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: jtw321@gmail.com
Feb 21, 2012, 00:29
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Re: jtw321@gmail.com Feb 21, 2012, 00:29
Feb 21, 2012, 00:29
 
Dev wrote on Feb 21, 2012, 00:15:
Sepharo wrote on Feb 20, 2012, 23:39:
You don't own any software unless you wrote it yourself and even then your employer or university might want a piece.
I've ever heard of some employment contracts that even say stuff you do on your own time belongs to your employer.

Is that supposed to be a "never" or an "even"?

It depends on what sort of software your making. For example, if you make highly specialized software that controls lasers you can't easily go home and make your own with the knowledge you undoubtedly learned at your job. I'm not saying it's common, but there have been cases where former/current employers and universities have claimed to own code written by employees/students right?
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