At this year's Game Developer's Choice Awards, Vavle's Gabe Newell won the Pioneer Award, and he used the opportunity to share a slide show with the crowd of developers, press, and business people. His message? DRM is not good for business.

He spoke about DRM adding negative worth to products, and his remarks were greeted by loud and enthusiastic applause. 

"One thing that you hear [Valve] talk a lot about is entertainment as a service, it's an attitude that says 'what have I done for my customers today?'" he said. "It informs all the decisions we make, and once you get into that mindset it helps you avoid things like some of the Digital Rights Management problems that actually make your entertainment products worth less by wrapping those negatives around them."

Of course, Steam is itself DRM pretending to be a service, but as long as gamers are willing to trade the ability to sell their games or have a physical copy for the added features and convenience offered, Newell will continue to have a good thing going. DRM isn't going away, but at the very least its harmful effects can be minimized. 

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2010/03/gabe-newell-shares-his-thoughts-on-drm-at-gdc-ftw.ars?comments=1#comments-bar

It's the one truly great thing he does. Too bad after the applause die down no one with ability to do anything about it remembers what he said.

that award is called The First Penguin, which suits him

Perhaps Steam should require the removal of other forms of DRM if a game is to be sold through it? If your games are tied to your Steam account, why would a game need restrictive DRM like install limits or always being connected online to play your game?

Though as somebody else mentioned, I'm sure the people who Gabe's message was meant for promptly ignored it.

*edit* Hey look at that, 6,000th post.

He knows the PC audience well. Ubisoft, take note.

Digital "Restrictions" Management more like ;)

Inb4 Gabe Newell is fat.

This time he's quite right (not totally, because, as the article pointed out, Valve is a service for multiplayer and as a shop, but it's a sweetened DRM for single player)... But he's fat anyway.

Valve ported their games to Mac before the PS3 which makes them incredibly......... wierd. Who does that?

He has his head on straight about DRM, even if he doesn't necessarily have the power to change things.