
Valve: Piracy Is More About Convenience Than Price  - rprouse
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/38082/Valve_Piracy_Is_More_About_Convenience_Than_Price.php
======
politician
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.

~~~
wccrawford
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 before localization, I'd
find a way to get it early. Even if that meant learning English and engaging
in piracy.

These companies understand hype and the way it drives sales, and then
completely fail to use that knowledge when it comes to other countries. They
won't wait! The hype has pushed them into getting it NOW, by hook or crook.

~~~
w1ntermute
> 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.

~~~
kelnage
But yet they pirate the games anyway. My guess is that you'll find that a
large percentage of "gamers" in non-English speaking countries speak English
well enough to understand most games and don't want to wait the 6+ months
required to translate the game to their local tongue when they could be
playing online against US players.

This was especially true a few years back, when some publishers wouldn't
release games in the UK until the "European" translation was finished!

~~~
GreenNight
It depends. A shooter? Yeah, piece of cake. An RPG? Sorry, but depending on
the country no that many people could understand it well enough to follow the
story.

TV Series do get around the moment they get on a torrent site, but many many
people can follow them thanks to the subtitles provided by fellow viewers. If
not they would have a harder time following them.

------
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.

------
brc
The only 'piracy' I've done recently is to purchase a Kindle book using
convulted means (fake US account, Proxy service, using gift card) then crack
the DRM on the books so I can read it on my Kindle.

I'm sure the publishers and licensing people think they are very clever
restricting content to people in other countries, but in reality, they are
shooting both feet off.

The old ways are gone. There is now one global IP market, whether they like it
or not. They either get with the program or they lose money and die. Sucks to
be them, but that's creative destruction at work. You can't differential
price, you can't licence in one market but not another. You either release the
content for sale to everyone, or you will be worked around.

~~~
beseku
This is a massive sticking point for me as an Englishman living in Japan. The
huge delay in getting films and, especially, TV over here coupled with the IP
address and other restrictions in place by certain providers is a huge
encouragement to me to Bittorrent instead. Luckily I now have a UK and US
iTunes account that serves me well for most things.

My biggest gripe is with the UK sports companies - a lot of American friends
can legally stream NBA, MFL and baseball via a global site that charges for
high quality content. The English Premier League and cricket bodies are
absolutely blind to this - there is no way for me to legally watch these
sports via the web (and cable TV here isn;t possible in my apartment), even
though I'd happily pay through the nose to get a fix. Because of this, I'm
endlessly looking for ways to catch games via means that they spend huge
amounts trying to chase and shut down.

Now that language and communication face such a low barrier, staggered
releases and restrictions by market make no sense.

~~~
peng
Have you tried using UK and US-based VPNs to get through to the region-locked
content? I've spent a couple months in China with a California-based VPS, and
I'm able to SSH tunnel to watch everything I want on Hulu.

~~~
beseku
I;ve tried, with some success. This kinda makes my point though, using shady
means to download content because I am of one nationality and living abroad -
not exactly an edge case.

------
ethank
[http://www.blackrimglasses.com/2008/08/23/the-frustration-
of...](http://www.blackrimglasses.com/2008/08/23/the-frustration-of-wanting-
something-you-cant-buy/)

I worked in an industry (still do sort of) that took a huge hit from piracy,
and reacted by making it more difficult to do things rather than respond to
what piracy exposed.

While I still worked at a major I wrote this.

TL;DR summary:

I heard a song on the radio, and used Shazam to look it up. The song was
"Forgotten Years" by Midnight Oil, and it was 2008. I tried in vain to buy
this song legally before having to finally get it through illegal means
(torrents). To offset this, I donated directly to the lead singers political
campaign in Australia.

As I stated then and I still believe:

"I believe that the ultimate challenge for media providers is to make systems
of actualization which narrow the gap from desire to the fulfillment of said
desire. The only true way to fight one form of ubiquity is with another form
of ubiquity."

PS: Ironically the video embedded in my blog post is now blocked because it
was uploaded by the band's non-US label.

------
sdfjkl
In the olden days, pirating was hard. Hard to get the pirated game, hard to
install the crack, hard to get it working again when a new patch came out and
often the cracks didn't quite work and you had to find another one in the
middle of your playthrough or even restart from the beginning because it broke
something in your savegame. Just buying the game meant installing and playing,
no hassle.

Today, installing a game you bought is harder than pirating it. You have to
activate it, type in a 25 digit code you found on the box (wait, is that a B
or a 3? Damnit.). It'll need an internet connection to activate, but the
activation server is usually overloaded and doesn't work on launch day. Then
it wants to patch itself before letting you play, because the stuff you got on
the DVD you bought is actually out of date by the time you get home. You also
have to sign up for some stupid web service that you never wanted, and have
another login and password that you must not forget (or else you can't play
anymore and your savegames are gone with it). Except if it's GFWL (Microsoft's
Games for Windows Live). Then you also have to figure out why that damn thing
gets stuck in an update loop and makes you log into things just to play an
entirely offline, single player game (then you have to install xliveless,
which avoids that). Pirating is so much easier. You torrent the thing, unpack
it and play, just the way it should be.

I'm glad Gabe Newell gets this, and it's apparent in Valve's Steam (except for
some reason they permit GFWL infested games, but at least they warn you about
it).

------
nhangen
I pay for DirectTV, Verizion FIOS, Netflix, and have an Apple TV, yet I still
can't get content delivered how I want it.

The only thing the big networks get right is sports.

If I forget to record something, I have to go to Hulu, where I can't stream it
to my TV in HD unless I buy another device. My alternative is to pay 99 cents
(or more) on iTunes.

I also have to buy a switch so I don't run out of HDMI ports, and it's a pain
in the ass to switch between all of my boxes.

Yeah, piracy is starting to sound good.

Oh...forgot to mention that Netflix's selection currently sucks big time.

