The Glade 4.0 :: View topic - Valve: Piracy Is More About Convenience Than Price

From the perspective of Valve, software piracy is caused more by convenience than it is by the cost of games.

That's according to co-founder Gabe Newell, who recently spoke at the North to Innovation conference in Seattle, giving a very frank and open outline of the modern economics of video games.

According to Newell, Russia -- which is often ignored as a market due to its high level of piracy -- is one of Steam's highest grossing countries.

"Russia now outside of Germany is our largest continental European market," said Newell, adding that "the people who are telling you that Russians pirate everything are the people who wait six months to localize their product into Russian."

"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," he said.

Valve's Surprising Free-To-Play Numbers

Earlier this year, Valve officially went "free-to-play" by offering its popular Team Fortress 2 as a microtransaction-supported game.

According to Newell, the move increased the game's online userbase by a factor of five. Surprisingly, where most companies are claiming free-to-play conversion rates -- that is, the percentage of players who end up spending money on in-game transactions -- are between 1 and 3 percent, Newell said Team Fortress 2 players convert far more frequently.

"We see about a 20 to 30 percent conversion rate of people who are playing those games who buy something," he revealed.

"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."

Author:	Lex Luthor [ Tue Oct 25, 2011 6:23 pm ]
Post subject:	Valve: Piracy Is More About Convenience Than Price
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/3808 ... _Price.php Quote: From the perspective of Valve, software piracy is caused more by convenience than it is by the cost of games. That's according to co-founder Gabe Newell, who recently spoke at the North to Innovation conference in Seattle, giving a very frank and open outline of the modern economics of video games. According to Newell, Russia -- which is often ignored as a market due to its high level of piracy -- is one of Steam's highest grossing countries. "Russia now outside of Germany is our largest continental European market," said Newell, adding that "the people who are telling you that Russians pirate everything are the people who wait six months to localize their product into Russian." "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," he said. Valve's Surprising Free-To-Play Numbers Earlier this year, Valve officially went "free-to-play" by offering its popular Team Fortress 2 as a microtransaction-supported game. According to Newell, the move increased the game's online userbase by a factor of five. Surprisingly, where most companies are claiming free-to-play conversion rates -- that is, the percentage of players who end up spending money on in-game transactions -- are between 1 and 3 percent, Newell said Team Fortress 2 players convert far more frequently. "We see about a 20 to 30 percent conversion rate of people who are playing those games who buy something," he revealed. "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." It's interesting how piracy builds markets in other countries before the companies that made the content even get there. Also, why do many content publishers often react to piracy by making things harder to get?

Author:	Lenas [ Tue Oct 25, 2011 7:42 pm ]
Post subject:
Of course it is. Even when I purchase a game from a brick and mortar shop, it's VERY likely that I'm still going to "pirate" it just to get rid of stupid, draconian DRM methods. No DRM and pay-what-you-want models are successful and I hope they continue in the future.

Author:	Darkroland [ Tue Oct 25, 2011 9:04 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Valve: Piracy Is More About Convenience Than Price
Valve has said this many, many times, and as steam is by far the delivery system I own the most games on I'm compelled to agree. I think a lot of publishers have the idea that their customers are idiots, and just don't know that there are better options out there. I am still hopeful that they will come to their senses and realize that awful, AWFUL drm systems are crippling their games and ruining the consumer experience. Kind of like unskippable previews on DVD/blu-ray discs. Nothing like treating paying customers like thieves.

Author:	Lex Luthor [ Tue Oct 25, 2011 9:16 pm ]
Post subject:
If you ever were unfortunate enough to use Steam around 2004 or so, you'd know it completely sucked *** and as annoying as any DRM. Incredibly though, it slowly turned into something worthwhile and now it's fantastic.

Author:	Darkroland [ Tue Oct 25, 2011 9:25 pm ]
Post subject:	Re:
Lex Luthor wrote: If you ever were unfortunate enough to use Steam around 2004 or so, you'd know it completely sucked * and as annoying as any DRM. Incredibly though, it slowly turned into something worthwhile and now it's fantastic. I've been using it since launch. The only thing that sucked * about it were launch or patch days, just like every MMO ever. Fortunately, the server infrastructure eventually caught up.

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Author:	Lex Luthor [ Tue Oct 25, 2011 10:14 pm ]
Post subject:
When Steam came out, it used to be that thing that stopped my friends and me from playing mods on the same Half-life copy, and it provided no benefit otherwise. All games in 2003-2004 lived in their own directories, and Steam's attempts to organize them under one roof didn't go very far. So it was just more clutter.

Author:	Raltar [ Wed Oct 26, 2011 12:48 pm ]
Post subject:
Steam was **** terrible when it was first released. It's gotten better but I still prefer to not use it whenever possible. If I didn't get some of the discounts on games I've gotten on there, I would have hardly of ever used it at all. It pissed me off to no end that Fallout: New Vegas was Steam instead of GFWL.

Author:	Darkroland [ Wed Oct 26, 2011 3:05 pm ]
Post subject:	Re:
Raltar wrote: Steam was **** terrible when it was first released. It's gotten better but I still prefer to not use it whenever possible. If I didn't get some of the discounts on games I've gotten on there, I would have hardly of ever used it at all. It pissed me off to no end that Fallout: New Vegas was Steam instead of GFWL. That's funny, I don't know a single person that likes GFWL. People hate it SO MUCH!

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