VALVe on Piracy

[vlad321]

Valve Says Pirates Are Just Underserved Customers

Says easy availability is the key to reducing piracy rates.

By Kat Bailey, 01/19/2009

Valve is one half of the pair of companies currently dominating PC gaming. So what do they think of piracy? Maybe not what you would expect.

According to GameDaily, Valve director of business development and legal affairs addressed the issued at the Game Business Law summit at Southern Methodist University, calling pirates "underserved customers." Taken from that perspective, Holtman says there are some interesting things they can do to make money off it.

"We take all of our games day-and-date to Russia," Holtman said. "The reason people pirated things in Russia 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.' "

To Holtman, the key is making sure that Valve products are available on the Moscow shelves, in Russian, when they hit America. After that, he said that "we found that our piracy rates dropped off significantly."

Holtman also took aim at the conventional wisdom surrounding paid downloadable content, saying that giving away content meant that "sales would spike for several products, both at retail and through Steam." On that last point, at least, Criterion might agree with Burnout Paradise. As for the rest of the industry, it'll be interesting to see whether they're taking notes.

Image courtesy of GameDaily

 

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Go Go Valve...