Gabe Newell Thinks DRM Mostly "Dumb"

Gabe Newell, Valve cofounder and managing director, has reportedly shared his feelings regarding data rights management. According to a LiveJournal post (via Gamepolitcs.com), Newell wrote, "most DRM strategies are just dumb."

Newell added, "The goal should be to create greater value for customers through service value (make it easy for me to play my games whenever and wherever I want to), not by decreasing the value of a product (maybe I'll be able to play my game and maybe I won't)."

"We really, really discourage other developers and publishers from using the broken DRM offerings, and in general there is a groundswell to abandon those approaches."

Following through on the philosophy of rewarding the legitimate consumer, Steam, Valve's digital distribution service, offers players constant inbuilt game updates and various community implemented features, such as friends lists.

Due to its rather restrictive nature, DRM has caused quite a controversy as of late. The highly-anticipated and critically-praised Spore has received much criticism due to it three-install limitation. Even though the unique simulator currently maintains an 8.3 average on game averaging site Gamestats.com, Spore has only garnered a one-point five out of five star rating from consumer web site Amazon.com. Several users from the web site's community shared their thoughts that Spore's DRM was draconian in nature.

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