Gearbox Boss Says It's "Dangerous" to Let Valve Win

[Andy Chalk]

Gearbox Boss Says It's "Dangerous" to Let Valve Win

Steam [http://www.gearboxsoftware.com/] recently, calling it a money grab and saying that it's "really, really dangerous for the rest of the industry to allow Valve to win."

On a personal level, Randy Pitchford trusts the guys from Maximum PC [http://www.valvesoftware.com/], Pitchford admitted that Steam helps sell games but said he thinks the service creates an unavoidable conflict of interest for Valve and that the studio is using it to take unfair advantage of other developers, particular the smaller players.

"Steam helps. As a guy in this industry though, I don't trust Valve," Pitchford said. "I, personally, trust Valve. But I'm just saying, honestly, I think a lot of the industry doesn't."

He said he'd like to see Steam spun off from Valve as an independent entity, adding that it would be "much better if Steam was its own business."

"There's so much conflict of interest there that it's horrid. It's actually really, really dangerous for the rest of the industry to allow Valve to win," he said. "I love Valve games, and I do business with the company. But, I'm just saying, Steam isn't the answer. Steam helps us as customers, but it's also a money grab, and Valve is exploiting a lot of people in a way that's not totally fair. Valve is taking a larger share than it should for the service its providing. It's exploiting a lot of small guys."

So who would Pitchford like to see at the head of the digital distribution charge? Oddly enough, he seems to think console platform [http://www.microsoft.com]. For the time being, that's nice, because some of us aren't sure we want Microsoft to control [distribution]."

via: GamesIndustry [http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/pitchford-dangerous-for-the-industry-to-allow-valve-to-win]


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[Monkeytacoz]

you want Microsoft in charge? FUCK YOU, then they would charge us for free updates dumbass

 

[Ancientgamer]

The conflict of interests really is quite blatant. I know people trust valve quite a bit, but that's not really a situation you ever want to see.


Then again, I sure as hell wouldn't want to see microsoft running things.

 

[IrrelevantTangent]

Yeah, it's totally dangerous for a company that's known for its high-quality products (most of the time), attention to detail, and fanservice to actually get ahead in the industry. And Steam is exploiting people how exactly? Mind elaborating, Mr. Pitchford?

 

[Chaossebba]

Microsoft would charge for every bit of update. You want the heavy update? 5 bucks. You want the spy update? 6 bucks.

 

[Cousin_IT]

Hmmm...Steam, or Games for Windows...Ill stick to the industry compromising, evil competition beater that is Steam to the broken, money grabbing, waste of time that is Microsofts 1/2 assed attempt.

 

[oranger]

hell, the whole thing stinks. anybody remember a certain "episodic" game, sold in 10 dollar chunks? what would have happened if that strategy had worked? how many "chapters" would there have been before we got the whole game? 10? 11? what I'm getting at is this: steam is evil,
because if the people running it had their way, we would all be paying sooo much money for our games...hmm, I seem to recall some dude saying we gamers are getting too much game for our money, it was an article here somewhere

 

[Therumancer]

I think this is just one issue among many with digital distribution. Ultimatly everyone winds up having to trust the source. As a consumer it's an even bigger issue because if the service you buy from goes down, and you've deleted your game (or require a connection to that service to 'verify' it) your out of luck. I can't wait to see the issues when you see a digital distribution company go belly up while the game developers still remain and the lynch mobs forming to get the game developers to honor the liscence irregardless of what the EULA probably said when you did that.

... and yeah, having game developers running the DD is a bad idea because of the competition involved. Microsoft is also a bad idea because it has it's own game studios.

In the end I think they should just kill the entire idea, disc in hand is how it should be.

As far as the "little guys" being exploited, I find that kind of lulzworthy and it makes one of my earlier points. People start screaming about how this great is for indie developers, but the bottom line is that if you can't support a $10 direct-to-budget format to begin with you probably shouldn't have been developing to begin with, and shouldn't be surprised when someone starts nailing you one way or another.

See, I personally don't like the idea of indie games via services like Steam because the industry is already full of tons of shovelware. All it's going to do is create an even bigger glut of garbage, that a lot of people aren't going to trust based on a few paragaphs of text. At least with the $10 shovelware and such you know it was at one time a fairly successful game, OR the developer had a certain degree of resources to invest.

I can't wait for someone to realize that they can release somelike like a "Pac Man" clone under false pretenses, grab some Steam/DD sales, and then go out of business only to pull the same scam later. At least with a physical disc if I get "Punk'd" the clerk/manager at my local store has to deal with me (and anyone else I bring along for support) yelling at them, making a scene, and driving away business if they don't make things right/refund me. With DD I have no such option. It removes the entire "human factor" from the equasion which is going to make scams a lot easier in the long run.

 

[Lord George]

Yes damn Valve with there high quality games and free updates for older games, I mean how dare they give people a system to easily download games and access them from any computer easily and quickly.

 

[The Rockerfly]

I don't want to see anyone particularly in charge, it's good to have other companies around.
Companies need competition, it helps them creatively and if one was in charge then they could be as dick as they like and no ne could do anything about it

 

[Dan Shive]

Meh. I like Valve. It's one of the few video game companies I have fuzzy feelings for. Come to think of it, it's the only one. I hear "made by Valve", I think "that's worth trying". It's the only company I can think of where this very real potential for conflict of interests doesn't really bother me.

Of course, given adequate reason to be bothered, I wouldn't be blindly loyal to them, either.

 

[Woodsey]

Didn't he say in the last few days that Fallout 3 would of been better with more shooty-shooty and less talky-talky?

Considering it's an RPG that's utter BS.

And considering I haven't seen anyone say they don't like using Steam, I'd say he's talking out of his arse.

 

[Anton P. Nym]

Ah, Steam, the world's most popular DRM package... though it's obvious that Pitchford is bloviating yet again, I can see his point that a monopoly on digital distribution channels would be bad for developers and ultimately gamers. (No matter who holds the monopoly... companies can change over time.)

-- Steve

 

[XerxesQados]

Well, there's also Direct2Drive. They don't have an auto-update system (yet), but they generally carry the same catalog as Steam.

Sometimes I prefer buying from D2D because I can share a purchase with my boyfriend since it's not tied to a player account, and I can download the game in OS X and only boot into Windows to install and play it. But even for people who don't need that sort of thing, at least there is competition. Valve hasn't won.

 

[Christemo]

Microsoft is possibly the worst developer and publisher i know about, save Atari, obviously.

this is my vision of steam if Microsoft took over.

-everything would be green and white, text included, which would make Steam lose it charm.
-prices on free updates and patches.
-higher prices, MUCH HIGHER.
-worse customer service.
-no weekend deals.
-friend system fucked over to resemble XBL.
-price for owning Steam, just like XBL.
-360 advertising all over.
-more developers, including the ones that have made shitty games.
-no porting of older games, KOTOR for example.
-Halo adversiting all over.
-no Valve games, because Microsoft is a bunch of greedy clusterfucks.
-fake Metacritic scores for Microsoft games.
-no "Add non-Steam game" option.
-no downloadable mods, like Zombie Panic or Zombie Master.
-do i need to continue?


in short, Steam would be fucking horrible.

 

[wrshamilton]

I think it's difficult to say that Evil has anything to do with overcharging for videogames.

That comment about Fallout 3 is probably true, though, since Bethesda seems to be firmly against paying anyone who can write.

 

[archvile93]

As weird as this sounds to me, I actually trust Valve. I guess that's inevitable though when It's the only company I can think of that at the very least seems to care more about quality than profit.

 

[nonW00t]

WOW!!! Jealousy of success is so amazing.