Valve’s head honcho Gabe Newell isn’t exactly the biggest fan of DRM. In a recent correspondence with aconcerned customer, Newell called modern DRM protection strategies “dumb” and opined that the goal of the developer shouldn’t be to restrict, but rather make games more available to the consumer. Without saying it, Newell expressed that Steam (go figure) is one of the best methods of both protecting and ensuring playability with consumers.
From the letter:
As far as DRM goes, most DRM strategies are just dumb. The goal should be to create greater value for customers through service value (make it easy for me to play my games whenever and wherever I want to), not by decreasing the value of a product (maybe I’ll be able to play my game and maybe I won’t).
Newell went on to say that Valve discourages other publishers and developers from using “broken DRM offerings,” but added that there is a “groundswell to abandon [these] approaches.” This e-mail is a little catty towards EA, specifically because Newell was addressing the consumer’s apprehension of EA’s DRM protection scheme and it crossing over toLeft 4 Dead. Of course, Newell said that EA is merely a partner, not necessarily Valve’s new grand overlord.
[viaGame Politics]
