal rental service, some do it to circumvent anti-consumer DRM, some do it to send a "fuck you" to the publisher over certain aspects of the game (consolisation) or its sales model (on-disc day-one DLC, regional price-fixing, etc), some do it because it takes anywhere between 6-18 months for a game to be released and localised in certain countries (Newell has cited this reason several times) and there are those who pirate because it is illegal to sell, purchase, import and/or distribute the game in their country due to excessive violence or sexual content.

Morally these reasonings are all debatable, but to say that pirates just do it to get the game for free is dismissive of the entire issue.

 

[piscian18]

Ubisofts argument doesn't jibe with the rest of the community because their broken draconian DRM pushed people to pirate their games. They've put the cart before the horse in terms of fighting piracy. I've bought games from them and then had to crack them to play because the DRM servers were down. I wish another company would buy the Settler's IP from them because they are done.

I can tell you another thing, most other publishers are catching on to the idea of releasing fucked up copies into the wild. You'll have to do the underworld research yourself but I can tell you for a fact this is having a huge impact on piracy. Downloading a 25GB game just to play 5 minutes in and have the whole thing fall apart really drives pirates to give in and just go to the store and get it.

It's interesting to hear a company simply write off a platform due to piracy. What that says to me is that making games isn't their primary goal. It's making money.

 

[Thuleman]

really? have you asked your neighborhood pirate lately? last time I checked the vast majority of people who pirate games don't do it because they can't afford to buy the games. They do it because it's the "free option". Why pay for it if you don't have to. They give a damn how the content is delivered. It's delivered by torrent. LOL

I am going to go ahead and guess that you are still in school and don't have any income of your own.

As an adult with plenty of disposable income there simply is no need to pirate when decent titles eventually hit $5-$10 on Steam. Why would I risk my ISP dropping me from their service, C&D letters, etc. etc. when I can easily afford games at a price lower than what I pay for lunch? Makes no sense at all.

 

[piscian18]

Gabe already has the money, no reason to become a turncoat.

I watched an interview with Gabe awhile back where he said even when he started Valve he had just quit at Microsoft because he felt like it was boring and he just wanted to make games. He was pretty well off already. Now he's come out and said that steam basically generates enough income that they do whatever they want so they're very picky now just making games they want to play. I got the feeling from his last interview that either DOTA 2 or the next game they're working on will be free. The only reason HL3 is off the table is because they've written themselves into a storyline that is going to be incredibly difficult to finish.

 

[MavericK]

really? have you asked your neighborhood pirate lately? last time I checked the vast majority of people who pirate games don't do it because they can't afford to buy the games. They do it because it's the "free option". Why pay for it if you don't have to. They give a damn how the content is delivered. It's delivered by torrent. LOL

Pretty much everyone I ever knew that has pirated did so because they could not afford the games. That's why Steam sales are so popular; $15 or less is an extremely attractive price point versus $60 which, for many titles, is like a slap in the face. Plus, Steam is a great delivery system. Having to manually keep up with patches, cracks, etc. would be a pain in the ass.

I would say another thing that drives many to piracy is that many have been burned in the past by buying $60 games on release that ended up being piles of shit. Piracy offers them a "try before you buy" kind of option that nothing else does.

 

[Spare-Flair]

i don't buy his argument

the person who would pirate a game would not give a damn about ease of access, price, availability, or anything else.....they will pirate it regardless

they have one goal, play the game without paying, end of story, Gabe is delusional

I disagree with you completey and so do reality and real world results.

What Valve has realized is the same thing Apple realized. You need to create an ecosystem and provide a service and people will pay.

A song is the perfect thing for proving your theory false. All people want to do is to listen to it..They don't even need to bother with things like installing a song or cracking a song or a song not having multiplayer, yet somehow itunes makes a fortune for Apple.

It's about building an ecosystem and a service where the money you pay also goes into paying for the ecosystem and service and convenience of service (find what you want right away, download any time, click and have it delivered right away, always have it available in the cloud, etc.) and that has to be balanced with the right price point. Consumers were sick of expensive albums and paying a buck or two for a song was the right price point. Steam has also found the right price point and the right point in time in which the price should drop dramatically for PC games. The only issue here is that console players are inflating the industry by making them think they should be able to charge $60 a game for years and years, even to the point of them taking up practices to stop the used game industry.

