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Valve: Piracy Is More About Convenience Than Price

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Re: Valve: Piracy Is More About Convenience Than Price

#31

Post by InclinedPlane »

Cushman wrote: post #9
parfe wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>But it should be noted that Steam's pre-release anti-piracy has no yet been broken. So it's not like they don't do DRM... In regards to pre-lease, A bit of a stretch calling what Valve does DRM. The pre-release stuff is straight up encrypted. It's a convenience for the end-user to pre-load the data. Once the game gets released you don't need to contact valve's servers for decryption keys every time you want to play.…

That's Steam's secret right there, yeah? Use DRM to make the product more convenient, and pirates will pay you for the privilege.

DRM by itself offers no benefit and significant down sides to end users. It's a bitter pill to swallow on its own. Most game makers slap DRM on a game and call it a day, then wonder why users complain. Valve adds enough sugar to their DRM to make it woorthwhile overall. To offset the downsides of DRM you get the benefit of super easy digital distribution, "cloud" storage of game saves and settings, easy installation on multiple computers, etc.

Re: Valve: Piracy Is More About Convenience Than Price

#32

Post by TruthElixirX »

aw3c2 wrote: post #10

Convenience of purchase or convenience of ownership/control? I am refusing to use Steam since I cannot be sure that I will be able to play when and however I like. In fact, I can be sure that at some point I would not be able to play my games because I lost internet access and Steam does not let me play (do not reply with "there is offline mode", that mode is a joke as you have to enable it whilst being online).

Offline mode has been fixed since at least the start of August, if not longer.

Re: Valve: Piracy Is More About Convenience Than Price

#33

Post by w1ntermute »

wccrawford wrote: post #4
politician wrote: post #2

TLDR: "The easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting antipiracy technology to work. It’s by giving those people a service that’s better than what they’re receiving from the pirates," Gabe Newell said.

But it should be noted that Steam's pre-release anti-piracy has no yet been broken. So it's not like they don't do DRM... Having said that, the conclusion is pretty much in line with what many gamers and pirates have been saying: Stop screwing the customer and creating pirates of them. I'm lucky enough to live in an English-speaking country, but I'm sure that if I lived in a country that typically sees long delays be…

> I'm lucky enough to live in an English-speaking country, but I'm sure that if I lived in a country that typically sees long delays before localization, I'd find a way to get it early.

Localization isn't just bureaucratic nonsense that was conjured up to aggravate gamers in foreign countries - the games actually need to be translated to the local language.

As for if you were living in one of those countries as an expat, as you suggest, that's a very small market and not worth pursuing.

Re: Valve: Piracy Is More About Convenience Than Price

#34

Post by afterburner »

>"We don’t understand what’s going on," he admitted. "All we know is we’re going to keep running these experiments to try and understand better what it is that our customers are telling us."

That's refreshingly honest, I like that. No bluster about how it must have happened because they're so awesome and made such brilliant calculated decisions.

Re: Valve: Piracy Is More About Convenience Than Price

#35

Post by redthrowaway »

politician wrote: post #2

TLDR: "The easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting antipiracy technology to work. It’s by giving those people a service that’s better than what they’re receiving from the pirates," Gabe Newell said.

It was a 250-word article; not sure a tl;dr is warranted. I certainly don't think it should be the top-voted comment.

Re: Valve: Piracy Is More About Convenience Than Price

#36

Post by getsat »

pixie_ wrote: post #29

Nowadays if a game isn't on Steam I just won't buy it. Mainly because keeping game CDs around is too much a hassle. When I buy something on Steam, I know I have that game for life and can re-install it quickly on any computer.

> I have that game for life

Not for life, but rather for the life of Steam as a platform. I don't see Valve going away anytime soon, but you never know...

Re: Valve: Piracy Is More About Convenience Than Price

#37

Post by mattgreenrocks »

redthrowaway wrote: post #35
politician wrote: post #2

TLDR: "The easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting antipiracy technology to work. It’s by giving those people a service that’s better than what they’re receiving from the pirates," Gabe Newell said.

It was a 250-word article; not sure a tl;dr is warranted. I certainly don't think it should be the top-voted comment.

