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MPC: What’s your feeling about the health of the PC as a platform for games?
RP: It’s tricky, right? It’s a very powerful platform and it’s very flexible.
MPC: You mean the technology and the widening gap between Xbox 360 and PC’s capabilities?
RP: The longer the generation goes with the consoles, the more the extreme side of the PC will have an advantage, from a technology perspective. The other thing is that the PC is a very flexible platform, we can build PCs of a lot of different types. Another angle to that is that it’s a very accessible platform, it invites a lot of different development activities. However, the biggest games in the world are very costly to produce.
MPC: $30M-$40M for some AAA titles, right?
RP: It’s becoming very difficult to rationalize that on the PC alone. When you’re sitting in my seat, you want to make sure that you’ve thought through your business model, and want to make sure that you make at least as much as you spend. Because if we don’t make as much as we spend, we don’t get to do it again. That would suck.
MPC: We don’t want you guys delivering pizzas. That would be bad.
RP: We learn something each time, and we get better each time, so we want to make as much as we spend at minimum to keep going. We need to make a lot more than we spend if the pattern continues, in that the cost of the next project is much more than the cost of the previous project. So anyway, what does that mean? How healthy is the PC platform? I believe the PC has a hard time being a dominant gaming platform, because of the advantages it has. Because it’s such a powerful, flexible platform, it’s also less accessible, to ordinary folks.
MPC: There can be a high expense to them too.
RP: It can be expensive, but you can amortize your investment in a PC in a lot of different ways. Everyone uses email, browses the web, and watches YouTube on their PC, but you can’t really do that on a $250 console. You’re not just buying a PC as a gaming platform. You can rationalize that cost in a bunch of different ways. The big problem though, is the flexibility of the platform. It becomes a real challenge to push things because it’s difficult to know whether your customer has a high-end gaming machine or a 4-year-old computer with Intel integrated graphics. Ultimately though, that versatility of the platform means the PC won’t be the dominant platform, but it also means it will never go away.
MPC: Unless people stop making PC games.
RP: Which is very unlikely. Games will change, but we’re always going to amuse ourselves with whatever tools we have.
MPC: How worried are you about piracy?
RP: I think I look at piracy a little differently than most people. It sucks as a content creator who has invested a lot of, not just our money, but our souls, our creativity, and our time, to know that someone’s stolen something. That feels bad.
Part of it is price point, part of it is convenience, but part of it is that the bootleg, stolen stuff is harder to get now. There was a period of time when I could type in the name of a song and I’d find a website with it on there. Today, I have to use Bittorrent and all this other stuff.
MPC: You have to speak that language.
RP: I’m comfortable speaking that language, but a lot of people aren’t. Any computer savvy person is going to be able to pirate, but the question is “Can your mom pirate a song?”
MPC: But she has the option of paying the $0.89, and that’s easier for her.
RP: Amazon has made it super easy. On the videogame industry, especially on the PC side, we kind of suck on all three points. Our retail experiences are sometimes less convenient and less trustworthy than the alternative. There’s a ton of risk as a retail customer—half the time you don’t even know if that game is going to run on your PC.
Then there’s the DRM issue, which makes us even more skeptical of retail sales. DRM has been handled terribly for so many years. For example, false negatives are a disaster for everyone. I’d much rather have a false positive, and allow thieves to play, than prevent a paying customer from playing my game. The industry has destroyed a lot of good will with DRM problems.
MPC: You’ve had issues with this in the past?
RP: The more control we have, the better off we are. If you look at Hell’s Highway, there was virtually no DRM. We put our foot down on that, and they said “Ok, we’ll go your way.” Still, that’s not an ideal situation, because we released it and it was immediately stolen. Release and steal wasn’t good.
Comments are closed on this article
rubsgen12
October 13, 2010 at 2:32am
nice blog,but you could have made this blog more cool if you could configure the language changer plugin but all the same you have done a good job
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jml4970
October 17, 2009 at 11:37am
Does anyone know if I will be able to play Boarderlands on my PC with my friend playing on his XBOX / PS3?
MixedNuts
October 09, 2009 at 12:01pm
There is a pretty decent look at the article here, which tries to look at Pitchford's points a little more and examine them.
brainwins
October 08, 2009 at 5:28pm
Cool. There is an article based on your interview in Gamespot:
http://www.gamespot.com/news/6232484.html?part=rss&tag=gs_news&subj=6232484
aben2
October 09, 2009 at 12:23am
-Technology... will kill us one day.....
