Valve: Owning Content and Digital Distribution Go Hand-in-Hand

Valve’s Steam service has received some recent shots across the bow with Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford criticizing it as exploitation and Stardock's CEO Brad Wardell estimating that its market share may be too big. Responding to those criticisms that the digital download service was a conflict of interest, director of business development for Steam at Valve Jason Holtman said that the gains by the service actually benefit all.

“There's nothing better in the world for anyone making an Xbox 360 game than the fact that Halo exists. It's awesome, there's nobody saying, ‘boy I wish Bungie hadn't made Halo’ because it sold an awful lot of Xboxes that you can sell your games on,” said Holtman to GI.biz. “Having the content and the distribution that go hand-in-hand make it a stronger platform, make it a platform to reach more consumers with your own game. If you look at any given time on our top-sellers and our marketing, it's clear that [Valve games] are not the only push out there. In terms of whether we get too big or maybe our content shouldn't be on the platform, it's just doesn't make much sense. Because the content helps the platform grow.”

“The other thing about PC in general is that unlike a closed platform you can make your own,” he added. “We have a force of openness on the PC that's always pushing on us. If we started doing things that were bad decisions for customers or developers, they can just move and go somewhere else.”

While it is true that PC is an open platform, Holtman’s comments don’t take other factors into consideration. If someone would want to switch to another digital distribution platform, there might be the problem that other services don’t carry a favorite game because of Steamworks or maybe everyone else they know uses the Steam matchmaking service for multiplayer; alternatives to Steam can be developed, but it could be hard to compete on an even playing field.