Valve on Piracy

[Kasz216]

JaggedSac said:

Kasz216 said:

JaggedSac said:

Kasz216 said:

 

Also you don't take out loans.  You do what the M&B guys did.  Make a short demo.  What you plan to accomplish.  Then "sell" your idea to try and get enough money to make it.

If you don't... well you don't.  Your idea wasn't good enough.

So you have to have money up front to pay employees to create a demo.  Unless they are working for free on the hopes of getting a pay check.  In which case, not many highly skilled people would take that job.  Not as a primary one in any case.

You are trying to apply small cases of this working on a broad economic system.  Not saying this would never work, as that is clearly not the case, but that it would not work on a massive scale.

Videogames aren't meant to work on a massive scale.

They're games... take a loot at a game like mount and blade.  It's HUGE yet it wasn't done with a giant dev team.

As for other computer applications... they will work that way because they are needed.  For example companies currently create their own propirtary invetory programs.

By massive scale I was not referring to games themselves, but to the industry.  You are trying to apply a system that worked for 1 game(Mount and Blade) to an entire industry.  Mount and Blade is a nice game but it is lacking graphically.  This is where most costs come from in game making.  Graphical assets and cutting edge engineering.  Neither of which come cheap.  M&B was made with less than 10 people without a shadow of a doubt.

If what you are looking for is nice cheap games, you can find that right now.  But if you want a graphically impressive, cutting edge game, there is no way in hell you can rely on the patronage of the end customer to fund development.  Nothing like us as customers paying for 10 games(from different development studios) that are in development, with no actual garauntee that any of the games will finish development.  Basically it would be like buying stock in a company and hoping it would pay off.

Ever think games aren't supposed to have cutting edge graphics and engineering?

Bescause it's an unsustainable buisness model?  There is plenty of shit that would be nice to have but is unsustainable.

Like personal Jet Packs.  Yet you don't see us making non sensical laws so that everyone can have their own jet pack.