Valve says agressive DRM on games is a step backwards

Gabe Newell, the company president of Valve, seems to think that the idea of always-on DRM is a bad idea.  Newell was critical of usage-stifling DRM in a recent interview, stating "This belief that you increase your monetization by making your game worth less through aggressive digital rights management is totally backwards."

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Kotaku recently published a piece asking Newell about his thoughts on piracy and competition. Newell believes that the way to make money is through a reliable, integrated service and not heavy handed DRM measures that simply cause more headaches than anything else.

"The best way to fight piracy is to create a service that people need," Newell said. "I think (publishers with strict DRM) will sell less of their products and create more problems.”

"Customers want to know everything is going to be there for them no matter what: Their saved games and configurations will be there. They don't want any uncertainty."

Certainty is exactly what Valve’s Steam service offers. Saves are stored in the cloud and in many cases can be accessed from different machines, friends can be tracked and communicated with even between different games, and purchases can be made quickly, with software preloading available for new game releases.  Steam also makes things easy from the developer end, allowing game patches to be submitted and then pushed to consumers quickly.

Newell also talked to Kotaku about the idea of competitors creating services similar to Steam. He doesn’t seem particularly concerned by behemoth companies like EA competiting with Valve in the digital space.

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"They look at Steam as it is today and say, ‘Aha, we can do something like that too.' What they are missing is that this is just the beginning. The rate at which stuff is changing is dramatic. Things we've done in Steam are going to seem very primitive simply a few years down the road."

It’s clear that Valve isn’t willing to stand still and will always be iterating on Steam and the services it supplies to developers and consumers. The idea that more could be coming in the future is exciting because Steam is honestly one of the most enjoyable services I use on a daily basis.

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