Gearbox's Randy Pitchford critical of Valve and Steam . . . again

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Gearbox's Randy Pitchford critical of Valve and Steam . . . again

Posted Nov 5th 2009 9:00PM by John Callaham
Filed under: Biz

Gearbox Software's Randy Pitchford must be flying high on the critical and sales success of their first person shooter Borderlands. And he's not afraid to speak his mind on any number of subjects. A few weeks ago we reported that he made statements that were high critical of Valve, saying their ownership of the Steam download platform was a conflict of Interest and that smaller developers were being exploited. Smaller developers who have worked with Valve to get their games on Steam quickly defended Valve, saying their distribution terms were better than others.

Now Pitchford has reportedly taken a few more shots at Valve's expense. Industry Gamers reports that Pitchford, quoted in a new issue of the U.K.'s Official PlayStation Magazine, stated, "Valve think their own stuff is the only stuff that matters, to the point where they have their own distribution platform." While he does feel Steam itself is a good system he added, " . . . . at the same time they're reliant on the rest of the world. They had to do that [Left 4 Dead] deal with EA. When I see the L4D ad on the television I don't see a Valve logo, I see an EA logo, and when I bought it, I bought it at a store." It's pretty clear that Pitchford would like to see Steam be handled as a separate business with no connections to Valve.

Tags: gearbox, gearbox-software, steam, valve, valve-software

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

I was watching TNA Impact tonight, and all three major PC titles all had their ad aired during the show.

1)Modern Warfare 2 - Infinity Ward Logo, NO Activision logo.

2)Borderlands - 2k Games Logo, Gearbox Logo

3)Left 4 Dead 2 - EA Logo, Steam Logo, NO Valve logo.

Just pointing this out - nothing more. Take it as you will.

GFWL - But in my honest opinion, Randy may have a point here.Posted at 9:59PM on Nov 5th 2009 by SidearmS

If Valve were a huge company like EA or Activision, releasing games left and right, I could see a conflict of interest. They could easily promote their own games over competiting products. As it is, Valve releases 1 game a year if we're lucky.

If these comments were being made by GamersGate, Impulse, or Direct2Drive, I could see a conflict of interest. Valve holds a monopoly on digital distribution of their own very popular, A list games, preventing competitors from making any money from them. As it is, this is a game developer who has to be making bags of money from selling his game on Steam.

I just don't get his arguments. I personally don't really care if Steam and Valve Games are the same company or separate, as long as both keep their high level of quality. But for him to continue to bite the hand that is feeding him without better justification is baffling to me.

...bysmittyPosted at 10:12AM on Nov 6th 2009 by bysmitty