Gabe Newell: Overly Restrictive DRM Devalues a Product

After receiving the Pioneer honour at the GDC awards, Valve boss Gabe Newell has said that ‘œDigital Rights Management problems… make your entertainment products worth less by wrapping those negatives around them.’

Newell said that developers should constantly be asking themselves ‘œwhat have I done for my customers today?’ and that once they do, devs can avoid issues such as overly aggressive DRM. He also spoke about Valve seeing ‘œentertainment as a service’ rather than just shipping discs and forgetting about the users.

Newell’s comments, which were greeted by cheers from the assembled crowd, come as Ubisoft recently implemented its DRM which requires users to constantly be connected to the internet. The issue was aggravated more when Ubisoft’s servers went down; resulting in players unable to play the games they’d paid for through no fault of their own. Ubisoft claim that only 5% of players experienced problems, but that figure remains unproven.