Personaly i Think steam is Pretty hard to comit to piracy, and wal-mart... will be sold as CD-Roms which pirate bay and, their hackers, will soon be able to play for free... steam however seems only a few games can be pirated without notice.
djfreex
October 08, 2009 at 1:03pm
Everytime I saw this guy make a statement, a strange sadness fills me. I wonder when will someone interview Randy about BIA:HH multiplayer disaster. How would any serious game company could let a third party develop the multiplayer component to one of their flagship franchises in the world of Call of Duty 4/WaW and Halo 3 is beyond me.
First, you failed us all BIA fans and let Infinity Ward imitator Treyarch to run over us and declare BIA is not even in the same category as COD:WaW then you make statements about Valve and Steam? Unless you forgot Randy, when nobody was doing anything about digital distribution, Valve put a lot of effort to put together probably the best digital distribution service out there. In the meantime, they did not outsource their multiplayer components and killed their flagship franchises. No sir, they improved on their masterpiece franchises HL2 and launched other masterpiece MULTIPLAYER masterpieces like L4D and Team Fortress. Valve never failed to deliver.
No, Randy. I do not trust you when you talk about multiplayer, because I know its just another overpromised statement that you will underdeliver. You could not even decide on if Borderlands' graphic style until late in the dev cycle; now you expect us to believe in Borderlands. It is time for Gearbox to reconsider its leadership.
danielHjelmtorp
October 08, 2009 at 12:21am
As one of the competitor of Steam, the big thing we see that can be a problem is how the Steamworks software, is implemented in many big new titles. The Features they have are great, DRM, Autopatching, Mutliplayer functionallity and more. But the problem is that you have to be tied to Steam, something that customers in the end doen't like! We at GamersGate have taken the policy not to sell games that includes Steamworks, as they are a competitor for us, and we don't want to "give away" our customers to Steam. And this is starting to be a big issue, not only for us. I hear from people in the industry that they are starting to have problem selling in games that include Steam not only to digital distribution stores, but also regular retails!
With GamersGate.com we have had the end user in mind then developing our service, not to force any software to be installed and run in the background when they buy and wanna play their games from us. A more open approach, that differs from Steams "Locking in" mentality.
The PC and Mac digital distribution growth is really great! The only thing worrying is that Steam gets to much attention when media rights about digital distribution. Sure they are the biggest, but no market works well when one have monopoly. The Digital distribution platform is great for Publishers and Developers who can get more reveune % out of their games than retail, and its easier to work with.
GamersGate started the same way as Steam, developed by Paradox Interactive, but we have now split the companies to seperate entities operating independent. We try to focus much of our attention of our business on retail mentality, constantly working in pricing, special offers (something we were the first as a DD site to do, and now everyone else is doing it), pre-order campaigns and having the latest games, as well as backcatalog. What we see is that the theory "Long Tail" really works for us, regaring back catalog titles.
Daniel Hjelmtorp
Partner & Product Manager
http://www.GamersGate.com
QUINTIX256
October 08, 2009 at 3:02pm
...for these so called "steam killers" and "competiors" should be considered spam.
Steam works is free seperate product. You do not need steam to use steam works.
Miller stated that the commisions on steam where "almost as bad as retail", not as bad. I'm of the opinion that this is the case only for big and well known studios.
You can have your recession. I'm not participating.
XOPN
October 07, 2009 at 10:59pm
Yeah that comment about steam having some huge plot to rape devs for thier money rings a little hollow for me. Just by the fact that they'll happyly take it up the ass for Microsoft and there hard line requirements. Yet no complaints from most of them. Hmm. He did mention not wanting Microsoft to have control either but.....I'd like to know if he would go through the crap that most other devs go through to put thier game on Xbox live. I'm guessing he would.
Sonickid101
October 07, 2009 at 1:22pm
If a developer doesn't wanna do business with valve there's always alternatives.
NathanLands
October 07, 2009 at 9:00pm
Sonickid101:
You can't be serious. They're talking about Steam and you say Impulse is the alternative. Impulse is owned by Stardock which has made such great failures as the poorly executed DemiGod. I have to give Valve that atleast they are making good games.