 

[Zero82z]

i don't buy his argument

the person who would pirate a game would not give a damn about ease of access, price, availability, or anything else.....they will pirate it regardless

they have one goal, play the game without paying, end of story, Gabe is delusional

So you think the person in charge of the most profitable PC game distribution network in the world is delusional when it comes to getting people to buy games? I think you're the delusional one.

 

[TheOneKnownAsMe]

Gabe Newell: "Hey Ubisoft, this is how we got our license to print money."

And yet Ubisoft continues to ignore him, much to their detriment.

 

[teletran8]

Your sweeping statement is just as inaccurate and shallow as those made by anti-PC developers such as Ubisoft and Epic.

The type of pirate you outlined exists but it's only one section of the actual population that pirate games. Some do it to check the game out in lieu of any demo or legal rental service, some do it to circumvent anti-consumer DRM, some do it to send a "fuck you" to the publisher over certain aspects of the game (consolisation) or its sales model (on-disc day-one DLC, regional price-fixing, etc), some do it because it takes anywhere between 6-18 months for a game to be released and localised in certain countries (Newell has cited this reason several times) and there are those who pirate because it is illegal to sell, purchase, import and/or distribute the game in their country due to excessive violence or sexual content.

Morally these reasonings are all debatable, but to say that pirates just do it to get the game for free is dismissive of the entire issue.

This Plus I think people pirate when they don't have a job. Far Cry 2 was a let down, Ubisoft f'd themselves and are acting like a dumb kid.

LOL @ the people trying to make fun of Gabe, he is actually a God and I am very happy he is in the PC industry prob my fav guy to hear from. Love Steam. I just wish they get to putting out a new HL3/Source game engine. (DX11) It's also to bad it looks like Gabe don't care for his health though, then again he's a busy guy. Ease of use is why there are so many console fanboys, and not enough PC Gamer fanboys IMHO. Steam is the most user friendly game service I have ever seen.

 

[MavericK]

It's also to bad it looks like Gabe don't care for his health though, then again he's a busy guy.

I agree with the rest of your post but it is ignorant to assume that being overweight means unhealthy or lazy. Off-topic though, sorry.

 

[MavericK]

Ultimately I think the threat of piracy is rather overblown. I think most pirates are like me, only pirating games that they were unlikely to buy in the first place because of the flood of games on the market has already drained them of their discretionary income. I pirated Skyrim, why? Because while it's an awesome game, Serious Sam 3 and Saints Row 3 had co-op multiplayer which is a big selling point for me, and they got my money instead. I didn't think about price, or convenience, or any of the Gabe Newell "Pimp Steam" talking points. I thought about what games would be more fun for me.

I agree that the perception of piracy is overblown, but I'm a little confused about your justification of piracy. You claim that it's not about price but instead what is most fun, and you say Skyrim is an awesome game, but those other games got your money instead. So either it really is about money (i.e. could only afford two games and chose the MP ones) or you're implying that Skyrim isn't worth the money despite saying it was awesome, and since fun = game purchase according to you...

I honestly don't care if you or anyone else pirates or not, I just thought that statement was odd.

 

[PrincessFrosty]

Well...

I've been gaming for over 15 years on the PC
I've got over 200 games on steam, including most of valves titles
I deliberately don't buy Ubisoft titles because of DRM

Do the god damn maths Ubi.

 

[TheOneKnownAsMe]

Yeah, I wasn't entirely on-board with that whole Ubisoft boycott thing, but with this + the whole "95% of PC Gamers are pirates" thing has really ticked me off.

 

[socK]

Gabe Newell: "Hey Ubisoft, this is how we got our license to print money."

And yet Ubisoft continues to ignore him, much to their detriment.

forreal

gabe is literally a billionaire who has proven time and time again he knows how to handle shit, so why do people not take notes? he / valve is clearly doing something right so i don't know why others feel inclined to sit at the polar opposite of the spectrum and complain about shit results.

