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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Feb 20, 2012, 23:39
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Re: jtw321@gmail.com Feb 20, 2012, 23:39
Feb 20, 2012, 23:39
 
Razumen wrote on Feb 20, 2012, 23:27:
Blackhawk wrote on Feb 20, 2012, 21:47:
Razumen wrote on Feb 20, 2012, 19:59:

Yeah, far be it from us to expect the co-founder and managing director of Valve to know the details of his own business.

We live in a society where even lawyers have to specialize in a narrow branch of the law to gain an even basic understanding of it. There is absolutely no reason to expect a 'managing director' to understand the thousands of subtle legal quirks related to a company. That's why corporations have packs of expensive attorneys - to tell the directors how things work when they have need of a specific piece of information.

This isn't some small trivial piece of information we're talking about here, this is a basic question of what rights the customer has to the content they're purchased on Steam. Considering that Gabe is basically the 'talking head' of Valve and the 'managing director (Yes, the "Managing Director" or in other words, the CEO - you know, the Head honcho, the big guy, the boss.) I think it is not unreasonable that the head of the company should have informed answers to these kind of expected questions beforehand.

We live in a society where even lawyers have to specialize in a narrow branch of the law to gain an even basic understanding of it. There is absolutely no reason to expect a 'managing director' to understand the thousands of subtle legal quirks related to a company. That's why corporations have packs of expensive attorneys - to tell the directors how things work when they have need of a specific piece of information.

And besides we all know the real answer is that you don't own the games. That's always been the case. You don't own any software unless you wrote it yourself and even then your employer or university might want a piece. Valve owes you their best effort, and you if you don't think you received it, you sue. But the question was also about Valve's place between licensor and licensee. Basically Gabe said he has lawyers to worry about international legal issues and his job is to make customers happy. Hardly a dodge.

This comment was edited on Feb 20, 2012, 23:46.
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