Piracy is a non-issue to Gabe Newell

[blinblue]

L4D1
L4D2
TF2
Portal 1
Portal 2

Let's not forget a small franchise known as Half Life (though it kinda feels like Valve has forgotten, but that's a topic for another thread )

 

[Texashiker]

Of course Gabe doesn't care about piracy. His company barely makes games,

Valve has made some of the famous games of all time:

half-life
team fortress Classic
half-life 2
counter-strike
counter-strike:source
left 4 dead (developed by turtle rock, bought by valve)
left 4 dead 2
tf2

Counter-strike global offensive and DOTA2 are currently in development

I would like to know why you think valve barely makes games?

EDIT

If Valve had only made the games it did before the release of half-life 2, and then went out of business, it would still be considered a meca in the pc gaming industry almost a decade later.

The thing about Valve, they made playing, buying, and DRM easy. No other company in the pc gaming industry has brought more to the table then Valve software. In the 1990s id was the industry leader. For the past decade, valve has been the leader.

 

[Wyndru]

I've bought a lot of games off of steam, the odd part is none of them were from valve.

I got the orange box for free from a video card purchase, so I guess I purchased those games indirectly.

I definitely agree with others in this thread, steam has moved me away from piracy. I just wait until 6-12 months after release and buy it on one of their crazy sales.

 

[micrometers]

Gabe is completely right.

Especially with games approaching huge 20 gb sizes.

Ever try to bit torrent something larger than a gig? It sucks. It takes several hours, your net connection will be slow the entire time, your ISP might throttle you, you might get SUED for copyright infringement (rightfully so), and to top it off the file could be corrupt or contain a virus.

And then you have to mount it on daemon tools and apply any cracks or patches.

Steam makes it all safe and legal and convenient.

DRM tends to be cracked pretty quickly, and so it just hinders legitimate paying customers. Now property rights are important and I think it is in the best interests of society if content providers are paid, but this is the world we live in.

 

[Red Storm]

I've bought a lot of games off of steam, the odd part is none of them were from valve.

I got the orange box for free from a video card purchase, so I guess I purchased those games indirectly.

I definitely agree with others in this thread, steam has moved me away from piracy. I just wait until 6-12 months after release and buy it on one of their crazy sales.

Well Valve takes a cut from every Steam purchase, so we all help fill their wallets whether we buy their games or not.

 

[Texashiker]

I just wait until 6-12 months after release and buy it on one of their crazy sales.

That is one of the things with Steam, they have several sales a year where the prices of the games are dirt cheap.

Go to walmart, best buy, target,,, I never see games there on sale like what Steam has. And then, after a few years the big box marts stop selling the older games.

Its either go to amazon, ebay, good ole games or steam to find old games. I have not seen a copy of quake at walmart in probably close to 8 years. But I can buy quake off of steam right now.

 

[Genx87]

I couldnt agree more with gabe. We were just talking about this subject this morning at work. That once there was a service that offered the product I was looking for with minimal interference my days of looking for MP3s, applications, and games online for free ceased to exist. My time became more valuable to spend the dollar on a MP3 I want from amazon than to search an hour or more for the same mp3 that doesnt have a trojan or virus embedded and has decent quality.

Steam has been a huge hit for me. It is the perfect match between DRM and service.

 

[BurnItDwn]

How come it took so long for the hackers to release Half Life 2?

Yeah, I downloaded it but I also bought it off Steam. Man, Steam almost has taken me 99% away from Piracy. So convenient.

Half Life 2 was pirated quite a while before it officially came out.

That said, my days of piracy are long behind me, with services like Impulse and Steam, and having a better job than I did as a teen in the 90s, I find it generally more convenient to just buy things legally vs pirating them.

 

[gladiatorua]

Ever try to bit torrent something larger than a gig?

Yes.

It sucks.

Nope.

It takes several hours, your net connection will be slow the entire time, your ISP might throttle you,

Your ISP sucks and/or you're doing something wrong.

and to top it off the file could be corrupt or contain a virus.

