Newell: 'Most DRM Strategies Are Just Dumb'

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President of Valve doesn't see the value in trying to punish your customers to prevent piracy; rather, he says they should be rewarded for being honest.

by David Radd on Tuesday, December 02, 2008

Recently, LiveJournal user Paul Reisinger sent an e-mail to Valve president Gabe Newell. The email expressed concerned over EA's involvement with Left 4 Dead, as the user was highly dismayed over the company's use of DRM in titles like Spore. Newell responded quickly and frankly on the issue of DRM.

"Left 4 Dead is developed entirely by Valve. Steam revenue for our games is not shared with third parties," read Newell's e-mail. "Around the world we have a number of distribution partners to handle retail distribution of our games (i.e. make discs and boxes). EA is one of those partners."

"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)," he continued. "We really really discourage other developers and publishes from using the broken DRM offerings, and in general there is a groundswell to abandon those approaches."