Yes, it is discouraging seeing willful ignorance (aka, tl;dr) voted up on HN.

If people can't take the time to read the article, they shouldn't comment. Period.

Re: Valve: Piracy Is More About Convenience Than Price

#38

Post by slowpoke »

chadgeidel wrote: post #28
slowpoke wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Unfortunately for you, the game's industry is slowly and inevitably moving towards personal subscription based purchases. It's my guess that this model will work until the first major publisher, for whatever reason, collapses - or simply stops bothering with providing access to older games. Then people will realize how insane and retarded this entire system of "paying for access" is. Same goes for cloud computing, b…

You should check out the roaring indie game scene. The Humble Indie bundle ( http://www.humblebundle.com ) has given me spectacular gameplay for very little money. (No, I don't pay pennies for the bundle).

I know a bit about and highly respect the indie scene. They are, in my opinion, the future of game development in general. I paid for the second bundle, and was highly entertained for quite a while. It's a very cool project.

Slightly offtopic, but Wolfire has also written one of my favorite articles/blog posts as of recent, as well - http://blog.wolfire.com/2009/07/linear-algebra-for-game-deve...

Re: Valve: Piracy Is More About Convenience Than Price

#39

Post by archgrove »

slowpoke wrote: post #22
ryan-allen wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately for you, the game's industry is slowly and inevitably moving towards personal subscription based purchases. This is slowly driving down the price of games (which is a good thing), and hopefully it'll lead to higher revenues for publishers so (the good ones) can continue to make more and better games. More money for publishers and cheaper games for individuals? I think it's pretty win-win. The second han…

>Unfortunately for you, the game's industry is slowly and inevitably moving towards personal subscription based purchases. It's my guess that this model will work until the first major publisher, for whatever reason, collapses - or simply stops bothering with providing access to older games. Then people will realize how insane and retarded this entire system of "paying for access" is. Same goes for cloud computing, b…

How about this alternative: "Until this insanity stops, I don't purchase their product, and instead buy indy games or games from publishers that support my policies". Voting with your wallet will encourage these policies in developers.

If you don't adopt this approach, you look more like the normal "entitled, rationalising pirate", a story I see regularly going something like:

1) I want games that aren't just fancy graphics! Give me gameplay, and I'll pay! 2) Oh, so there are these games now. Well, now I want easy access! Give me downloads, and I'll pay! 3) Hold on, I can download? Well, now they're too expensive! Make them cheaper and I'll pay! 4) So iOS games are about $4.99 for a high quality title? Well, that's still to expensive! Make them cheaper, and I'll pay! 5) Oooo, $0.99. Well, that was published by EA, sooo - use a publisher that doesn't use DRM on any title, ever, even back in time and I'll pay! n + 1) Insert new demand here, then I'll pay!

The result here being that, actually, said person didn't actually want any of these things. They just want excuses to rationalise away their taking the work of a group of people that they evidently do want (otherwise, why bother pirating it) without any kind of remuneration so they can do those crazy greedy things like feeding their family and raising their kids.

Re: Valve: Piracy Is More About Convenience Than Price

#40

Post by forrestthewoods »

wccrawford wrote: post #4
politician wrote: post #2

TLDR: "The easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting antipiracy technology to work. It’s by giving those people a service that’s better than what they’re receiving from the pirates," Gabe Newell said.

But it should be noted that Steam's pre-release anti-piracy has no yet been broken. So it's not like they don't do DRM... Having said that, the conclusion is pretty much in line with what many gamers and pirates have been saying: Stop screwing the customer and creating pirates of them. I'm lucky enough to live in an English-speaking country, but I'm sure that if I lived in a country that typically sees long delays be…

"Steam's pre-release anti-piracy has no yet been broken"

That's because it can't be broken. You can't break what isn't there. Pre-load only downloads 99% of the game. Let the user download the game sans a few important bits, say the entire executable, and upon release enable download for the last tiny bit. Most retail games release weeks early because it's impossible to stop once the disc hits manufacturing.

Retail discs that require one-time Steam activation can be uncrackable because those important bits aren't on the physical disc. Once a Steam game is unlocked for play it's immediately cracked and released into the wild.

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