people do want to pay for content, thing is everything is way overpriced atm.

This is a misunderstanding of the problem, and I think Gabe Newell explains it perfectly. He gets into it about a minute in.

Good video

wrong you listen also to good ripped music and you don't think about paying ... if you can have something for free, why pay ...
and I think piracy is so common in the non-western countries that noone in these countries even thinks about actually buying software ... I heard in countries like marocco piracy is allowed, there are shops where you can buy pirated movies burned on dvd ...

I pay so that the developers/artists will have the money to make more of the things that I love. None of the software on my PC is pirated, and I own more than 90 games on Steam alone.

I think the problem you mention with non-western countries is that the companies ignore them or dont adjust their prices for a specific market.
Ever since the dollar dropped software and technology companies use the 1:1 (USD vs EUR, GBP, AUD) conversion, obviously in favor of US and forcing people to pay almost double.
Steam being one example or Sony selling inferior and much more expensive PS3 model to Europe.

Personally, I always try to support the developers and I usually end up paying overwhelming amount of money (by local standards) for a piece of software I get no support.
For example, Adobe InDesign costs as much as the average three months salary in my country. So the only alternative is me buying a used (older) version from eBay. No hyphenation support means another 300eur for third-party plug-in. So if a company is ignorant or is basically not interested in offering support why should I care?

you don't need a new hardware to consume new music or films. of course you can buy some sort of highend speakers or a hd-tv, but it's not essential like with games.
both industries are really desperate to change that and deliver new content/experience combined with hardware needs (5.1/3D)

the same thing goes for music tho.

i have no doubt that the introduction of the itunes store for purchasing music has decreased the number of pirated music in some way.

the countries you speak of will of course always be an exception.

but 11 years ago everyone would pirate over napster. a few years later there was emule/edonkey and torrents... then some time later apple launched it's store.

of course people still pirate, and they always will. but alot of the people that used to pirate started using the stores. and i think that mass of people is an indicator whether piracy is really an issue or not.

if one out of 100,000 people buy a pirated cd (because they live in marocco), its not really a problem. and if another 20,000 download the cd via bittorent or rapidshare, well: it is a concern. but i believe the introduction of officially downloadable music did two things:

1. somewhat preventing the music industry going down because of piracy
2. improving the availability of music, and thus improving sales in a whole.

Actually a lot of what he said was retarded and flawed.

If you could virtualise hardware upgrades and get free internet, do you really think these people would go out and buy a £300 graphics card, or pay 50 bucks for their AOL?

His examples were just stupid. You can't pirate the latest computer hardware and you can't easily pirate bandwidth because of encryption. At least from Wireless B onwards.
WHy do you think encryption exists? Because bandwidth is some kind of undesired.unstealable commoditiy? BS.

So pirates ARE going to make those investments because once they know they have those protocols in place all they need to do is download Utorrent and visit ISOHUNT and they pretty much have every piece of digital media at their disposal.

All game/software companies need to do is do a pay as use model, so you buy a game for £4.99, then you pay per level, that way, people will not feel they are forced into an all or nothing scenario.

I would gladly pay full price for quake 3 when it came out, even SF4, its worthy of a full price game.

But if I only play 2-3 characters, why should I pay for the other 35?
Why should I have to pay £35 for Crysis when I got bored by the end of the 2nd level and never played it again?
Because of that, I never bought Crysis 2, but if I could buy crysis 2 for 4.99 then a few bucks per level every time i progress, I would be more open to giving the game a shot, but because I still feel ripped of from their previous game Crysis 2 did not get a dime from me. In the case of valve I could not even trade the game (Ihalf life 2) in cos of the key, so I lent it to someone and I got my account banned! So Valve are far from perfect. As I finished that game within 48 hrs, actually I got bored towards the end, but still.

Until software shifts from its binary model of all or nothing piracy will always be justifiable to many. Its about delivery for sure and steam is great for this, but steam is far from maximisng what needs to be done. Software needs to split into a scalable way which allows people to pay for what they use, but greed at the top can't see the genius behind this model, all they see is a potential sale at 4.99, while failing to realise that they might get a much higher ratio trying out their software, therefore, actually making more money.

Its going there with music, now you can buy individual songs instead of buying an album of 15 songs and only liking 2.
And nobody talks at what a failure iTunes is.

Not surprising that you'd be jealous of one of the most successful game developers.