 

[jonneymendoza]

i don't buy his argument

the person who would pirate a game would not give a damn about ease of access, price, availability, or anything else.....they will pirate it regardless

they have one goal, play the game without paying, end of story, Gabe is delusional

that same person pirates console games too with ease and doesnt give a fuck about xbox live/psn

 

[sirmonkey1985]

i don't buy his argument

the person who would pirate a game would not give a damn about ease of access, price, availability, or anything else.....they will pirate it regardless

they have one goal, play the game without paying, end of story, Gabe is delusional

or you are the typical delusional person.. sorry to burst the bubble but people don't pirate regardless of all those reason. the key reasons people pirate stuff, 1. no fucking demo, 2. they can't afford the game so they download it and play the single player until they can afford it and buy it to play online, 3. because the multiplier is completely worthless in the game due to dumb ass developers and production companies that try to fast track games, 4. and of course because people don't like dealing with DRM.

stop acting like all pirates are the evil monsters of the internet.

forreal

gabe is literally a billionaire who has proven time and time again he knows how to handle shit, so why do people not take notes? he / valve is clearly doing something right so i don't know why others feel inclined to sit at the polar opposite of the spectrum and complain about shit results.

for all the reasons you just said.. people don't like being proven wrong, especially by some one that is far more successful then they are.

 

[jonneymendoza]

Yeah, things like Steam and iTunes are great when you're talking about $5 games or $0.75 songs. $5 is an easy-to-justify impulse buy. But when it comes to the big full price first run sales that make publishers and developers all their money, Steam is no solution to piracy. You can't sell all your games for $5-15, you'd make no money.

I pirate games on occasion. I also pay full price for some games, and I also buy games on sale on Steam. What makes me decide to buy one game and not another is simply how much I want to play it. I'm not going to buy ten $5 games on Steam instead of one $50 game that I'm really excited to play.

Ultimately I think the threat of piracy is rather overblown. I think most pirates are like me, only pirating games that they were unlikely to buy in the first place because of the flood of games on the market has already drained them of their discretionary income. I pirated Skyrim, why? Because while it's an awesome game, Serious Sam 3 and Saints Row 3 had co-op multiplayer which is a big selling point for me, and they got my money instead. I didn't think about price, or convenience, or any of the Gabe Newell "Pimp Steam" talking points. I thought about what games would be more fun for me.

If developers want to increase their sales, it's not about price, or Steam sales, or whatever other marketing scheme. It's about making your game better than the other games on the market.

^this guy should be banned. cant believe its fine to admit and boats about pirating games

 

[sirmonkey1985]

^this guy should be banned. cant believe its fine to admit and boats about pirating games

he will be when some ones finally decides to report the post, but it sure as heck ain't going to be me.

 

[Spare-Flair]

Yeah, things like Steam and iTunes are great when you're talking about $5 games or $0.75 songs. $5 is an easy-to-justify impulse buy. But when it comes to the big full price first run sales that make publishers and developers all their money, Steam is no solution to piracy. You can't sell all your games for $5-15, you'd make no money.

You are missing the point completely.

You can sell 100,000 copies for $50 or 500,000 copies for $10. It's the same. Digital distribution means there are no production, shipping, warehouse, etc. costs. More and more developers are finding that they sell many more copies for $5-$10 than they ever would at a larger price point. How much more are people willing to put $10 down on a game? Look at steam sales and how much people blow on them every time they come around just because they want to try something out and $5-10 is the threshold of where the game costs as much as a fast food meal so it's an easy choice.

Furthermore, Steam means that games are in the retail channel for years and years and it is always viable long-term where the traditional model says you need to sell your game in the first few months and then it's out of stock and out of sight with shelf space given to new games and not accessible even if people want to buy it.

 

[Jay_2]

I see Valve's Steam as DRM and at times one of the worst!

 

[sirmonkey1985]

I see Valve's Steam as DRM and at times one of the worst!

i can't stand steam because its turned into bloatware, but i also wouldn't remotely put it in "one of the worst" categories. ubisoft and impulse are by far the worst DRM you could possibly find.

