As you all know by now, Destructoid has been hanging out with Valve, bothering Chet Faliszek and Doug Lombardi with an endless stream of questions. We've had a full interview and some interesting industry tidbits, and we're going to close with a follow up to a discussion we had with Lombardi about used games. Namely, how far a good community goes to tackling the problem of videogame piracy.
"I think community springs up as kind of the reward you get as a developer or publisher for keeping your customers in mind and for providing a level of service, whether it's for new DLC post-launch, or mod tools, or answering emails," explains Lombardi. "You know, Gabe [Newell] tries as hard as he can to answer every email he gets from customers, whether it's just a 'thanks for your mail' or a longer reply. He really does reply to a lot of mail, and if he can't get to it, he makes me and Chet reply to it. We just try and stay in touch with folks and provide a higher level of service.
"... Affinity to a game [and] affinity to a developer comes from keeping them in mind, putting them first, putting yourself in their shoes and saying, 'If I were a customer of Team Fortress or Half-Life, what would I expect from Valve, what would I want from Valve and how much of that can we reasonably do?'"
"I think all of those things, from end to end, are all connected. They're gonna help you find crooks if you get ripped off [the Half-Life source code debacle], they're going to promote your games to their friends and tell them to buy it, they may buy it for their friends for a birthday or Christmas, and chances are if they like your games and a part of your community, they're probably not returning your games or pirating them."
Perhaps Electronic Arts can remember that the next time it bemoans the problem of piracy and used games. It's a simple fact that people don't want to rip off studios they
like. A big company like EA and Activision, that flaunts its disregard for the consumer, can't expect sympathy or guilt from the fanbase. Encouraging a community is a very good way of tackling piracy ... although I'm sure having a platform like Steam helps as well.
Contest:
2:40 PM on 08.05.2009
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But yeah, Valve is one of the few groups who understands the community. I'd say they've got the most devoted of all fanbases, but considering the L4D2 controversy...
Err...
I must have been thinking about bothering Faliszek's chest.
Learn how to play
DON'T STEAL FROM VALVE!
@manasteel88
Nintendo fans don't count. Nintendo fans are dicks.
I'd argue that pirates don't care too much about online play, I think the average is for every 1 online player there are 10 offline?
Offering Online play that requires authentication is one way to combat the problem, but it's barely a deterrant anymore. (or even in the past) Fact is if someone really doesn't want to play the game, there is a way.
I like the Gabe tries to answer his emails. I can't imagine how many he gets per day. I think it goes a long way to talking about what's on Valve's mind and acknowledging what's on their customers minds. I mean that's HUGE.
I'm on Twitter and lately EA has been putting their PR people into pseudo twitter accounts for their new games so they can answer questions and talk about what's going on. It seems a bit faked here and there, but it's something that says they want to know what you think, here's someone who's paid to listen. Unfortunately you rarely get answers to directed twitters, which is a shame.
That's not accurate, at all. You can pirate WoW. They're called private servers. They exist and are used all the time.
@ aZZmodan
Same goes for you. You can pirate any online game so long as people have private servers up for them.
I kinda thought this was common knowledge.
Some games, like GRID and Demigod allow pirates to play online though.
How is say.. a COD4 private server subpar? It still ranks you up, you're playing with the same amount of people, and I can't think of anything that's different.
@Satsumomo,
"Some games, like GRID and Demigod allow pirates to play online though."
That's why I said any online game. Because... I meant any of them.
But, the one argument against private servers that does hold up across the board, no matter who you are hasn't even been mentioned, yet. Hackers. It's extremely easy to hack on a private server. That's the main reason I wouldn't play on them, assuming I had no morals and played on private servers to begin with.