Gabe Newell on Valve Hardware and Owning Steam Games

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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Re: Gabe Newell on Valve Hardware and Owning Steam Games
Feb 20, 2012, 11:29
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Re: Gabe Newell on Valve Hardware and Owning Steam Games Feb 20, 2012, 11:29
Feb 20, 2012, 11:29
 
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.

I don't think Gabe has ever had to deal with Steam support. Or the fact that any issue in payment is your fault even if it is clearly their fault. They also love suspending you for weeks at a time while it gets sorted out and take their sweet time getting back to you. When I had issues it took 3.5 days between replies.

Steam is getting too big for it's own good. If you have as many games on steam as I do then you run into an issue that causes a suspension all your steam games become unplayable. That is unacceptable. You might not have any issues but you will eventually. I thought steam was great till an issue on their end caused me to lose access to my account for 2+ weeks. It should have been fixable in a couple of days if not for their incompetent customer "service".
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