Not every one has there own store front where they make money from their percentage of every sale to make up for sales of their own games that in many cases have run there race and the extra bargain bin sales are all cream even 3rd party's do it why because it's a single store front that they can say to here's 5 games past their sales peak lets bundle them cheap with little cost compared to doing it at bricks and mortar yep it's a great dumping ground.

While it's not as bad as just outright pirating the game, it still isn't good.  The problem is you're supporting the sites that support piracy.  By downloading a torrent you helping other people leech off it and by visiting the sites to find the torrent you're giving them bandwidth to further support their doings.

I completely agree that obtrusive DRM is wrong, but if you want to tell the companies to not use it, don't buy their game and let them know why.  If you email the development studio directly, they listen.  All you're doing along with every other pirate is showing there's a want for that game and they obviously need some sort of protection from piracy.

Capcom, EA, and Ubisoft put out a ton of software and some work better than others. Companies like Blizzard and Valve don't put out much and even their games can be buggy or resource hogs for sub par graphics.

Fifa won't sell nearly as well as the console ports even if they improved it for the PC. I've played a lot of Capcom games over the years on the PC and most worked great. Like I said though, some may work better than others. Also their older games don't work well on newer releases of Windows, but that's common.

If consumers are unhappy with the quality of a game, they don't have to buy it. Video games aren't forced on people. However, people shouldn't be getting them for free either. I recall Capcom saying they were happy with the PC sales of Street Fighter 4, but they were unhappy with how many people were getting it free.

And as Gabe Newell a man who turns just about everything he is involved in to gold, from Microsoft, creating the story driven FPS, turning free mods into some of the most successful franchises in the genre and making the most successful digital distrabution nework in gaming. Is aparently not to be trusted

"Avalanche Studios boss Christofer Sundberg, the man behind the “Just Cause” game series, has offered his solution to the rampant PC piracy problem, try making better games, scrap the "stupid" DRM and give hackers a job."
http://www.qj.net/pc-gaming/news/avalanche-studio-offers-pc-piracy-solution-make-better-games.html

http://notch.tumblr.com/post/1121596044/how-piracy-works

What are your thoughts on DRM as a whole?

FW: I do not believe in DRM as a method of fighting piracy. Our way of fighting piracy is trying to give more value to people who actually bought the game. We are working on a few projects at the moment that will hopefully be appreciated by our gamers.

Paradox has typically released games with no DRM added. Is that due more to a lack of concern about piracy, or are you more focused on selling the product to potential customers?

FW: Our idea is that installing the game for someone who actually paid for the product shouldn’t be harder than installing the pirate version. DRM also costs a lot in technical support.

http://www.thedrmnews.com/games/a-chat-with-fredrik-wester/#more-1066

In other words AAA studios use a broken business model, doesn't make Gabe's point wrong

I personally don't find DRM that requires you to be online to be an issue. If consumers don't like it, they don't have to play the game period. it doesn't justify piracy. Mass piracy is something all publishers of PC games have to deal with, not just EA.

If Valve didn't have Steam and relied solely on the profit of their games, I assure you Valve would be more concerned with piracy.

Capcom put out little PC software and most of what they do put out is delayed or shodilly ported and all are designed for consoles first, Ubisoft put out a lot of shodally ported, console led, months late ports and games with draconian DRM.

 EA are changing to put more on attention to PC but still mostly console led design, they do however have some of their most successful games only on PC like the Sims so they are a bad example for your argument.

Graphics are not as important as gameplay, you can give your PC port of your console game enhanced graphics on PC but it still won't sell if you keep the console led gameplay and UI.

If there was a make fun button that every studio could push then they would be wrong, but that isn't the case.  Valve can afford to take their time because they have an alternate revenue source, Steam, that isn't going dry any time soon.  Not every studio can have that or else all those sources would dry up.

Gabe's point is so much wrong, it's more just ignorant.  He as done a great deal many great things, but that just isn't something every studio can do.  If it were, every game would be as amazing as Half-Life 2 and every studio would have their own version of Steam along with their own licesned engine.

That's like saying if a company isn't a Fortune 500 company then it's obviously doing it wrong.  That isn't the case, it just means they are as successful as the top companies in the world.  By your reasoning studios like Naughty Dog are using a broken model except they manage to make excellent games.  Part of that is the business model and part of that is they're a great developer.

The AAA business model isn't the best business model and it's incredibly risky but everyone trying to copy Valve would be a death move for everybody.

I whole heartedly agree that graphics don't trump gameplay but I'm sure you've heard the expression you eat with your eyes first, right?

As much as we don't like to admit it, graphics matter a lot.  A game may be fun as Hell but if it doesn't look good it's going to have a hard time selling.  Yes, there are extreme examples like Minecraft (though you could just call that a unique art style), other games like Braid or Limbo would have gone completely unnoticed if they hadn't concentrated so hard on their style.  Other games like BattleField 3 would be left in the shooter waste land if it weren't stand out graphics wise.

You may be enlightened enough to know that graphics don't matter and you play all those indie darlines knowing it's the gameplay that is making them special, but that doesn't make the money and making games is only about making money.

First Naughty Dog use the same business model as Valve, use an outside source of income to support game development until it's perfect.

But  anyway you don't need endless iteration to make good games, many successful PC games that are great don't have that luxury ether, paradox interactive, CDProjekt, GSC game world etc are developers that have managed to make great games that have sold well on PC with limited budgets and resorces. The question is why can't big developers and publishers with many times the budgets not manage to match the success of basically indies on PC, the answer is not piracy it's bad design for PC, just because it's not easy doesn't mean you can't do it.