Gabe Newell – piracy not a pricing issue

Valve co-founder, Gabe Newell, has said that piracy is not a pricing issue, rather a service issue.

The legendary developer told the audience at the WTIA TechNW conference:

One thing that we have learned is that piracy is not a pricing issue. It’s a service issue. 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.

Newell added:

You say, ‘oh, we’re going to enter Russia’, people say, ‘you’re doomed, they’ll pirate everything in Russia’. Russia now outside of Germany is our largest continental European market…. The people who are telling you that Russians pirate everything are the people who wait six months to localise their product into Russia. … So that, as far as we’re concerned, is asked and answered. It doesn’t take much in terms of providing a better service to make pirates a non-issue.

Valve’s Steam accounts for approximately 70 % of the PC gaming market with the digital distribution service now valued at $4 billion.

Thanks, GeekWire.