Frequent readers of this site may know that while I love the games put out by Valve, I have a serious problem with Gabe Newell (seen left, overlooking his empire) and his continued sloth when it comes to working with the PlayStation 3. After all, we all know that the people working at Valve are certified geniuses and to try and tell us that Valve is ignoring the PS3 because porting game code is too hard really undermines the intelligence of everyone working there… if you ask me. Anyways, Newell said something recently just made me laugh for all the wrong reasons.
In an email sent to a gamer by the name of Paul Reisinger, whom we will refer to as “Paul”, Newell speaks on his distaste for most DRM strategies:
…As far as DRM goes, most DRM strategies are just dumb. The goal should be to create greater value for customers through service value (make it easy for me to play my games whenever and wherever I want to), not by decreasing the value of a product (maybe I’ll be able to play my game and maybe I won’t).
We really really discourage other developers and publishes from using the broken DRM offerings, and in general there is a groundswell to abandon those approaches.
This is coming from Gabe Newell, the co-founder of Valve Software. The same Valve Software that owns and operates Steam, the very essence of DRM that requires you to be logged onto the internet to activate (and often times, play) your game.
Deep down I think most video game developers know that DRM doesn’t actually work to curb piracy. Hell, the highly touted SecuROM, the new DRM software that was supposed to bring an end to piracy as we know it, was undermined inside of 24 hours of Spore’s release.
Steam is an awesome service, don’t get me wrong. But sometimes you just have to look in the mirror and think to yourself “Gee, will I look like a giant hypocrite if I say this?”. In this case: Yes, you will. And do. Now go pick up a copy of “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Making PS3 Games”.
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The whole point is that Steam is not intrusive; it doesn’t get in the way of playing the games at all. Other DRM measures actually limit the number of installs a user can perform, before you have to ring the publisher to extend the loan of the game that you’ve paid for! And that is outrageous.
Steam is fine because it just works.
“Steam is fine because it just works.” Yeah a very smart comment, not…
Back when Half life 2 was released my house had a single 56k modem, on the first day I spent ages fixing my pc to use the Internet, and spent all day and night downstairs waiting for my copy to validate.
Once it was done, I took my pc back upstairs and went to bed. 13 hours later I found out some game data was corrupt, and spent another 1-2 days downloading.
After which I had no problems till about 2-3 months later when Steam wanted me to connect again.
Steam “just works” if you have a net connection to that PC, otherwise its just the same as trying to use a SecuROM disc in a drive that SecuROM is invalid with.
Having a 56k modem for the whole house in 2004 would is called “not keeping up with the times”. You can and you may always put the steam in offline mode. There are hardly any computers that still have 56k modems, now with broadband and sattelite internet.