PS3 Informer

Valve Says Pirates Would Buy Games

The renowned publisher of the Half Life series of videogames said that software pirates would buy more titles if they were able to get new releases on time in their own territory. When titles are released exclusively in one geographic region, said Valve, it creates a vacuum for other gamers living abroad. The solution is to release games worldwide within a short time period to reduce this effect.

In a recent interview with journalists, Valve executive Jason Holtman described how his company is approaching the piracy problem in Russia:

"The reason people pirated things in Russia is because Russians are reading magazines and watching television [and] they say, 'Man, I want to play that game so bad,' but the publishers respond, 'You can play that game in six months... maybe."

However, by launching in Russia at the same time as the rest of the world, Holtman said his company's losses to piracy had dropped off significantly.

Of course, this strategy is made simpler by the fact that Valve is largely an online distributor, meaning that customers can simply log on to the company’s website to pay for and download new titles.

We applaud Valve’s innovative stance on piracy, and we agree that releasing games on the same day around the world would have an effect on the levels of piracy in underserved territories. However, considering that much of the revenue lost to software pirates is North American and European downloaders, we doubt that this strategy would eliminate the problem altogether.

[Source: Game Daily]