Most game companies treat piracy as a major threat. Valve, however, has always seen things differently. A resurfaced interview with Gabe Newell explains why piracy barely registered on Valve’s list of worries, and his reasoning still feels relevant today.
The clip has been circulating widely on social media. In it, the Valve co-founder makes a simple argument: pirates aren’t people who refuse to pay. They’re people who’ve been let down.
What did Gabe Newell say about piracy?
According to Newell, piracy simply wasn’t a big issue for Valve. He explains that if you looked at the company’s top ten concerns at any point, piracy would almost never be on the list.
He believes the rest of the industry has the wrong idea about pirates. Many companies assume pirates just want to steal content and never pay a penny. Newell disagrees.
Why does Newell think piracy is misunderstood?
His argument centres on spending. As Newell points out, many of these players own $2,000 PCs. They also pay around $50 a month for their internet connections. In other words, they clearly have money and they’re willing to spend it.
So why would they pirate games? For Newell, the answer is obvious. “Piracy is a result of bad service on the part of game companies,” he says.
It’s a point he has made many times over the years. In a widely reported 2011 interview, he summed it up even more simply, describing piracy as “a service problem and not a pricing problem.”
How did Steam put this into practice?
That philosophy shaped the way Valve built Steam. Instead of focusing on punishing pirates, Valve focused on making buying games easier than stealing them.
Over time, Steam added features that made legal copies more convenient. Games update automatically, saves sync to the cloud and big seasonal sales make games cheaper. Steam also introduced refunds, which have occasionally gone further than anyone expected. Just recently, one player even got a Battlefield 6 refund after 470 hours because content was removed.
Valve keeps adding quality-of-life features, too, such as its new Achievement Sets. Each one makes a legal copy more appealing than a pirated one.
Does Steam use DRM?
Steam does offer its own optional copy protection, and some publishers add extra DRM such as Denuvo. However, Valve has never made heavy anti-piracy measures the centrepiece of its approach.
That stands in contrast to some infamous industry moves. Always-online requirements, like those that crippled SimCity’s launch in 2013, often frustrated paying customers more than pirates. Newell’s view suggests why. When legal buyers get a worse experience than pirates, more people turn to piracy.
Does this still apply today?
In many ways, the argument is more relevant than ever. Players today juggle subscriptions, launchers and always-online games. Meanwhile, some companies are testing new ways to charge for access, such as Xbox’s plan to charge per hour to stream games you already own.
Moves like that are exactly the kind of friction Newell warned about. Players are happy to pay, but they expect convenience and fair treatment in return.
Valve’s success speaks for itself. Steam has grown into the biggest PC gaming platform in the world, with tens of millions of players logging in every day. It’s also proof that treating customers well can be more effective than treating them like suspects.
Some people still own every game on Steam, after all. Newell’s point is simple: give people a better service, and most of them will gladly pay for it.