That's rich coming from a guy whose spent the last 5 years of his life denying I worked with videogames becuase his tiny pea brain can't stomach the fact that in spite of all your opinions nobody ever paid a dime for them or ever will. And that I have a silent an unspoken rank over you in your only area of comfort in life and that I know it, and you know it too :).

What I said is a fact, it has nothing to do with gabe, he used two stupid and flawed examples as a basis of comparison, I was simply pointing these out. I have a lot of respect for the guy, it doesn't mean he's wrong at times. You can't pirate a PC or internet, so why even use them as an example to defend pirates, or are you unable to counter my point and are reverting to your usual dysfunftional mind?

The fact that i can point out undeniable holes in the statements of people whom you clarify as hugely successfull in the game industry only stokes my ego further.

His points of reference were deeply flawed, and that bitter & self convincing little mind of yours which tries so hard to elevate me to false levels doesn't fool me, you or anyone else.

P.S.

"So based on age, gabe doesn't come close to what I did with games"

Haha, oh wow. That's some juicy bait right there.

Seek help.

It's funny how you continue to spout totally incorrect bullshit about what Gabe said, and yet he's managed to run one of the most successful, if not the most successful, game companies in the world. It's so funny hearing all the other game companies complain about piracy, while Valve is laughing all the way to the bank with the money of people who want quality service/products.

Meanwhile, you have... no accomplishments, no money, no college degree, you live at home, and you have a webpage fit for 1993.

So based on age, gabe doesn't come close to what I did with games :)

Pretty disturbing to think that this isolated and meaningless fact you pointed out makes you think you're somehow above this Gabe Newell fella.

This guy founded and runs Valve. You make ugly 3d work on pirated software in your bedroom. This is the fact that actually counts.

You make ugly 3d work on pirated software in your mothers bedroom*
Fixed

Lost youre job as a gameshop clerk have ya

the last couple of years i have become much better at paying for stuff, especially if its done by a small company.

its manly because i will be pissed my self if i see any of my future movies on pirate bay and i know i lost money because of it.

music and movies is the same thing, you can get the albums and films before they are officially released for free on the internet, and often there is one guy who is very well into the warez stuff and gets all the newest stuff and then distributes it among his friends ... you can listen to all the songs on youtube, you can download almost any film on megaupload ... that is also essentially why the music and movie industry is collapsing right now ... pc gaming is facing the same issues ... consoles might still be healthy but there is also a warez invasion right now ...

You have to pay for water, food, bills, public transport (considering you don't own a car to save even more) basic commodities and so on, education, a little vacation once a year to not go insane and so on, all of this is enough to barely have any free money, and you want the average citizen to be paying for music, games and apps when you can get it for free?

Well fuck it, Tim.

i dont see anyone malnourished in the industries in which piracy is supposedly destroying

not yet, piracy is just beginning now for real ...
now that bandwitdh and storage devices are at disposal where the filesize of a film doesn't really matter and sites like megaupload become more commonly known and people also having less money ... you will see the impact ... take the music industry as example, there you can really measure a downfall ... games and films used to be too big for some time for piracy to have a real impact ... but now bethanks to greater bandwitdh and storage downloading them is becoming comparable to downloading mp3z 10 years ago ...

pretty dumb to just project it on the industries. you're the one who's missing something already, but you'll never know which little project suffered from the whole issue.

the big fishes are already aligned with making stuff more casual, mainstream and stale.

while precious ideas and projects are more and more lacking in things like manpower, money and competitiveness making a certain luck the decider to success.

adjust or die

indie games/music that are actually good seems to do quite well, i don't honestly know how to apply the techiniques there into software though.

no one in 2011 is going to pay huge money for software though.

Die, patents/copyrights, die.

What about them, mein führer?

i hope they die

:(

I hate this 'trend' aswell and therefor pay for everything I love.
It's quite disrespectful to say "oh man I love the new Radiohead Album" and then dl it for free.

free > paying, unless you're butthurt and working in the software industry or music business. simply that.

share or die.

oh yea fuck you.

I imagine piracy is a handy scapegoat to have. You can just put any pile of bug ridden dogshit on the market and when investors come wondering where all their money is you just blame it on pirates.

i am paying those games which deserves the money. Diablo3 will be one of the minors I will pay for

Tell me do you pay for a lot of minors?

xPP