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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71.
 
Re: Gabe Newell on Valve Hardware and Owning Steam Games
Feb 20, 2012, 21:41
Prez
 
71.
Re: Gabe Newell on Valve Hardware and Owning Steam Games Feb 20, 2012, 21:41
Feb 20, 2012, 21:41
 Prez
 
Valve has a done a whole lot right with Steam, but Steam support has got to get better. I have had to wait 3 days to have my account re-activated after it inexplicably got inactivated because their support is so godawful. My son got locked out of his when he couldn't reset his password after losing the email address he originally signed up on Steam with. That took 2 days to fix. Something that removes a customer's ability to access their entire library after putting their faith in your service should be addressed within a matter of hours, not days. It's the core of your goddamned business Gabe! It's inexcusable that Steam support has been so consistently terrible since the beginning. Nothing reminds you more starkly that you actually DON'T own your games like you used to when you are prohibited from playing your games because of problems on the service provider's end.

And if your goal is indeed to keep the customer happy, consider that a fail for all Half-life fans.

This comment was edited on Feb 21, 2012, 00:01.
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