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Gabe Newell on Valve Hardware and Owning Steam Games

[Feb 20, 2012, 11:27 am ET] - Share - Viewing Comments

An interview on The PA Report talks with Valve's Gabe Newell, discussing some general topics with Valve's Managing Director, whose beard is growing in nicely (though not to the magnificent degree mine has at this point). The discussion covers things like his work schedule, his fascination with wearable computers, the possibility Valve might someday sell hardware, pricing games on Steamand more (thanks nin). He also offers responses to questions about to what degree customers won games purchased on Steam:

But even from kind of a more general point of view, you have services like Steam or Origin where these many purchases and micro-transactions and all these transactions we’re making through multiple companies are kind of tied to this overreaching account. Do you have lawyers who kind of look at the legal implication of where exactly you fit into that relationship?

Yeah, we have lawyers who look at stuff all the time, I’m not sure I’m answering your question directly. It’s sort of like this kind of messy issue, and it doesn’t really matter a whole lot what the legal issues are, the real thing is that you have to make your customers happy at the end of the day and if you’re not doing that it doesn’t really matter what you think about various supreme court decisions or EU decisions. If you’re not making your customers happy you’re doing something stupid and we certainly always want to make our customers happy. And I think we have a track record of having done that.

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30.

Re: Gabe Newell on Valve Hardware and Owning Steam Games

Feb 20, 2012, 13:29

Tumbler

Well valve certainly owns my steam games. There is no question that my access to the game I've paid for on steam are not mine at all but belong to Valve and Steam. I have no ability to sell my steam library so I do not own them in any real sense. This is why I pay very little for most of my steam games. Regardless how much the game is worth the value I get from playing it through steam is on par with rental prices which to me are around $5.

There have been odd little comments about passing these accounts on to your children, like when you pass your stuff on to your children...what happens to these accounts?

Just understand what you're paying for. It's a rental. You're renting stuff from steam. It might be a very generous rental in your opinion but you have no rights. (at least nothing that has been upheld by the courts)

I think the courts should rule in the favor of consumers in these cases and force all these companies to allow these licenses to be retitled and transferred. Possibly at a cost to the consumer but there is no reason the consumers should not be granted ownership of these titles the way they are being marketed. The terms purchase, buy, and such which they freely use at the point of purchase should not be allowed if these companies are renting these titles. The reality that this is a rental is buried inside those eula's which is done deliberately because consumers are smart enough to know that you should be paying less for "rentals" than you do for ownership.




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