Gearbox CEO Claims Valve Is Exploiting Their Digital Dominance

Posted by David Delony at 9:10 AM Oct 09, 2009

​Digital downloads seem to be well on their way to finally replacing physical media. We download music from iTunes (if we even bother to pay for music at all), stream movies from Netflix, and even buy games from Steam.

​ Like iTunes does for music, Valve might be establishing a monopoly for game downloads, and this makes Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford uneasy. When he was interviewed for Maximum PC recently, he said that Valve's popular Steam service is "taking a larger share than it should for the service it's providing. It's exploiting a lot of small guys."

Pitchford says that Valve should spin off Steam into a separate business. Being a major game developer that also happens to own the most popular PC game download service is a conflict of interest.
​And with Amazon selling PSP downloads, the shift from games on shiny discs to games downloaded from the Internet could allow smaller indie developers to reach lucrative audiences without the overhead of producing physical media.