Besides being super pumped for Borderlands at all times -- which, who can blame him? -- Gearbox president and founder Randy Pitchford has a few negative things to say about Steam, the digital download service that almost never seems to get slammed for anything.

Speaking with Maximum PC, he says Valve ought to split off of Steam. "It would be much better if Steam was its own business. There’s so much conflict of interest there that it’s horrid." He even goes so far as to say it's "really, really dangerous for the rest of the industry to allow Valve to win."

"Steam helps us as customers, but it’s also a money grab, and Valve is exploiting a lot of people in a way that’s not totally fair. Valve is taking a larger share than it should for the service its providing," Pitchford explains. "It’s exploiting a lot of small guys."

He goes on to say that the industry needs to pay attention to the way digital distribution is handled for music. "I’d rather buy it from someone whose only interest is serving me. I’m cool with it being a digital retailer, but I want that to be their only business. And then I’ll really trust them."

I suggest you all read the full interview beyond what I was able to fit in this condensed version. Pitchford makes a lot of good points, even if as consumers it can be difficult to relate to his viewpoint as a businessman.

His concern isn't much to worry about. He's afraid that if Steam has no competition and "wins", Valve will stop innovation in the Digital Distribution world. The thing is that there's alot of up and coming DD services that are looking to compete, such as Impulse, GFW (crap), GOG, and Blizzard's Battle.net if they fully go with the plan to make a Steam-like service.

As for the indies comment, Steam is just one DD service where they can sell their games, so if they don't like it then don't come to Steam. There's hundreds of DD stores where they can sell their games. Steam has a userbase of over 20 millions, and Steam gives a much bigger exposure than the other DD stores.

Garry's Mod, a game/mod made by an indie guy, sold over 300k units on Steam in just 2 years. Valve got 50% of the money made, but the guy still became a millionaire. The Garry's Mod is a unique case though, because it's a game that works only on Source games, which is why Valve got 50% of the money. For the other devs, Valve probably gets around 30-40%

haha good luck with that...

anyway, Valve deserve to take a large portion of profits. theyve spent years, and therefore lots and lots of money developing steam into the easy and well structured program it is today. Even though they take a fair portion of profits, small companies BestGameEver (Audiosurf) and other Indie companies would be nowhere today without the support from Valve and Steam

Agreed.

thanny - That's the more common method of DD. iTunes exists to serve you. Yes it is a business and they intend to make money off of you, but they don't make music and they don't give preference to their own products over others. They don't make greater than normal profits off of their own goods while giving less than normal returns to other companies that work with the system. Steam does these things. Valve generally takes a higher % of revenues than other DD systems because they nearly have a monopoly. This is not really a good thing.

So Steam/ Value = MS #2 ?

From everything i have read before, it seems Valve take off what would be normal for regular retail... Are you just basing off this one article? do you have any other proof? Particularly what i bolded, that just seems like speculation at best...