Valve: We don't really worry about piracy

Actually, I LOL'd really hard at that.

Don't worry, Ludwig has a license to pun.

that was the best pun ever

I plus da pun.

Why the downvotes? Be honest with yourselves, Gabe Newell is a jerk, despite the fact he works for a great company like Valve.

Nevermind about the downvotes. And sorry for the triple-posts.

Troll post is troll.

...you finished?

No news on that today.

Your princess is in another castle.

People pay MS $50 a year to do exactly that.

Wow. I like to consider myself a fan of Valve and their work, but you're sucking Valve's pipes pretty hard, aren't you?

The way I see it, Valve is one of the industry leaders not only in game design but also with Steam and commercialising IP in accordance with the changing market environment (i.e. internet), by adapting and growing steadily.

It takes balls and wit at the same time to be a leader.

Having no concern for piracy, but seeing them instead as underserved customers is a form of original and leading thought-frame-shifting which always deserves praise, especially when it is followed up with affirmative action.

Affirmative as in when they see fit, they release/update/act, not because immature cynical gamers are pushing and pulling them from all sides (which in itself is a testament to the quality of their product and again sound judgment on the whole).

bingo. that's why i love valve. every other company may go bankrupt on the way to finding out what they've been telling people for the past 7 years. you can be profitable on the PC if you're not doing it wrong.

It can't hurt that their games are actually, you know, good.

I'd totally love Steam if it weren't for the fact that I have to activate retail copies of the games before I can play them. That and the fact that you cannot sell your games used thanks to one-time activations. That's some total BS right there. You should absolutely be able to transfer the game to another account.

YES, you are!

Same here, spent right about $1000 for my rig, and its a bit overkill too. : P

hell that $900 was the basics...500GB HDD, 4GBs RAM, Quadcore AMD Processor, 9800GTX Vid Card, Motherboard, 750Watt Power supply(Overkill), case(overkill)...already had a 32" LCD TV to use as a monitor...and already had keyboard/mouse

$2000 for a computer is a myth.. last computer I bought had 360-esque capabilities and only cost me $400 to build. I say 360-esque, because it was capable of everything the 360 could do, but with slightly higher resolutions. you can spend $900 and get a VERY solid gaming PC that will last you for a number of years without even having to consider upgrading anything.

Sure you don't *neeeeed* to spend $2000 on a PC, but that doesn't mean people won't.

PC enthusiests like to go a little overboard, things like KW power supplies and SLI'ing 2 (or 3) of the most powerful expensive graphics cards, putting 4TB of hard drives in raid. It's not too hard to spend over $2000 on a PC if you really want the best.

Of course in the end your experience isn't fantastically different than someone who spent $900

"hell that $900 was the basics...500GB HDD, 4GBs RAM, Quadcore AMD Processor, 9800GTX Vid Card, Motherboard" I spent OVER $2000 for just that. Tech isn't cheap everywhere.

you spent over $2000 for that?? is it MY fault you got raped?? or did you get your PC 2 years ago?? Hell like I said I could have came out a LOT cheaper had I not went overkill on the case and power supply....for $2000 I could build a SLI'd overclocked Quadcore, liquid cooled BEAST!!!

I think THIS is the exact reason people don't pirate Valve games as much. They are a very respected development studio. Blizzard also carries this clout, and I'm sure wouldn't have anything to worry about (STILL not sure the real reason behind the no-LAN nonsense).

The real problem here is that Valve and other highly, highly respected studios are kind of in their ivory towers. People WANT to pay for their games. Other studios don't have that same kind of name recognition and I'm sure they suffer a much harder fate. Just look at Iron Lore.

I bet the MPAA and RIAA squish those types of studies, as it would put some serious holes in their "ONE DOWNLOAD = ONE LOST SALE" argument in their lawsuits.

I would imagine that it would vary depending on the game. For example, an overpriced game that gets pirated might have a lower number of lost sales per incidence of piracy than a reasonably-priced game. (Because the pirate might think "no way am I going to pay $70 for a game! If I can't pirate it, I'm still not going to buy it.", whereas if the game is reasonably priced might fall more often into the category of "a pirate would've bought the game if a pirated copy wasn't available".)

I once heard an independent game developer talk about experiments he did with pirates (he posted fake registration codes on the internet). His estimate was that about 1/3rd of all pirated copies are a lost sale. Although, there are a few reasons why that his estimate might be off.

Another article I read by a different game developer said that he thought that about 1/1000th of all pirated copies are a lost sale. His system for measuring that was very flawed, though, so I don't think his estimates have much legitimacy.

And the percentage of a lost sale due to piracy might even change over time, depending on the people involved in piracy. For example, when a person in a third-world country pirates, it might not be a lost sale (since the official price is outside their ability to pay for it). But, if a rich person in the first-world does it simply because they prefer not-paying to paying, it would be closer to 1 lost sale. If piracy increases in the first world, then the ratio of 'piracy to lost sales' will also change.

You can totally pirate a computer. It's called robbery

Wow, must be comfy under that rock.

I hope I'm not making an ass of myself by explaining it for you, but here goes: "A new 'ell it 'll be! For him."

"new" + "'ell" (Hell) = Newell

God, I feel a little bit dumber for actually typing that out.

that was the worst line