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442 Comments
- thesnarebear, on 01/17/2009, -6/+518An intelligent look at piracy! Finally!
- scratend0788, on 01/17/2009, -4/+400i'm a pirate to an extreme, i even pirate books rather than buying them.
i have bought games on steam though, it is very simple/easy/convenient. - Zuwxiv, on 01/18/2009, -1/+329I've always said that companies need to stop treating customers like potential pirates, and need to treat pirates like potential customers.
It's no coincidence that Valve does extraordinarily well. - JamesBondJr, on 01/17/2009, -4/+256FTA - "We take all of our games day-and-date to Russia," Holtman says of Valve. "The reason people pirated things in Russia," he explains, "is because Russians are reading magazines and watching television -- they say 'Man, I want to play that game so bad,' but the publishers respond 'you can play that game in six months...maybe.' "
so true - Shaggy3, on 01/18/2009, -3/+239Valve doesn't tell a lie.
Except that one time with the cake... - konataXchan, on 01/18/2009, -7/+189If you think about it Pirates don't pay for games but occasionally they'll come across something worth buying once and a while and support that.
I'm kind of like that because PC game demos are basically dead yet If I like the game enough and theres enough content in it to keep me going I'm going to buy the game no matter what.
Also there's a rule of thumb: Blizzard = Buy all games, Valve = Buy all games but EA = Pirate though spite for ruining so many gaming companies. - thesnarebear, on 01/18/2009, -0/+160It's a businessman's approach. He doesn't immediately reject anyone who pirates software because they did something illegal, he looks at it as an opportunity. I'd say that's an intelligent look.
- t0x2c, on 01/18/2009, -0/+145i think steam games are the only ones i buy
- AzzX, on 01/18/2009, -1/+127I think my gaming days would be over if it wasn't for Valve.
Valve are the Nexus of PC Gaming. - Exodin, on 01/18/2009, -0/+119the guys at Valve are the smartest in the industry. Gotta love'em.
- WithMyMind, on 01/17/2009, -2/+106Underserved, not undeserved.
- DeathRay2K, on 01/18/2009, -0/+97EA has the same solution as almost every other publisher out there, try to stop the pirates from pirating. Valve, on the other hand, instead looks at why they're pirating, and figures out how to turn them into customers.
Definitely an intelligent look at piracy. - inactive, on 01/18/2009, -0/+92agreed - Valve knows how to warm my pirate heart.
- Azerael, on 01/18/2009, -2/+85Dyslexics of the world, untie!
- Quwel, on 01/17/2009, -5/+88i pirated the orange box when not too long ago but it was buggy and eventually i just brought the valve pack a nice £60 VALVe made there and it was soo worth it even for the mods some of which are even as good as propper games.
VALVe ROCK
end of - inactive, on 01/18/2009, -0/+74Man, if I'm a fanboy of anything, it's Valve. They are just so... good.
- compgeek, on 01/18/2009, -0/+71Valve makes it well worth it to pay money for their games. If only other companies would follow their lead maybe I'd pirate less
- TheSpore, on 01/18/2009, -0/+62As an avid reader of Techdirt, I'd like to throw 2 cents in...
People can pirate Valve's games. What they can't pirate is Valve's good built in server support, their ease of finding new games, their fast downloading of games when you first buy them, their automatic patching, their redownloading of games, and whatever other great services you get.
When I paid $10 for Team Fortress 2, I got more than just a copy of the game, I bought an entire experience of gaming. That's what makes Valve click with gamers and it's also why companies like EA and Sony don't get it. - barc0001, on 01/18/2009, -0/+59Steam is good. They have decent sales every so often, and the big thing is it's one authentication for my whole library of games on the system. I can have all the stuff at home and on my workstation at the office, plus on the spare computer when I visit my family for holidays. As long as only one computer's using the account, they don't care how many installs are done. That's the way it should be.
- ZeeSniper, on 01/18/2009, -0/+51Its not just making it more available.
Notice how he slipped in the free weekends and how they increased sales?
Many people pirate games because they don't want to pay for a game that they can't try out. Why pay 50 bucks for something if its garbage and won't last you more than 2 hours? With no trial or demo, people will pirate.
