Valve co-founder: good gamers should pay less, and vice versa

[Emil]

Gabe Newell is the co-founder and managing director of Valve. He often has something interesting to say, and the recently lengthy interview with Develop is no exception (seriously, it's worth a read).

One of the topics Newell covered jumped out at us: creating the optimal pricing service for each customer. In short, the co-founder says to hell with equality: the industry should charge gamers based on how much fun they are to play with and how they influence the community.

Newell explained that some people bring many gamers with them when they join a server while there are people who join a server and cause other gamers to leave. "We should have a way of capturing that," he says. "We should have a way of rewarding the people who are good for our community." This means that a really likable person in the community should get a game for free, because of their past behavior in a different game, while a jerk that annoys everyone should pay full price for a game, and have to pay an extra hundred dollars if they want voice.

A more extreme example is how some gamers want to pay for a dollar for items over and over again while others want to run servers and create mods. Newell believes each one of these people should represent a different monetization scheme for the community as a whole. He explains that Valve has started finding high value customers and connecting their Steam accounts to their PayPal accounts. These people aren't just paying for games; they're making money from them: some are being paid as much as $20,000 per week.

Valve has a unique opportunity in the gaming industry because it has built a platform. Steam is very popular because it gives gamers a lot of what they want. What do you think about an optimal pricing service?

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/43826-valve-co-founder-good-gamers-should-pay-less-and-vice-versa.html

 

[Guest]

Although a good idea after releasing a game with 5.5hrs of singleplayer gameplay (portal2) valve is on my crap list.

 

[Darkshadoe]

I can see rewarding players for brand loyalty, but this is just dumb.

 

[Trillionsin]

Let me tell you what.... I get called a hacker almost on a daily basis (or whenever I play) while playing Black Ops (PC) online. People don't enjoy getting their arses kicked and jump to any excuse they can find, usually the easiest being "hacker! You just wall-hacked!" Well, playing in Nuke town constantly with spy-planes kinda makes it easy to predict where people are, where they are camping, and where they charge from.

So this would put me in the "unpleasant to play with" category just because people leave thinking I am a hacker. I really hope that this wouldn't reflect on me, making me have to pay more, because that would just be silly. I am usually a pleasant person. I like teamwork, and I like a good challenge. I just hope that if something like this was truly employed, that there would be a way to distinguish the difference.

 

[hitech0101]

Well people pretend to be all kind of stuff when they're online so don't let some gamer get to you its just a game.

 

[Vrmithrax]

What, no tinfoil hat privacy nuts screaming "FOUL!" yet? They hated the fact that Steam captured even basic gaming stats from its users - imagine the reaction if it wasn't just hardware and game play time stats, but actual performance and details of player skills or behaviors. It would be pure paranoia-induced anarchy.

 

[Riun355]

Eh, while it sounds good, I think the ethics of it would get a bit murky... I could go for getting payed $20k a week, though.

 

[pacostrano]

trillionsin said:
Let me tell you what.... I get called a hacker almost on a daily basis (or whenever I play) while playing Black Ops (PC) online. People don't enjoy getting their arses kicked and jump to any excuse they can find, usually the easiest being "hacker! You just wall-hacked!" Well, playing in Nuke town constantly with spy-planes kinda makes it easy to predict where people are, where they are camping, and where they charge from.

This is why I play on my clan server we have rules and we have servers that have a bot that banning players like this or not fallowing rules

 

[wcbert]

What????

They are paying some people $20,000 a week. That is $80,000 a month and around $960,000 for a year. That is almost a million dollars. If you can make $20,000 a week, would you leave you house? Would you go a vacation? You have a life just still on your butt playing games every day and not even know that life has just past you by.

But this type of person is consider to be a high value customer. To me it sounds like a addict, and this addict is to attract more addicts.

 

[TomSEA]

I'm having a little problem too swallowing this as Guest #1 alluded to. Valve just released Portal 2 - which is a 6-9 hour game with almost zero replayability, charges $60 for the pre-order, entices people to buy other games in the hope for an early release of Portal 2 with some bizarre contest, and then an hour into the game they start pumping you to buy meaningless DLC content.

How does all of that fit into his "We should have a way of rewarding the people who are good for our community," statement??

 

[gwailo247]

How about they worry about putting out bug free games, or put pressure on their partners whose games they sell via Steam to do the same?

