Valve: Steam Sales Don’t Cheapen IP


You may remember a while back that David DeMartini, the man in charge of EA’s Origin service, took a light pot shot at Valve and its Steam sales? According to Demartini, Steam sales cheapened video game IP. Now Jason Holtman, business development chief at Valve, has countered.

“We don’t see any of that. We see people buying a lot and enjoying it and playing a lot,” he said, talking to Eurogamer.

“Discounting is one small function of what we do. It’s one small function of our market and our store. It certainly doesn’t seem to be anything that cheapens IP.

“We do it with our own games. If we thought having a 75 per cent sale on Portal 2 would cheapen Portal 2, we wouldn’t do it. We know there are all kinds of ways customers consume things, get value, come back, build franchises. We think lots of those things strengthen it.”

Really, DeMartini’s pot shot was just that — a pot shot. I don’t necessarily think sales cheapen an IP — there is, of course, a minority of people that simply wait for sales to buy anything, but that’s not the market you should be selling to when you launch a new IP anyway.

Thoughts?

Valve counters EA’s Steam sales “cheapen intellectual property” accusation [Eurogamer]


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