The funniest part about it is, some game devs purposely don't release a demo because the game is complete *****, and then they blame poor sales on piracy, give me a ***** break and make a better game. - badwithcomputer, on 01/17/2009, -2/+53its a comma missed steak
- bilbus, on 01/18/2009, -9/+58Linux users won't pay for anything, look at their OS :P
- spynes, on 01/18/2009, -1/+48i own all of valve's games, and thats not going to end anytime soon - great company.
- Isfacat, on 01/17/2009, -5/+49Granted, Valve may release games world-wide at the same time (for Valve games, nonetheless), but that still doesn't totally stop piracy at all costs. Valve has a good idea on stopping piracy with their Steam system, but people will find a way around.
- ifruit, on 01/18/2009, -5/+47I WANT MORE PORTAL!
- HappyScrappy, on 01/18/2009, -0/+35Some pirates could be converted to paying customers. Apple showed this with the iTunes Music Store.
But in the end, most pirates could not be convinced to pay for something no matter how cheap because they are just downloading things they would never pay for. Some are just collecting things to collect them. Some are collecting things to trade for other things, and some are just downloading so much stuff they couldn't pay for a significant subset of them even if they were cheap and could figure out which ones were worth paying for.
Clearly, a company that makes very good games like Valve generally does you stand a better chance of converting pirates into paying customers. - Renton, on 01/17/2009, -3/+38cus⋅tom⋅er
–noun
1. A person who purchases goods or services from another; buyer; patron. - inactive, on 01/18/2009, -3/+37And we can forgive them that, because it turned out to be a huge success.
And I find it hard to overstate my satisfaction about that. - cheezintern, on 01/18/2009, -1/+35The only games I ever buy are on valve. They aren't overpriced, and are quick and easy to get.
- inactive, on 01/18/2009, -0/+34Try to solve the problem at the source. That's a damn refreshing thing to hear, especially since there's a good amount of piracy going on just because people don't want to deal with copy protection.
- jellydoughnut21, on 01/18/2009, -0/+34i can't say enough about how much I love valve and absolutely adore steam. After reading that article, it makes sense that steam is becoming its own gaming platform. All these developers are signing on to have their games distributed through steam digitally, plus all the independent games like world of goo and audiosurf. Through steam gamers have access to more content that on any other platform. Not only that but Valve themselves continually update and distribute new content for their games over time, continually adding value for FREE.In my opinion I'll take a PC with steam over every console any day of the week, and I don't see that changing any time in the future.
- AManWithNoName, on 01/18/2009, -0/+34Same. Valve is on my list of companies I'll pay for games from.
- WithMyMind, on 01/17/2009, -0/+32It wasn't that it was misspelled, it was because it made a completely new word. I think he misread it to begin with.
- ifruit, on 01/18/2009, -3/+34I like the fact that you can pay with paypal, which means I don't have to leave my desk to find my wallet.
- scratend0788, on 01/17/2009, -0/+30yer, people will always find a way arround.
but how much more convenient and simple can they make it to just buy the game.
Getting pirate games to work online is a pain it the arse.
also i aint just for valve games, almost every big game company uses steam to distribute its games. - drknockrz, on 01/18/2009, -1/+31Valve needs to show Mac/Linux users some Steamy love.
- Corey2, on 01/18/2009, -1/+28I think you mean, "I say steam sucks to justify my pirating of amazing valve games"
- teamr, on 01/18/2009, -3/+27the diffrence is that steam actually makes the legit product better than the pirated. As opposed to games like Spore and Bioshock that are better to pirate because of intrusive DRM
- scamper22, on 01/18/2009, -2/+26It's not about finding a way around it.
Games and media are completely based on disposable income.
What is disposable income? Income you don't mind throwing around just to have fun and for your own convenience.
If someone doesn't have much disposable income (that 12 year kid with no job), you are not losing any money by them pirating the game.
If someone has a decent amount of disposable income (your targer audience) and they're pirating your game, you are doing something wrong! Why are they not wasting their disposable income on your product? Yes it is waste... virtually all disposable income can be thought of as waste.
This same person is more than willing to spend 100 dollars for a sweater that cost 5 dollar to make.
This same person is more than willing to spend 100 dollars for one night on the town.
This same person is more than willing to waste a few bucks a day on coffee from Tim Hortons when their work place provides free coffee.
...
So why won't they spend 50 dollars for a game they might get 100s of hours of gameplay out of? You're not making it convenient or cost effective for them.