However, in a near future where all gaming is done through digital distribution and Pcs move to the living room, game developers will find themselves in a bad situation if they put all the power into Valve's hands. Imagine there is no more physical distribution and your only source for distribution is through your competitor's platform. This would put way to much power into Steam's hands and trust me when the time is right they would act on it.
That is a major reason we created GameStreamer, we are working on building a Steam Killer and we are 100% agnostic to devices and developers. We don't make games and won't be. We are focused 100% on our platform and it's features & functionality.
Nathan Lands
Co-Founder & EVP of GameStreamer
http://www.gamestreamer.net
cell
October 08, 2009 at 11:53am
They were only the publisher. Demigod was developed by Gas Powered Games, developers of Dungeon Siege, Supreme Commander, and Space Siege. If you want to denigrate Stardock's games, go after the games that they have actually developed, like Galactic Civilizations 1 and 2, The Political Machine, and the upcoming Elemental: War of Magic. Galactic Civilazations 2 had very good reviews, with GameRankings aggregating the reviews at around 87%.
Impulse today is a very good alternative to Steam, with EA having recently signing on to publish games through the Impulse service (EA is also distributing through Steam). Impulse's catalog has improved greatly recently and is slowly becoming a good alternative to Steam.
QUINTIX256
October 07, 2009 at 11:01pm
...and misused. I have heard absolutely no news or even rumors about Valve thwarting sales of "competitors." These accusations are being thrown around left and right with no concrete evidence to substantiate them. The only things that give them any weight is talk about “conflict of interest” and “control.”
Speaking of claims being pulled out of the rectum… Scott Miller said there will always be that impulse purchase at wal-mart. The folks who actually have years of real experience in digital game distribution (Valve) had stated again and again that display boxes for brick and mortar stores are not going away.
On top of all this, let's not forget that this is Valve we are talking about here, not the likes of Activision (who tried to sue Double Fine... and sued Valve), or 2K (who refused to fund the developers after buying the rights to Duke Nukem).
Valve may be making some profit off of steam, but from what I have experienced with my steam acount, it is Valve of all people who are being genuinely agnostic.
You can have your recession. I'm not participating.
XOPN
October 07, 2009 at 10:53pm
you can't be seirous.....
I read a little up on you guys.....you're ok I guess but you guys have head lines like: TOP DEV 1C signed to GameStreamer!" yeah as well as every other downloading service inculding steam. You have no community no social tools of any type. But hey compition makes for more inovation I guess.
*stays away from link just in case it's phishing ploy*
I just googled and looked at forum posts.
std error
October 07, 2009 at 12:26pm
Why didn't you ask him about the DRM on Borderlands specifically? Will it be SecuRom 7? Will there be install limits?
Trooper_One
October 07, 2009 at 12:13pm
I agree with what Pitchford has to say about digital downloading and piracy. However, I don't think Valve should spin off Steam - it's their creation and they can do what they like with it.
Remember, ultimately, Valve is a business and it's selling a service to make $$$. So far, they have been more than reasonable in terms of pricing and convenience (major points as to why I'm paying lots for lots of games).
QUINTIX256
October 07, 2009 at 10:48am
"We haven’t said anything about Steam yet."
http://store.steampowered.com/app/8980/
I guess Valve finally convinced them. When Randy Pitchfork claims that "It’s exploiting a lot of small guys", I just keep thinking about how proud Valve was that audiosurf outsold the Orange Box. When I hear from the likes of Scott Miller and Randy Pitchfork that Valve should "spin off" steam, I think of when Gabe Newell talked about trying to work things out with Yahoo and Microsoft to see if they would create such service (which failed to fall through) before Valve created Steam.
Scott Miller stated that Valve's commissions are fairly high, being "almost as bad as retail" in one podcast I can't find, but I don't think commisions are Valve's bread and butter. In regards to the small guys... well I can't find a source but I think the commissions are much smaller for indie developers than for big studios and publishers.
Put simply, I just can't believe Valve has any ill intent. I don't think they keep the commissions "all to themselves", and most of that revenue go's back into Steam, paying for things like its development, bandwidth, and content servers.
You can have your recession. I'm not participating.
chronium
October 07, 2009 at 10:10am
One question I wish you asked is if they were going to leave mouse and keyboard support in the console version of the games.
