Randy Pitchford Talks Borderlands, Piracy, and Why He Doesn’t Trust Valve
Posted 10/07/09 at 12:30:00 PM by Will Smith
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On Steam, Games for Windows, and Wal-Mart
MPC: The download services, like Steam, are helping make it easier to buy games though, right?
RP: I’ll tell you what. Steam helps. As a guy in this industry though, I don’t trust Valve.
MPC: Because they’re competitors?
RP: Right.
MPC: You guys have worked with them a lot!
RP: I know. And I, personally, trust Valve. But I’m just saying, honestly, I think a lot of the industry doesn’t.
Rocket launcher-equipped vehicles in Borderlands not only let you travel quickly across the game world, they also open a whole world of vehicular combat, giving entirely new meaning to the phrase road rage.
MPC: So you think Valve should spin off Steam?
RP: They should! It would be much better if Steam was its own business. There’s so much conflict of interest there that it’s horrid. It’s actually really, really dangerous for the rest of the industry to allow Valve to win.
I love Valve games, and I do business with the company. But, I’m just saying, Steam isn’t the answer. Steam helps us as customers, but it’s also a money grab, and Valve is exploiting a lot of people in a way that’s not totally fair. Valve is taking a larger share than it should for the service its providing. It’s exploiting a lot of small guys. For us big guys, we’re going to sell the units and it will be fine.
MPC: What about Microsoft?
RP: Microsoft has every single one of us running Windows, and it could solve this [distribution] problem in a second if done right. It’s not hard, but either the company doesn’t know how to do it, or it’s not willing to invest, or it’s got other priorities. Gamers can see the prioritization. Microsoft is focused on the console platform. For the time being, that’s nice, because some of us aren’t sure we want Microsoft to control [distribution]. Frankly, at this point, I’d rather trust Best Buy and Wal-Mart.
MPC: But you can’t think brick and mortar retail is the future?
RP: The thing I love about the digital method is that I’m buying a credential. When I buy a credential, I can log in from any terminal and my content can follow me, but I don’t care who I buy it from. I’d rather buy it from someone whose only interest is serving me. I’m cool with it being a digital retailer, but I want that to be their only business. And then I’ll really trust them.
Of course, I’m kind of joking when I say that I want Wal-Mart to control it. What I’m really saying is that brick and mortar stores work because they give the customer the retail experience he wants. At the end of the day, their only business is retail, and if they fail to serve their customer, they die. I think if we’re more convenient than stealing it, and we, as a culture, are learning that stealing software is still theft. We all want to be good people, we don’t want to be criminals.
As you progress in the game, you'll be able to customize your character, specializing in one or two of the six main weapon archetypes. The upshot? As you progess in the game, you'll be able to do even more damage with that machine gun that fires grenades instead of bullets.
MPC: Given the opportunity, most people choose to do the right thing.
RP: We need to improve the convenience thing, and we need to figure out who controls the digital distribution stuff. I think it depends on the model. If they’re slicing a piece of all of us off, that sucks. It depends how much the piece is. There’s a fair piece and an unfair piece. How much service are they offering? Are they creating opportunity for us to manage some of those resources themselves? We’ll bear the burden of the cost of the service, but we want more of the reward. Are they creating that opportunity for us or is the only way their way?
The best example is that I can go to this place using Vista to buy software from Microsoft. But, I can also fire up my browser, whether it’s Internet Explorer or Mozilla, and I can go to any retailer in the world and purchase something. That’s really neat. Amazon has somehow figured something out, as have Apple and others, and made it really convenient for me to buy songs. They have that interface exactly right for the way I want to consume that. It seems like it’s not that hard to do. We’re not there yet, it’s still 2009, but we can see it and know that it’s possible.
Cross console play?
Submitted by jml4970 on Sat, 10/17/2009 - 10:37am
Does anyone know if I will be able to play Boarderlands on my PC with my friend playing on his XBOX / PS3?
Submitted by MixedNuts on Fri, 10/09/2009 - 11:01am
There is a pretty decent look at the article here, which tries to look at Pitchford's points a little more and examine them.
Gamespot
Submitted by brainwins on Thu, 10/08/2009 - 4:28pm
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
Yes Steam...
Submitted by aben2 on Thu, 10/08/2009 - 11:23pm
-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.
Submitted by djfreex on Thu, 10/08/2009 - 12:03pm
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.
Problem with Steam locking in the Customer
Submitted by danielHjelmtorp on Wed, 10/07/2009 - 11:21pm
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
I'm starting to think that these lengthy posts...
Submitted by QUINTIX256 on Thu, 10/08/2009 - 2:02pm
...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.
Submitted by XOPN on Wed, 10/07/2009 - 9:59pm
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.
Impulse is the alternative for steam
Submitted by Sonickid101 on Wed, 10/07/2009 - 12:22pm
If a developer doesn't wanna do business with valve there's always alternatives.
GameStreamer
Submitted by NathanLands on Wed, 10/07/2009 - 8:00pm
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
Submitted by cell on Thu, 10/08/2009 - 10:53am
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.
Submitted by QUINTIX256 on Wed, 10/07/2009 - 10:01pm
...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.
Submitted by XOPN on Wed, 10/07/2009 - 9:53pm
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.
Submitted by std error on Wed, 10/07/2009 - 11:26am
Why didn't you ask him about the DRM on Borderlands specifically? Will it be SecuRom 7? Will there be install limits?
Submitted by Trooper_One on Wed, 10/07/2009 - 11:13am
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).
Submitted by QUINTIX256 on Wed, 10/07/2009 - 9:48am
"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.
Submitted by chronium on Wed, 10/07/2009 - 9:10am
One question I wish you asked is if they were going to leave mouse and keyboard support in the console version of the games.
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