In the  lecture today, Serdar spoke about how Spotify fought piracy and peer-to-peer downloads. I came to think about a different company called Valve and their service Steam. Steam uses the same ideas as Spotify but for PC games. They saw that piracy was a problem and found a solution by first creating an easier platform for finding games and then creating an easier payment method with Steam wallet.

Gabe Newell, the co-founder of Valve explains his views about piracy by saying

“In general, we think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem. For example, if a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after the US release, and can only be purchased at a brick and mortar store, then the pirate’s service is more valuable.”

This is very interesting because it contradicts what the developers of games are doing against piracy.

Source:

Interview: http://www.tcs.cam.ac.uk/interviews/0012301-interview-gabe-newell.html

Steam: http://store.steampowered.com/

 

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