GameDaily has the lowdown on a talk given by Valve’s Jason Holtman at the Game Business Law summit in Dallas last week. Holtman argued that “Pirates are underserved customers.” Looking at it this way, he said, allowed Valve to make some “interesting money” from it. “The reason people pirated things in Russia,” Holtman 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.’ ”
When Valve worked to time distribution in Russia with Western releases: “We found that our piracy rates dropped off significantly.”
Even more interesting, to my mind, was this tidbit of Steam’s development philosophy: “”We’re not just a way of selling game… What we are, actually, is a platform.”
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Gosh, captain obvious strikes again. Preventing people from buying your game encourages piracy! Who’d have thought it?
Glad we have Valve to set the record straight.
The funny thing is, publishers are well aware of this effect in other situations. Remember when the Bioshock devs proclaimed their DRM a success because it prevented piracy for the first week, which was when there was the most interest in the game, and so where the big sales were made.
Obviously the same works in reverse too. When a game comes out, people want it. If you won’t sell it to them until 3 months later, they’ve forgotten all about it, even if they were nice and didn’t pirate it.
Now if only they would turn the same clarity and insight towards their european prices, they might just realize that “games sell better when you don’t charge twice the price people usually buy at”.
Maybe the word ‘platform’ is misinterpreted. Not like they want to be seen as the entire PC market. I think they just want to say that they do more than just selling games and providing DRM. It is also a patching service, it can provide easy access to mod and server tools, it has community stuff, support for achievements and it can download and show trailers.
What would YOU call it? A duck? (Actually… let me note that)
@RC1290: I believe the term is “program”.
A program? calc.exe is a program. It doesn’t patch my games, it doesn’t provide a DRM solution to publishers, it doesn’t store my savegames across installs. It doesn’t submit usage statistics to the publisher or any of the dozens other things Steam does. That’s why call it a platform. Not a platform in the sense that the 360 or Wii are platforms, but in the sense that it attempts to provide all the services necessary when distributing a game online.
“Probably brought up before but how many “pirate” TV shows due to their country being 1-2 seasons behind or whatever?”
Try being an American in a different country (Japan). They’re on season 2 of heroes, way behind on others, and some series aren’t even out. Although, I can watch “Barb Wire” if I want.
Hulu, NBC.com won’t play for me (they don’t play internationally). I used to bittorrent the Daily Show, but now I watch it at comedycentral.com because it comes out here around 4pm the next day, even faster than bittorrent. I’d count myself as “unde(r)served”.
*puts hands up to having read it as undeserved – 3 times*
Only just got it after reading the article then looking back up at the headline.
Valve is a good platform.
Digital distribution is comming. The only problem is that some people have crappy internet connections. With caps and slow speed. Theres also the thing DD is not cheaper, and adds more DRM. So is not better. Could be quick, easy (in a console-ish sense) and convenient. And thats what is need to fight piracy: A distribution method for the lazy. Anyway this will not kill all piracy. There are, and there will be always, the “freeloaders”, people that just want everything from TV for free (there are free stuff, but “freeloaders” are not interested because is not advertised on TV). Steam will not fix the problem with “freeloaders”.
Valve just make me happy. We have this amazing games company producing primarily PC games and they just ‘get it’ to an an paralleled extent. They don’t punish gamers because some of them are pirates, they make sure people get the service they want so they won’t pirate.
Take note, all ye of little faith.
It’s easy for Valve to be blasé about piracy, they’re shifting millions of units of their games anyway. It’s almost as if they think the key to a chart topping game is making it really good. Good luck with that theory Valve, it’ll never catch on!
How much does a “service” (seems better than “platform”) like Steam suffer from piracy anyhow? I guess indirectly they do.
A lot of good points made by people here. I’ve always seen distribution delays and price differences as unfair and counter productive. Hopefully Valve will actually act on these ideas and change their own ways as an example to others rather than just try to sound good.
That said I have to agree that a lack of demos (or even in-game footage!) probably has more to do with piracy. I haven’t pirated a game in probably 10 years but there have certainly been moments where I have thought about it just to “try a game out” (and have wished I had).
Looking at Steam as a platform of sorts isn’t making me feel more liable to use it. Why? I’m wondering about that myself a bit, for it doesn’t exactly change what it does.
In part it is the idea of exclusivity, the closed-off service you’ll have to sign up for to get specific things you can’t get at other places. Consider consoles, which often compete with eachother through exclusive offers. Then again, Steam is free to use (it is, isn’t it?).
Maybe it’s also because in another area, that of net communication, I’ve come across so many different ways, applications, that in other areas, such as games, here, I feel the need to be rather selective in what I sign up for.
This is why I’d rather have a more accessible and less exclusive service. It still feels as if I’m afflicited with an unreasonable Steam-itch, as I’m not actively trying to dislike it, but I just don’t (without trying it, even).
Just because your game gets on the Steam Platform, it’s no guarantee that it’ll do well – even if it’s good!
They should be making more of advertising in the ‘real world’, if they want real platform status – like Apple’s iTunes.
Plug for deserving case: Buccaneer: The Pursuit of Infamy which is available on Steam, has great multiplayer, but very few people to play with :(
@espy – thanks! I do read a lot of this stuff, you wouldn’t believe the time I spend on RPS and ShackNews. :D
Rather interesting (and by interesting I mean insanely low) prices of Steam games in Polish game shop:
http://g2play.pl/
Maybe it was already mentioned here, who knows (well, Google probably does)…