Valve Views Pirates As Potential Customers

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The great thing about certain bands, artists and companies is that they see piracy as a good thing. Maybe not the actual act in itself but the idea that their content, creation etc is spread to more people, therefore increasing the chance of getting something we all love, MONEY! A major brand/company that have gone publicly saying that pirates are just potential customers is Valve

Now Valve has created a nice little “a digital distribution, digital rights management, multi player and communications platform” called Steam. Steam basically is a nice platform to play games with. Games that can be played with it include Counter-strike, Day of Defeat and a SHIT load of others. They realize that a play before you buy is something great. Instead of chasing pirates and file sharers who in reality are potential customers like some dumb ass companies like RIAA do. They decide hey don’t get it from there for free, get it from us for free. Try it out and see if you like it.

So what exactly does Valve/Steam do to get those nasty pirates to pay for their games. Why they get them hooked of course. They offer some games for free for a few days, all of it not just a certain level etc and let anyone play it. Then after a few days, usually 48 hours, they cut them off. Its like a cocaine dealer giving out a tiny sample then having them wanting more and saying sorry there is no more, unless you pay. Lots of people will pay if its good. Well thats what they do and it works. It works really well. They did it for Day of Defeat and after the servers crashed from so many people, they managed to sell a whole lot more (Sadly I cannot find the figures from them, )

Well they realized that an amazing game should be done the same way. The most recent game, Left 4 Dead. Well I decided to download it and play the free 2 days (yes its 2 days they extended it due to popularity) and will be buying this game soon. First off the game is amazing and its just fun. Single player and online its just fun. Secondly I will support any company who doesn’t attack filesharers etc. Instead of attacking they recruit and offer reasons to pay. Naturally I could download the game, but I wont. Its 23.99 (USD), about 26 CAD, so its worth it. I’ll give someone who I think deserves my money. The fact is even if I’m the only person who pays for the game, that’s still 1 less pirate and 1 more person giving them money. Its win win. Plus even if people don’t like Left 4 Dead there are still thousands of other games to choose from and play for free and I don’t mean just demos. The full try before you buy is a great idea, especially for computer games when before was buy and hope its good. No renting store nothing. Now we can try before spending and its a good thing. So visit steam (its too late for Left 4 Dead), check out their other games and support them if you like them, pirate them if not :happy:

:source: Source: Valve Says Good For Pirates

I just bought L4D last night while it was on sale and it's a great game! I think it's back up at $40 now though..

Sometimes they have free trials on long weekends , great way to test run a game . Wonder if they'll have anything on May 22 th .

Valve is just awesome. I love their games, and at least they're trying to work with piracy.

Well, as a European I have completely stopped supporting steam after their idiotic new (soon half a year old) pricing scheme.

Example:
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Nice! Just $39.99, but 49,99€ (~$66.5). But sure, I can try on steam, but my money goes elsewhere.

Other company may be unreasonable in their anti-piracy measures, but honestly I feel like its unfair to compare Valve to other companies.

Valve's strongest and flagship games are mostly online based - CS 1.6, CS:S, TF2, L4D, the list goes on. With these games having an almost non existant single player, the majority of people rarely even WANT to pirate the games. The core of the game comes from playing online on servers - private servers are laggy, unreliable, and unmonitored.