Andre Yoskowitz
19 Jan 2009 16:44
At an interview at the Game Business Law summit this past week, Valve director of business development and legal affairs Jason Holtman spoke out about the company's thoughts on piracy, surprisingly calling pirates "underserved customers."
"There's a big business feeling that there's piracy, pirates are underserved customers."
"When you think about it that way, you think, 'Oh my gosh, I can do some interesting things and make some interesting money off of it.'"
"We take all of our games day-and-date to Russia," Holtman added. "The reason people pirated things in Russia is because Russians are reading magazines and watching television. They say 'Man, I want to play that game so bad,' but the publishers respond 'you can play that game in six months...maybe.' "
Holtman also noted, correctly, that publishers normally only care about the west leaving eastern nations with no real other alternative but piracy. That being said, Valve products are launched in Russia, in Russian, on the same day they hit North American shelves. After doing so, the company "found that our piracy rates dropped off significantly."
Steam currently has 15 million "connected gamers" speaking over 20 languages.