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| [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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| 28. |
Re: Gabe Newell on Valve Hardware and Owning Steam Games |
Feb 20, 2012, 13:20 |
Beamer |
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CJ_Parker wrote on Feb 20, 2012, 13:06:
Creston wrote on Feb 20, 2012, 13:02:
Obviously you don't own your games on Steam, but if you can't tell the difference in attitude between how Steam views its customers, and how EA/Origin views it, then I don't really know what to tell you.
Yeah. Awesome. So Valve regards us as top class hookers while for EA we're street slut hookers. Does it really make a difference? At the end of the day we're still getting fucked  .
I don't use Origin and see no need to, though I support there being alternatives and competition. Right now it may be ahead of where Steam was at this point of its lifespan, but from a consumer standpoint there's no reason to compare things at two states other than the present.
But Gabe danced around ownership. He gave a stock answer about doing what's best for the consumer. Yeah, ok, every successful company does this, and every company ends up less successful a while after they stop.
He avoids, though, that their customers aren't just end consumers. And that sometimes doing something that, on its face, seems worse for end consumers is better for them (e.g., taking away some of their rights in exchange for a vastly expanded product assortment.) And I'd wager Gabe is quite fine with the ownership model as it stands. |
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