~~~
zbisch
I don't mean to sound critical but why do you think networks get sports right?
I actually feel like this is one of the worst offenders. Say I want to watch
every Chicago Blackhawks game this season (or any other hockey team). Well,
then I need to sign up for Versus. In order to get that I need to sign up for
a Cable/satellite service. But I don't want all the channels, I watch what I
want on broadcast or rent/stream. I just want to be able to watch a game when
I have the time. I don't like watching normal shows TV on cable (can't stand
commercials), so I rent DVDs or stream it on Netflix. Now there really aren't
any options for me to just get sports, without paying way extra for a bunch of
crap I don't want.

I can sign up for NHL Center Ice (Internet streaming), but then I don't really
get to watch every game online, most are subject to blackouts, playoff games
are spotty, Stanley Cup games are nonexistent. And since I don't have cable, I
miss local games because it's subject to black out in my team's region.

Maybe it's better with other sports, but I really wish there was an easier way
to select a team I want to follow or pay to watch games as I watch them, and
only pay for that. The only station that I thought got things right was
Telemundo during the world cup, even though I don't know any more spanish than
"no hablo espanol". I watched all the games there since I didn't want to sign
up for cable to get ESPN for two months.

Basically I'd just like a way to pay for season passes (and actually get all
the games) or get a decent sports channel without paying for a bunch I don't
want.

Edit: Sorry if this seemed nonsensical, my frustration with finding an easy
way to watch certain sports has gone on for a couple years now.

~~~
corin_
Living in the UK means I don't have to put up with blackouts, so ignoring that
I can say that options for watching US sports are immense compared to what we
have in Europe.

The fact that I can pay a hundred bucks and watch any MLB game live or on
delay, on my PC, iPad or TV, in HD, with pausing, skipping to inning or
batter, picture in picture, and more... that's mind-blowing for me.

~~~
zbisch
Yeah, that sounds very awesome and like exactly what I want. Is this using the
MLB streaming service?

I really wish I could do the same thing with hockey games. I just really
despise the idea of either paying a chunk of money and not being guaranteed of
watching every game, or paying way more for a bunch of stuff I don't want to
get almost every game.

Out of curiosity, what sorts of options do you have in Europe?

~~~
corin_
Yeah, that's with an MLB.tv Premium subscription - and same thing for NBA.

In Europe sports leagues (or at least the ones I've cared about) don't provide
their own media options, it's all through TV networks. So you can subscribe to
Sky Sports channels which are something like $50-$70/month, you can subscribe
to ESPN which is something like $20/month (figures off the top of my head),
etc. And then you can watch whatever games they chose to show.

And some games in some sports are shown on free to watch channels such as BBC
and ITV, but these are highly limited. For example in football (sorry, soccer)
you don't get any league games on BBC/ITV, but they will do the world cup (big
international tournament every 4 years), and a few other things now and then.

I'd love to be able to pay for a digital service that gives me all Premier
League (top level of soccer in the UK) matches - I tried, with a US proxy, Fox
Sports' offering in this area, but the matches on offer were limited, and the
video quality was truly terrible. It was painful to watch on my PC, yet alone
TV.

------
fourk
There are plenty of people who pay between $10 and $100 a month to have access
to a dedicated seedbox in order to maintain ratio requirements on private
torrent trackers. These people are a clear example of existing willingness to
pay for access to content. Whenever content providers figure this out and can
provide a service that has similar selection, availability, portability, and
quality, they'll be sitting on a goldmine.

Resistance to change can be blinding. I have my doubts that such a service
will exist anytime soon, however much sense it might make for their bottom
line.

EDIT: this is in reference to TV/Movie industries, where this is much less of
a solved problem than games and music.