 

[Plague_Injected]

This Plus I think people pirate when they don't have a job. Far Cry 2 was a let down, Ubisoft f'd themselves and are acting like a dumb kid.

LOL @ the people trying to make fun of Gabe, he is actually a God and I am very happy he is in the PC industry prob my fav guy to hear from. Love Steam. I just wish they get to putting out a new HL3/Source game engine. (DX11) It's also to bad it looks like Gabe don't care for his health though, then again he's a busy guy. Ease of use is why there are so many console fanboys, and not enough PC Gamer fanboys IMHO. Steam is the most user friendly game service I have ever seen.

I should point out that I did not want to defend torrent users or justify "piracy", but rather arguing that the price-point of $0.00 isn't the singular driving factor.

 

[Hornet]

Valve owns one of the biggest PC gaming distribution online. I'd tend to believe Gabe Newell more when it comes to the buying habits of the PC gaming community rather than Ubisoft.

 

[jonneymendoza]

I think one of the main reasons people pirate games is because most games released in the past couple of years have, put lightly, suck a bag of dicks.

Do you people know how much money I have saved by downloading a game first before buying it? Why? Well for one many reviewers are paid off or there simply isn't a demo out...LMAO! DEMO? WHAT'S THAT?!

So yeah, I've downloaded games before, and its not just because I'm broke its because I actually want to PLAY the game before I buy it...simple as that.

Ask yourself...would you just blindly buy a car without driving it? Buy a pair of pants without trying them on? No? Then why should us PC gamers have to buy a game before deciding if we like it or not? To find out its a buggy piece of crap not worth its weight in old elderly women tits?

Yeah yeah yeah I know all about reviews from gamers...the "true" review...not corrupted due to bribes or ad space. But hey, just because a game is getting a 9/10 or 10/10 by majority of gamers doesn't mean you or I will like it. This is why I NEVER base my game buying on reviews...any reviews...I buy a game because I played it and I liked it.

Take Halo Reach for example (console I know). This game received AMAZING reviews from everyone and their dead dogs...me? Even being a Halo fan I stopped playing about 2 hours in...was boring and repetitive (random member response: aren't they all?! Harharhar...)...point is that if publishers aren't going to release demos or they release buggy "you'll be our testers!" games then I'll continue to download games to try before I buy.

And yes I do buy games...games I feel are worth my money, I've got about 50 now and WOULD have more had my house not been robbed a few years back (thanks best friend!)

Either case...I download games...and my download is one that publishers like UbiSucks want to convince you is a "lost sale"...NO...it is not a lost sale, it is a sale you never would have had in the first place because your game is crap. Period.

Last example is a game like Fable 3...downloaded and was LOVING it! Was definitely going to purchase it to add it to my collection of keepers/want on hand at all times...that is until I got to the end of the game which, in my opinion completely blew ass and made the entire game a total waste of time. Like, I was seriously angry. All that hard work and time dedicated to this game and I get this?!...needless to say, yes I did play the game and yes I did beat it...but due to their inability to make a ending that made sense or at least was anywhere near half-decent created a lost sale...thank goodness I played it all instead of deciding to go purchase half-way through playing it or WHOOPS I just dropped my money in the toilet and accidentally flushed it! Oh no's!!!

Hmmm...is pirating right when you download a game just to get it for free? No, of course not! Is downloading a game to see if you'll like it in order so you can purchase with confidence OK? In my book...yes...most definitely yes!

lots of games come with a demo/beta. BF3 , nba 2k12, fifa 12, PES 12 to name a few. So by your logic, when u go to the cinema and watch a movie, we should only pay for it if we enjoyed the whole movie. if it sucks then we dont pay? haha lol wtf

 

[CryingGod]

Bullshit trying to justify piracy.

Fixed that for you. By your logic when we go out to a restaurant we should be able to try the food first just to make sure we like it.

And yes I do buy games...games I feel are worth my money, I've got about 50 now and WOULD have more had my house not been robbed a few years back (thanks best friend!)

Maybe he's just trying them out before he goes out to buy them.