When Gabe Newell Was asked about Video Game Piracy — Transcript

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1. 0:00What's Valve's take on piracy? Piracy to
2. 0:02us So we don't really worry about
3. 0:04piracy. You know, when we think You
4. 0:06know, when you look at the top 10 issues
5. 0:08on our list at any given point in time,
6. 0:11piracy is almost never, you know,
7. 0:13something that's that's on that list.
8. 0:16And the reason that we that we think
9. 0:18that we don't have issues with piracy
10. 0:20is [snorts]
11. 0:21that there's misconceptions in the
12. 0:23industry about what piracy is, right?
13. 0:25You know, there's assumption that what
14. 0:27is piracy? Piracy is about people want
15. 0:29to steal stuff from you, right? That
16. 0:31they don't want to pay any money and
17. 0:32they want to get your content. But when
18. 0:33you look at the fact that these people
19. 0:35have, you know, $2,000 PCs and, you
20. 0:38know, they're they're spending $50 a
21. 0:41month US more or more on their internet
22. 0:45connections, clearly they're willing to
23. 0:46spend money. So from our point of view,
24. 0:49what we saw more and more is that piracy
25. 0:51is a result of bad service on the part
26. 0:54of of game companies. So
27. 0:57an example where that was really clear
28. 0:58is Russia. Right, everybody in the
29. 1:00United States knows that [snorts]
30. 1:03Russians are pirates, right? So there's
31. 1:05no point in localizing your game.
32. 1:06There's no point in making your product
33. 1:08available in Russia cuz all they'll do
34. 1:10is pirate it.
35. 1:12And then when the reality is is that the
36. 1:14pirates in Russia were actually doing a
37. 1:17much better job than the games companies
38. 1:19themselves in localizing the product and
39. 1:22in making it available. So if I wanted
40. 1:24the product and I didn't want to wait 6
41. 1:26months to get the product, and if I
42. 1:28wanted it in Russian, I was going to
43. 1:29have to go to a pirate simply because I
44. 1:31couldn't get it any other way. And as
45. 1:33soon as the product became available at
46. 1:35the same time that it was available in
47. 1:37Australia or the UK or the United States
48. 1:39and it was localized in Russia, all of a
49. 1:42sudden our piracy problems in Russia
50. 1:44disappeared. So [snorts] it really is a
51. 1:46question of offering of viewing yourself
52. 1:48as How can you provide the best possible
53. 1:51service to your customers? And pricing
54. 1:53really is one of the less important
55. 1:55aspects of that whole equation. People
56. 1:58are happy to pay
57. 2:01money if they're getting what they
58. 2:03perceive as as a great product delivered
59. 2:05on their terms. This is an example where
60. 2:08a lot of the copy protection schemes go
61. 2:10in exactly the wrong direction. They
62. 2:12actually make They're actually negative
63. 2:14service, right? Suddenly I don't know if
64. 2:16this product So from as a customer, what
65. 2:18I want is I want my content on any
66. 2:20device at any point in time
67. 2:23with with a lot of [snorts] security,
68. 2:25right? I don't want to have to worry
69. 2:26when I buy a new PC that I won't be able
70. 2:28to play a game that I paid for.