Which is generally another issue.  Most games cost too much money both in price and production costs.

I mean should any game with a budget between 10 and 95 million cost 50-60 dollars?

A lot of people don't like the idea because it'd cut down on graphical quality and other "Triple A" frills....

but I mean, how many people buy a $60 fork... vs a $1 fork?

Now when you consider it's a virtual fork, having a lower price point makes even more sense!

Each sold copy is costing you... nothing, unlike the retail model where boxes and cds etc are made.

im sure gaben is okay with it, until some pirate steals his sweetroll, then all hell breaks loose and i'm not talking about loose skin due to fat, i'm talking drum rolls of slimey swirly swiggly swaggly rolls of fat.

did i ever mention how fat Gaben is?

Gabe has a point. I can pretty easily accept that piracy is a non-issue for valve. More than anything, Gabe realizes that antagonizing pirates is a losing battle because of how easily offended PC gamers are to any notion of wrongdoing. 

I also agree part of the problem is that the pirated product is in many cases better than the bought product. The biggest 'better' will always be a pricetag of $0, all other benefits are a subset of that. Like anything, there is a lot of nuance to piracy, and the reasons that people repeat online as justifiable or even noble reasons for piracy are kind of embarassing. 

At the same time, the topic of piracy has been beaten to death over and over. I'm not sure what to get out of this other than Gabe panders to PC gamers by showing that providing a decent product on decent terms is appealing to consumers?

Anyone trying to claim piracy doesn't effect game sales is naive. Pirates are not all noble people only pirating games they weren't planning on buying anyway so undoubtfully some sales are lost. The thing is though, piracy does exist, will always exist, and games will always end up getting cracked. In that sense it is a none issue since there is no way of avoiding it.

DRM, especially in single player games, is completely pointless and only punishes legitimate buyers, as pirates will be able to play the game, without dumb restrictions, and usually days if not weeks before the release date for free. Publishers need to accept the fact they they have already lost xxx sales to pirates. They need to make sure they aren't selling inferior products to what can be downloaded for free online because that will only further encourage more piracy.

I don't think anyone claimed otherwise. Way to miss the whole argument completely.

People like to "own" stuff, even if it's just a virtual copy. They don't mind paying for it as long as it is priced according. But that's quite tricky to figure out since everyone place a different value on the same item.

The biggest blow is that pirated copy often is the better product. Now, go and try get people to pay for inferior product that they could get free. It's a hard sell.

Like most of us (assuming). We'd buy the hard copy and then pirate the better version to use.

Another problem is how they like to blow up the numbers and that cause the industry to focus on the wrong problem. Hence, you see stricter DRM but that only make the pirate copy more appealing each time they beef up the DRM.

You want to attract people that would have bought your game. You want to ignore the people that would pirate your game, regardless of reasoning. You don't want to punish your customers and would be customers just to fight off the people that you should ignore.

Valve with Steam I believe have pretty much sorted out how to operate on PC. Service is indeed key as is pursuing a variable price structure - something that is hard at retail which is part of the issue with PC games at retail.

The point Valve understand is that there is a percentage of people who will pirate and never buy, hence there is no point worrying about their custom nor their activity so long as it's not malicious. You focus on the people who will pay and provide a good service.

Valve clearly sell a ton of their own games on PC plus plenty of other titles - you think EA have started Origin because Steam revenue is only lacklutre? - and plenty of developers have confirmed sales are strong through the store front.

Valve also provide a strong catalogue which is also key, from older games are lower prices to more recent games at regular prices across pretty much every genre, which caters to a lot of different shoppers easily.

It's interesting to watch how they get it right while others (Ubisoft being an obvious example) flail about getting it all wrong and suffering as a result. Amazing they don't simply take the time to deconstruct Steam's approach and emulate it.

Well actually no.  Consumer psychology shows us that consumers WANT to pay a fair price for something.  Given the choice of paying a price a consumer thinks is fair, or paying nothing without the creators approval, the VAST majority of people would choose the first option.

Aside from which, It's a lot bigger issue then that.

To put it more clearly, most people see a videogame as a finished virtual product.  Like a Virtual House.  Well a liscense to a digital house.

While Gabe see's it as a vitural service.  Something you pay a downpayment on, with updates with new content provided to you, with options to earn or buy... giving them more value either way because you are either providing money, or your time, which is also like money since friends who see you play the games will be more likely to play them.

TF2 for example, has almost no piracy anymore.  Pirates end up way behind and take forever to come up with the same items valve releases in updates, that can be gained or earned however you want.  It even drives sales of other games with it's promotions!

Another good example is DCU online, which despite being an MMO actually shows how it could work in a Single player game.  (though somewhat less so since there big stuff is buy only.)

The problem is, a digital house is problematic, because with a design, anyone can copy it.

A digital service, nobody can copy that, because you never know what's going to come next, and it takes a lot of time and effort to hack things added in later that are maintained by a server. 

 I know a lot of people that won't buy any game if it is singleplayer only or if they aren't interested in the multiplayer aspect. It is like "why pay for it if I can get it for free?"

Multiplayer is another story, since you can't play with an illegal download. But if it is playable using hamachi, tunngle or anything similar, they'll pirate.

"TF2 for example, has almost no piracy anymore." That's because TF2 is F2P now.

It had almost zero piracy before then.   Back around when the first updates came out.  Meet the Medic I wanna say was first.

Once TF2 moved from being a game... to a service.  (Ex: We're giving you at least 9 class updates)   Piracy dropped off like mad.

Can see the reasoning behind this. Have been looking at Steam recently as I'm curious as to what would be available if I were to try some games on my PC. It is quite annoying to find the majority of the games I would consider are Windows-only and so won't work on my Mac (Batman, Skyrim, Mass Effect, Assassin's Creed).

Looking at Valve's games, such as Portal and Left 4 Dead, they all have Mac versions available. Well isn't that handy...