Read comments. Don't download....... Ubuntu from weird sources. Corrupted files are far less likely on torrents, unless uploader's file was initially corrupted.
Torrent protocol is one of the few things that can push my download speed close to the limit.
It would be interesting to see Valve implementing torrent protocol in steam and rewarding users who upload a lot.

Steam is the best distribution method for now. It's even very successful in Russia. And Russians are known for their love of piracy.

 

[Skurge]

Gabe is completely right.

Especially with games approaching huge 20 gb sizes.

Ever try to bit torrent something larger than a gig? It sucks. It takes several hours, your net connection will be slow the entire time, your ISP might throttle you, you might get SUED for copyright infringement (rightfully so), and to top it off the file could be corrupt or contain a virus.

And then you have to mount it on daemon tools and apply any cracks or patches.

Steam makes it all safe and legal and convenient.

DRM tends to be cracked pretty quickly, and so it just hinders legitimate paying customers. Now property rights are important and I think it is in the best interests of society if content providers are paid, but this is the world we live in.

That part made me laugh. Mostly cause most of our ISP throttle torrents down to 3-4KB/s.

Most of my games are on steam. And yeah, it is actually easier to use steam than to pirate games.

 

[Mr. President]

Most of my games are on steam. And yeah, it is actually easier to use steam than to pirate games.

I feel exactly that same way. I still very occasionally pirate the odd game out of curiosity but I almost never get around to installing the damn things. Even with the games that I don't install, I usually just buy the whole lot on a Steam sale a few months later rather than dealing with the hassle of patches and cracks.

Then I almost never play the damn things.

 

[Texashiker]

Half Life 2 was pirated quite a while before it officially came out.

There was a kid from Germany that downloaded the source code a year before HL2 was released. I "think" the code was released on the net. From what I understand, the code was no where near finished and may not have been working.

I think there was a link posted here on ATOT awhile back with a link to a recent article about the event.

As for pirating games, I have not tried to download a pirated version in over 10 years,,, maybe even closer to 12 years.

When half-life came out, I knew if the community wanted high quality games, we had to support the developers. If the developers are not making money, there is no reason for them to make games.

 

[Red Storm]

Let's keep in mind that it is much easier for Valve to brush off potential lost sales due to piracy. They get a cut from every sale on Steam. No other dev company has that (massive) luxury. Even if all Valve games had a 100% piracy rate, they'd still be raking in tons of money.

 

[Anarchist420]

All of the arguments for piracy are stupid. People don't pirate because of iTunes bitrates, DRM, bad quality content, etc. They pirate because they want to consume some entertainment without paying for it. Yes, you're stealing a digital copy that isn't removing any physical resources from a store, but that doesn't matter. When you buy a game, CD, or DVD, you aren't paying much for the actual disc and such. You are paying for the time and resources put into producing the content on that medium.

I don't know about all that. I'd gladly pay if they do it how I want them to. If they don't then I don't pay.

Most people pirate for the same reasons you pirate music, due to their laziness they rather rather download it. Due to in not being in the format they think they have to have (DRM free) they steal it instead.

Amazon BTW sells DRM free music and its typically less then iTunes. No it's not lossless, but I bet no one bitches about the signal they get from their internet streams or radio streams because it's free...

Downloading without paying isn't stealing because it doesn't take anything away from anyone. They may not get paid, but they don't lose anything tangible either.

 

[Capt Caveman]

All of the arguments for piracy are stupid. People don't pirate because of iTunes bitrates, DRM, bad quality content, etc. They pirate because they want to consume some entertainment without paying for it. Yes, you're stealing a digital copy that isn't removing any physical resources from a store, but that doesn't matter. When you buy a game, CD, or DVD, you aren't paying much for the actual disc and such. You are paying for the time and resources put into producing the content on that medium.

This. Ban the OP for polluting forums beyond P&N.

 

[Capt Caveman]

I don't know about all that. I'd gladly pay if they do it how I want them to. If they don't then I don't pay.


Downloading without paying isn't stealing because it doesn't take anything away from anyone. They may not get paid, but they don't lose anything tangible either.