As far as I see it when they offer promotions in order to encourage people to pre-order the next buggy game, they're putting their reputation behind it. And I doubt that a few hats make up for the frustration that people feel when their games don't work correctly.

 

[r8bwp]

I spend too much time on steam for my own good and i don`t get 20k sniff

 

[Cota]

This idea needs to be tweaked a LOT.

-Getting people "skill rank" to put them to play whit people in their rank only?, this will ensure mouth breathers stay cool and that hardcore gamers have a challenge.

-About the not so kind players just let servers ban trolls and flamers (just like they do now), but hell manage those bans i love how i got banned from a BFBC2 server because the Admin liked my shiny grenade.

-The price tweaking idea is just awful :s but yeah if you want to lower prices have my thanks, would be nice to see one of the big ones break the $60 dlls price rule all the companies adopted.

-Playing moders and good players, well those are more likely like "employees", but if you are gonna start paying for playing treat us all the same.

 

[MilwaukeeMike]

I'd love for there to be a reputation system on WoW. I've played with too many D-bags. Make it so it take many many people to affect the rep and you'll prevent any abuse from individuals. I can see the issue with rating opponents though... they'll hate anyone better than themselves.

 

[amstech]

I like it.

 

[Guest]

To those thinking that Valve are paying people to play games, how about you have a look a few months back. The people referred to as being payed $20k/week are getting this because they put in massive amounts of work and developed new content for TF2. Every time their item is sold in the in game store, the original creator gets a slice of the profits. So all they had to do was spend some time creating the content, and now they can sit back and watch the cash roll in, and go on that holiday.
Far from being addicted, you tools.

 

[Rasta211]

Maybe they introduce a 2 type pricing system.
1 price is the normal price they charge for a new game like 59.99
another price like $149.99 and you can all downloadable content and future DLC in the game for free.

Then if they want to reward good community players make some type of reputation system in steam were other users can vote/add reputation to a player. Then users can use their reputation to get downloadable content in the game of their choosing. I'll let Valve sort out the rules to this system to prevent abuse.

 

[EXCellR8]

any leeway for members since 2004? still in good standing with VAC

 

[lalaman]

trillionsin said:
Let me tell you what.... I get called a hacker almost on a daily basis (or whenever I play) while playing Black Ops (PC) online. People don't enjoy getting their arses kicked and jump to any excuse they can find, usually the easiest being "hacker! You just wall-hacked!" Well, playing in Nuke town constantly with spy-planes kinda makes it easy to predict where people are, where they are camping, and where they charge from.

So this would put me in the "unpleasant to play with" category just because people leave thinking I am a hacker. I really hope that this wouldn't reflect on me, making me have to pay more, because that would just be silly. I am usually a pleasant person. I like teamwork, and I like a good challenge. I just hope that if something like this was truly employed, that there would be a way to distinguish the difference.

haha u know, it's not you that becomes "unpleasant to play with", it's the one's that call you a hacker that become "unpleasant to play with". So you don't have much to worry =P

 

[matrix86]

Absolutely not. Everyone should be charged the same price. "to hell with equality" Yeah, it's f*cktards like you that are the problem with society. Just my opinion

 

[MrAnderson]

I think this is all very interesting. The extreme I'm sure was a joke regarding paying 100 to have parts of a game functionality. Even if that would be funny to imagine a person that is known to be a jerk be charged a rediculos amount for voice chat... but that might have federally legal implications. But sure charge the base price unless they are on good behavior... or contribute to the community in a possitive way heck yeah!

 

[Kibaruk]

Sir... your ideas are plain dumb! =)

 

[Guest]

"Unpleasant" players should have to pay an extra $100 for a game? Hell no, they shouldn't be able to play the game at all. Anyone who is willing to hack, abuse the mic, or engage in any such antisocial behavior serves absolutely zero use to the "community" (or, more broadly, to humanity), and as such shouldn't be able to buy his way in to annoy everyone else. If a relatively reliable way can be found to identify these miscreants, then do away with them altogether.

 

[ramonsterns]

Bad idea, prime for trolling and abuse.

 

[Flannelwarrior]

"These people aren't just paying for games; they're making money from them: some are being paid as much as $20,000 per week."
How can I become one of these people? Haha