How a nephew’s CD burner inspired early Valve to embrace DRM
1 min read
Summary
In a talk at the Game Developers Conference (GDC) last week, Valve’s co-founder and former Chief Marketing Officer Monica Harrington revealed that her nephew’s cavalier attitude to using a CD burner to replicate games for his friends inspired her to take digital rights management (DRM) much more seriously.
She said that when Half-Life premiered in 1998 with a basic CD key verification system in place, they noticed complaints that the game wasn’t working, only to discover that those complaining hadn’t actually purchased the game.
This led her to realise that the increasing accessibility and acceptability of PC game piracy was a threat to Valve’s business model, and helped inspire more stringent DRM measures for future games, including the launch of Half-Life 2 in 2004 and its subsequent release on Steam.
