GDC 2010: Gabe Newell Bashes DRM

[Judgement101]

I agree (Only cause I <3 Valve)

 

[xavierxenon]

Valve co-founder Gabe Newell thinks that overly restrictive DRM ultimately devalues a product.

Oh right, and forcing a game onto Steam which means I can never sell that game(without my entire account) or lend it to a friend isn't overly restrictive?

I'm glad I only use Steam as a way to contact people now.

 

[Mikester1290]

I can only applaud what Valve has done with Steam. I don't see why people complain about it. I guess people just like to complain. Games on DVD and CDROM's are dead, distribution of games software/service is done via internet and services like Steam. This is how it is, get over it.

For quite a lot of working adults (you know, those weirdos who have jobs and therefore money to buy games, yeah the ones who outnumber us hardcore guys by a large amount) Find it much more time efficient, easier and better to go into a store, buy a real product and then put it on their pc like that.
I know because I posed the exact same point to an industry analyst whilst doing some work for a major bank.

Well to be honest, it's not really much quicker to go buy the game in a store really is it? Unless you have an extremelly poo internet connection, or the game is some epically large capacity. Don't forget that you have to install the game once you get back home, Steam downloads and installs at the same time.

Steam also offers another advantage, put steam on a seperate drive and when/if the time comes you have to reinstall windows for whatever reason that's not a problem because the games will just work, a lot of games installed from cd's will not just work in my own experience due dll's and maybe other things, if anything IS missing.. Guess what? Steam uses it's magic and fixes those problems automatically. Maybe I'm wrong but that's I what I've seen for myself.

Steam wasn't such a great thing when it was relativley new, I used to FLUCKING hate it, the offline mode did have problems, but the platform has been massivley refined. So NERR!

Oh and another thing, for people saying that Steam massively devalues the second hand market, yep your right and you could probably go off on a tangent on that topic alone for ever. Noone has mentioned the Gifting (which I know doesn't apply to many games) What are peoples opinions on that please???