http://games.on.net/article/14330/Gabe_Newell_Piracy_is_a_non-issue_for_Valve

Cambridge has published a new interview with Valve founder Gabe Newell, in which the mastermind behind Half-Life and Steam shares his thoughts on digital distribution, region-locking, and piracy.

Gabe asserts that since Valve focusses on monitoring and delivering what customers actually want, piracy is a 'non-issue' for the company.

In general, we think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem. For example, if a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after the US release, and can only be purchased at a brick and mortar store, then the pirate's service is more valuable. Most DRM solutions diminish the value of the product by either directly restricting a customers use or by creating uncertainty.

Our goal is to create greater service value than pirates, and this has been successful enough for us that piracy is basically a non-issue for our company. For example, prior to entering the Russian market, we were told that Russia was a waste of time because everyone would pirate our products. Russia is now about to become our largest market in Europe.

In addition to touching on the topics of Dota 2, CS:GO, and whether games really are art, The Cambridge Student also asked about one of Valve's most anticipated upcoming games:

When will Half-life 3 be released?
I don't know.

You can read the interview in full by clicking here.

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Well, crap.... no news on HL3.

Oh yeah, also, he seems to be the ONLY personthat realizes what piracy actually is. The other publishers need to HTFU, take the blame for themselves, and stop whining, bitching, and complaining about this.

What's fun is the one where he statistically breaks it down.

Though they aren't saying it publicly, you can tell a lot of other big publishers are slowly following valves example.

DC Universe Online, while at first looking a regular free to play MMO setup actually has a lot from the TF2 model.

I mean, to show how f'd up DRM and the like is....

I have quite literally purchased games in the store, then pirated them.  Soley because the pirated versions worked better and in some cases weren't at risk of damaging my computer.  (IE Starforce.)

prince of persia would not load for me because i had a virtual cdrom (which nero installs), even when disabled. So only option I had was to download a crack for my legit copy.

He is wrong.

I save lots of money by downloading for free rather than using Steam. And piracy is about theft, not service.

The same goes for me. I have countless of gmaes i haven't downloaded from steam or bothered to even open the boxes due to pirated copies. The Witcher 2 in particular I went out and bought and didn't open it since the box does look pretty damn neat and all.

I think there is a special word designated for people who stick to their beliefs once their points have been proven wrong, even more so by concrete examples. You should look up what that word is.

So your saying, you aren't willing to pay ANYTHING for ANY PC game you could pirate.  Even if it was just say, 2 dollars?  IE:  You don't legally own a single PC game?

Cause, if you aren't saying that, you must not have read what he's said before.

You've also probbably never played a game like TF2, where the pirated version is unbelievably inferior to the normal version.

I own a couple of dozen PC games but most are from the pre-broadband era or games I needed the CD key for online play. A few PC games I bought just because I wanted to have a hard copy (I like boxed copies) or I wanted to support the developer.

But digital download like Steam, if none of the above conditions are met I'd rather save those 2 Dollars.

In that case there is a specific phrase for that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exception_that_proves_the_rule

I agree with Newell but i'll say the excessive games i buy on steam are because of their awesome sales.