~~~
Anti-Ratfish
Very good point. Here in NZ much of what I want is literally years away from
coming out and paying for it through legal means isn't an option. But paying
in the form you suggest is an option. It's annoying to have to resort to
illegal measures which actually cost money to get something.

------
jakeonthemove
It's also interesting to see how piracy builds a market in third world
countries without the companies even being present there.

Like their example, Russians were pirating games and software long before
Valve or other companies had a presence there, and as soon as they came in,
they already had clients.

It was the same with Microsoft's Windows and Office - people got so used to
them, for example, in Poland, Latvia, Romania, that they just bought licensed
versions when they became available (government orders alone must've made them
hundreds of millions in revenue).

~~~
ryan-allen
I wonder how much of that was deliberate or a seized opportunity at a later
date? It never was very difficult to pirate Windows and Office back in the
day.

------
pixie_
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.

~~~
getsat
> 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...

~~~
nitrogen
Rumor has it that if Valve went under and Steam was shut down, they'd release
a patch to allow their games to continue to function.

~~~
suivix
But how could you back the games up or move them to another computer?

~~~
shuzchen
Same way that you do it now - copy the relevant files out of
~/Steam/steamapps/ to wherever you need. I've gotten around re-downloading
huge games because everything you need is in there (when I've already done it
once before on a different machine, or when I'm getting a game a local friend
of mine already downloaded). The only thing stopping you from playing it is
the DRM on the executable, but the mythical Steam-is-dead-here-you-go-patch
will solve that.

------
omgtehlion
[http://30.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ky29p9QR161qzu090o1_500.jp...](http://30.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ky29p9QR161qzu090o1_500.jpg)

------
DrStalker
Steam used to be a great way to get games at the same time as the USA for the
same price. Now it allows access at the same time but with significantly
higher prices in Australia.

In this case it _is_ about price. I don't like being ripped off, even if the
amount I'm being ripped off is slightly less than if I went into a physical
store to buy the game.

So far this behavior is limited to AAA titles from publishers other than
Valve, so I'm happy playing indie games and waiting for Half Life 2: Episode
3.

~~~
bluedanieru
Do yourself a favor and get a (preferably pro-rated) host based in the US and
set up squid on it.

~~~
mambodog
Not much use without a US billing address.

------
aw3c2
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).

~~~
Pewpewarrows
Just FYI, they fixed not being able to start directly into offline mode about
a month or so ago.

~~~
aw3c2
Nice! Does that mean I can purchase a game and then play it offline for all
eternity?

------
axefrog
If only broadcast media organisations would take this on board. If a movie or
an episode of a popular show is released even one day later via convenient
streaming media channels than it is through other traditional mediums, it'll
be pirated. Piracy is an international issue and will never ever be solved, or
at least reduced significantly, until these companies accept the internet for
what it is -- a ubiquitous global distribution channel -- and release content
everywhere simultaneously.

------
stcredzero
What people don't realize about DRM, is that it's asymmetric warfare, and the
_corporation_ is in the role of the guerrilla! If you have a popular product
and everyone in the universe wants to play your game, then your few
development groups (formed against bureaucratic friction) are going up against
the vast resources and nearly frictionless meritocracy of the internet. Don't
take the pirates on head-on! Be sneaky. For example, err strongly on the side
of false negatives (be forgiving) and greatly separate in time pirate
detection from any consequences. Never set up a situation where one crack
gives the pirate the keys to the kingdom. That's like facing a huge army in a
set-piece battle with your guerrillas. Only depend on a given detection scheme
for a short while.

~~~
bluedanieru
Sounds like a great way to give your game a reputation as a bug-ridden piece
of shit. This happened to The Witcher.

How about a delivery mechanism that uses technology in a sane manner and
doesn't punch paying customers in the face with stupid bullshit?

~~~
stcredzero
_Sounds like a great way to give your game a reputation as a bug-ridden piece
of shit._

Sounds like the same knee-jerk reaction. (Which usually shows you haven't
really understood what I'm proposing.) If the consequences are greatly
separated in time from detection, and there is strong bias towards false
negatives, then the result will be to give the cracked copies a reputation as
an incomplete, half-baked piece of crap.

In any case, DRM should never manifest as anything resembling a bug in the
game. It should only manifest as a failure of the pirates to do their job and
reduced access to online and downloadable content. Remember, guerrilla warfare
is about _the long term_ and not the short term. In the short term, there are
defeats and retreats for the smaller force, but in the long term, the larger
force is persuaded that the effort is no longer worth the reward.

Absolute containment is the essential failed strategy of regular armies taking
on the guerrillas. It's also the source of everything you find objectionable
about DRM. (Analogy: the armed force that's _unpopular_ with the local
population.)