If it is easier to go on bit torrent, locate the game, download it, virus scan it, maybe do some hacking on it, hack around online player (serial number issues.... there is something wrong with your product. This is where steam comes in. It makes it easy to buy games. Heck, its more convenient as the game is tied to your account. Just recently I wanted to replay Baldur's Gate 2 which I bought years ago. I couldn't find the CDs. So I torrented it. I check Steam nowadays all the time to see if a game is one there instead of going to the store.
In terms of cost? Yeah, I only spend that 50 bucks on amazing games I am looking forward to. But anything aroud 5-25 bucks is almost throw away money and I'd buy an alright game at that price. Most people would. Sure beat, torrenting and other issues.
You can see the same behavior occurring in other industries. Video on demand services from cable companies are there, even though people can download it... but what's 3-5 bucks for a movie? Itunes is a reasonble success as well. XBOX live is the same thing... its just online play... but it makes it convenient and nice... 10 bucks a month for all this convenience for something people spend 100s of hours on... its worth it.... hence people pay for it. What's 10 bucks? Another meal at burger king?
Yes, piracy is wrong... this is not a moral question.
This is a business question. Business is about making money. Business need to focus on making money, not on worrying about moral question of piracy. You just can't control and sue your customers, not matter how dishonest you think they are. - Bub978, on 01/18/2009, -1/+24No, you pirate Valve games because you're living in 2003. Steam hasn't sucked for years.
- Auran98, on 01/18/2009, -1/+24The sheer fact that I live in Australia means I pirate most of my games. The distributors and publishers add a significant portion of money onto the products here, and any time they're called out for it, "oh, it's the cost of shipping"
***** that - I prefer what Trent Reznor said when he was last here on tour and discovered how much his CDs were selling for here (compared to america) - "Okay, well, you know what that means — STEAL IT. Steal away. Steal and steal and steal some more and give it to all your friends and keep on stealin'. Because one way or another these mother****ers will get it through their head that they're ripping people off and that's not right.'" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJ5iHaV0dP4 - Tenareth, on 01/18/2009, -0/+21Same, I buy all games through steam. If it isn't on steam, I'm not dealing with a DVD, Keys, scratches, etc.
New computer: Log into steam, tell it to download all my games, boom done by morning, including all the patches.
Compared to the old days of "Damn, where is the CDKEY" and "Read Error", or "Ok, now to download the 300MB of patches", Steam does software distribution right. - Munk3y, on 01/18/2009, -0/+21I pirated the original Half-Life a loooong time ago to play Death Matches at work. Before this, I didn't really know who Valve was or what Half-Life even was. I could only play Single Player or LAN, of course. I slowly began noticing the quantity of fun games they made and released at a good value. Since then, I've purchased everything they've made and have never regretted it once. The key here is never regretting a purchase.
EA Games? Yea, you can bet I'll be trying their stuff out first or not at all. I still remember when a group of friends and I bought Battlefield Vietnam and none of us could play our LEGAL copies, while pirates were having a blast. - jpjandrade, on 01/18/2009, -1/+21Yeah, but Steam is so simple and useful that I WANT to pay $50 for a good game and a good service.
I will still not buy EA's games until I have pirated them and fully tested them, though. - chaoswings, on 01/18/2009, -1/+21The whole epidemic of piracy erupted because we were being ripped off. But let's be honest, it has snowballed and now people are accustomed to getting things for free. It is going to be difficult if not impossible to ween people off. This is defiantly not going to make a change overnight but at least this is a step in the right direction.
Sorry for being so cynical but we have been given the shaft time and again. One step forward and two steps back as they say. - DefaultGen, on 01/18/2009, -4/+23Those are uninformed consumers.
- purplesawdust, on 01/17/2009, -7/+26*****....YEH
- Clbck, on 01/18/2009, -4/+22Source? Never heard this before.
- havokdu, on 01/18/2009, -0/+18I'm from Argentina and I bought L4D for $37 during the holiday sale deal.
I already had the pirated version but wanted to play online (hassle free) and have the latest future patches from the moment they are released.
You could say I bought not content but a license to play it buy I'm fine with that given that I played countless hours online so far (compared to the offline-only/buggy online servers from the pirate version).
Another odd remark is that the retail version it's not yet available in my country, so Steam is the only legal way to buy it. - MacHarborGuy, on 01/18/2009, -0/+17heh, Valve gave up on Mac awhile ago
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