And you're a friggin [genius], nice excuse to steal. But again, you believe nobody should have any rights on their own inventions and hardwork. You're fine with someone spending years and money to create something and having someone else just steal it. Great way to kill innovation, Mr. Free Market [genius.

Let's try this without the namecalling
-ViRGE

 

[PrincessFrosty]

One thing I do find funny about this is that they acknowledge it's a service issue and not a pricing one, however despite the digital nature of steam they STILL release games late in the EU and UK regions, usually about 3 days, that's enough to be beaten to the punch by pirates.

I know valve don't set release dates, they're certainly in a position to influence them by settings terms of service for steam that all regions should unlock at one global time and not be restricted.

Unfortunately despite the problem being completely retarded, it's left unmanaged and continues to be a problem and probably will for years, sigh...

 

[lord_emperor]

And you're a friggin retard, nice excuse to steal. But again, you believe nobody should have any rights on their own inventions and hardwork. You're fine with someone spending years and money to create something and having someone else just steal it. Great way to kill innovation, Mr. Free Market retard.

That's a boatload of personal attacks and insults but I don't see you refute his statement.

 

[Red Hawk]

So, basically this?

 

[dingleberrydorkbutt]

So, basically this?

Yeah, I think you nailed it. LOL.

Thanks for the laugh. I needed it.

 

[Nebor]

That's a boatload of personal attacks and insults but I don't see you refute his statement.

Why would you need to refute the statement of a thief? How about I hire you to paint my fence? I'll provide the supplies. Maybe I won't pay you when you're done though. You won't have lost anything tangible.

And if I couldn't have tricked someone into doing it for free my fence would have gone unpainted, so no big deal.

 

[Larries]

but yet an always on connection like Ubisoft had isnt ok?
I don't really care too much myself, but seems to be odd at how such a super fine line that is for anyone would consider acceptable or not.
Either you have an always on connection or you don't. But ya never know when you may hit tough times and can't afford internet for a while which would mean that inbetween looking for work, you have time but no games to play with either one of them.



Not only that, but its mostly cause they are doing well...now imagine how his attitude would change if they wern't doing so well.

Steam doesn't require always on connection, does it? There are times when I am playing game and unplug the LAN cable, and I remembered the game just continue play fine. Also, Steam does have offline mode. I think is you need to be online run it at least once, then you can run it in offline mode in future. I remembered there are days when my internet connection went bad (no internet connection at all), but still can play the games.

Or, did I remember it wrong???

 

[colaxs]

One thing i want game publishers to do is to make the price of downloads much cheaper than retail. You remove the costs of pressing, packaging, shipping, and import duties for dvds and charge accordingly.

Around $30 for a new aaa title is a price point that will make piracy redundant imo.

And machine activation limits are stupid because pirates don't face this problem at all. It should be the other way around.

 

[micrometers]

The funny thing about the OP is that he justifies piracy as an appeal to quality.

And yes, it is arguable that for some people, a 256 kb/s aac file from iTunes is not good enough.

but steam games are perfect for downloads, since you are getting bit for bit the same thing as a multi-dvd install.

 

[Elixer]

ah, so offline is a joke, bringing the issue back where it starts. However, Steam is still the about the best solution out there.
Although it does appear that Indie games are doing extremely well...and none of those discs have any kind of protection. I've got a few before for my wife.

Yeah, they don't give any grace periods if your ISP has issues, so all the games you had on steam are all unusable.
Then all the times where offline mode is screwed up, and it won't allow you to enter offline mode at all.

While steam is OK most of the time, it is the times that you can't access it when you wonder why you spent all your $$$ on something that won't let you play at any time that you want without first being frisked.

Steam doesn't require always on connection, does it? There are times when I am playing game and unplug the LAN cable, and I remembered the game just continue play fine. Also, Steam does have offline mode. I think is you need to be online run it at least once, then you can run it in offline mode in future. I remembered there are days when my internet connection went bad (no internet connection at all), but still can play the games.

Or, did I remember it wrong???

Nope, you must be online to go offline.