Gabe Newell, the CEO of Valve, has said that his company is not that worried about piracy. He also said that publishers don’t understand that piracy is more of a service issue than anything else.
"In general, we think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy," he said recently. "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 three 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.”
He did not name any particular publishers are examples, and did not lay out any plans to combat piracy in any way.
Feed RSS