~~~
bluedanieru
Yeah, I get it. It's not a very complicated idea and it's been tried before.
Your mistake is that you assume people are going to attribute the bugs to the
cracked copy and not to the game itself.

People will look up the game and see that a level fails to load or the game
otherwise breaks at some point, but no mention by the person reporting it that
they're using a cracked copy. So they decide not to buy the game.

I'm not even going to bother presenting the evidence that DRM tends to
increase piracy rates because I'm sure you've seen it and have simply chosen
to ignore it. Just as you've ignored the truly best strategy for deal with
guerrilla rebels.

~~~
stcredzero
_People will look up the game and see that a level fails to load or the game
otherwise breaks at some point, but no mention by the person reporting it that
they're using a cracked copy. So they decide not to buy the game._

Here's a prime example of not understanding what I'm proposing. This would be
the manifestation of DRM as a bug -- which is one of the things I say you
should _not_ do!

------
noarchy
I think that people are still willing to pay for PC games as a service. That's
what massively multiplayer games are effectively doing. These days, you can
often download the game client at the cost of the bandwidth to do it ("free"
in the eyes of many), but you pay for access to the servers that are
maintained for the players, and you may also pay for expansions.

There are pirate servers, of course, but those suffer from instability, as
well as the high probability of disappearing once Big Company X goes after
them. That's not a risk that many players want to take, given the time
investment that is often made in such games; so they pay to play.

------
jcscott81
Of course. From games to music to movies, when you limit the utility of a
legitimately purchased product you will only serve to make the pirated version
that much more appealing. Case in point: I can buy a movie from a Hollywood
studio in Japan, but I play it on my US DVD player. If I were to pirate that
same movie - I can save $20 and watch it anywhere! Localization and DRM =
terrible concepts.

------
kbatten
When I can get a game for free that has fewer restrictions than something I
pay for then the system is broken.

Looking at you Ubisoft.

------
watty
Piracy has never been more convenient in gaming than the traditional route,
even with DRM. How convenient is it to download 4GB, follow cryptic
instructions, apply a crack, be banned from online play, be unable to update
patches, etc. I'm sure a small few pirate games due to DRM reasons but price
is the main reason.

~~~
mappu
Hmm? Piracy is incredibly convenient. Cracks are consistent and easy to use,
updates generally appear regularly, you can pass the installer to your friends
offline, and you can happily play without internet connection long after the
official servers die out.

Online play is a different matter, since you might have centralised server-
side authentication. Online multiplayer is a definite advantage to going
legit. Otherwise, piracy is nothing if not convenient.

------
zemanel
he's totally right. I have almost bought more games in a year of having a
Steam account than in the last 10 years and i prefer to buy them on Steam for
the "convenience" of it's "cloud based" service.

------
rsanchez1
I know that I didn't buy games before Steam, or at least as much as I do now.
But price is also a factor. I really have to think about it when a game costs
more than $15, but Steam usually has good games on sale anyway. Steam and
other digital distributors have made me more of a gamer.

~~~
DanBC
I buy, play, then sell games.

Steam does not let me do this; thus those games are more expensive to me. I do
not buy Steam games.

~~~
ryan-allen
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 hand game market really short changes the
publishers, and it's very expensive to make a top title!

Imagine how much Portal 2 cost Valve to make, was it worth it?

~~~
slowpoke
>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, by the way.

Besides, you are confusing publishers and developers. Valve is a rare case
where both are one and the same, making them a very weird exception, but in
general, direct distribution is bad for publishers (which is a good thing).
It's really the same as with the (major) labels.

>Imagine how much Portal 2 cost Valve to make, was it worth it?

Valve is also a rare case in that they still make games worth playing. Most of
the rest of the industry is a sea of bland, uncreative genericness with fancy
graphics. I acknowledge Valve for this, but I still refuse to pay for access
to games. I want a copy that plays where I want, whenever I want, and that
still works three decades from now.

Until this insanity stops, I hoist the black flag. Yarr.

~~~
chadgeidel
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).

~~~
slowpoke
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...](http://blog.wolfire.com/2009/07/linear-algebra-for-game-developers-
part-1)

~~~
nitrogen
Thanks for the link! The concept from part 3 of treating the axes as unit
vectors that default to (1, 0) and (0, 1) but can be rotated at will really
helped bridge the gap in my mind between rotating vectors "manually" and using
matrix multiplication.

