Continuing his now infamous comments from last month, Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford has come back with more less-than-stellar comments on fellow developer Valve. After several other developers and publishers came to the defense of the Steam owners, Pitchford later elaborated his statements, but has returned to pick another bone he has with the company in a recent interview with Official Playstation Magazine, in this case about the company’s vocal disinterest in the Playstation 3 platform. Portions of the Randy’s comments, including the complaints against Valve, can be found after the jump.
“I noticed something on the net not too long ago. Doug Lombardi (Valve’s VP Marketing) had to take a swipe at the PS3 again, and I thought it was foolish. I read it the same way I read fanboys. Like there’s a guy who bought the Sony platform and he’s a Sony guy, so he decides he’s going to spend a certain percentage of his time bashing Microsoft. And there’s a guy on Microsoft doing the same thing. Those guys are childish and narrow minded, it’s the same kind of thing,” Pitchford commented, “Valve think their own stuff is the only stuff that matters, to the point where they have their own distribution platform. It’s like, I don’t care about retail, about Marketplace, or PSN, I’m going to have Steam. It’s cool, it’s good, and they’re doing a good job but at the same time they’re reliant on the rest of the world. They had to do that [Left 4 Dead] deal with EA. When I see the L4D ad on the television I don’t see a Valve logo, I see an EA logo, and when I bought it, I bought it at a store.”
Do you agree with Pitchford, or Valve in this case? Let us know, and feel free to have a little mini-fight yourselves, below!
Other than Valve’s attitude, I don’t see what Pitchford is complaining so much about. That was a very roundabout rant. Does anyone want to try to clarify this for me?
He is being stupid, cause he knows that he won’t get attention unless he stoops to the “Childish” tactics Valve is doing, hypocrite.
Pitchford, I got something to say to you; grow up, deal with it, and STOP using Game Spy for your online connection for PC, it sucks balls, I can’t play Boarderlands with friends cause my router won’t let me configure my ports. Grow up and support Steam or something else.
Erm, you can buy Borderlands on Steam…
Yeah Pitchford’s right, Valve ignoring the PS3 platform is foolish of them. An the fact that they could have a conflict of interest with their Steam digital distrubution system is worrying.
But heres the thing, so far they haven’t abused their power. And even though we should keep an eye on them, we shouldn’t condemn them for something they’ve yet to do. It’s Minority Report all over again 😛
Yes, but Boarderlands uses Game Spy, which is outdated match making and online technology. It is frustrating, I wish he would use something else so I can play online without having to configure my ports that won’t let me configure them.
I think it’s dumb to try and bash valve for steam. They were the first ones to do the digital distribution that everyone else is now doing, and it’s a huge success. I think he’s shooting himself in the foot considering his own game is doing quite well off of steam. And from what I’ve seen Valve has never done anything to hold back any other developers or prevent anyone from using steam to sell their games. I think his comments are foolish in this respect and he should’ve kept his mouth shut.
To bash them for being down on the ps3 is a little more understandable, but utlimately a waste of breath. Valve doesn’t like the ps3 for whatever reason, so be it. The only reason to bash them is if they constantly put the ps3 down, which they might be but I don’t read enough about the valve comments to know what’s been said.
Basically Valve doesn’t like the architecture of the PS3 so they aren’t going to develop for it. Valve essentially says, “more power to those who develop for it, it just isn’t our thing.”
I think that’s fair, although a lot of PS3 owners are pissed, but that is fair too.
Uh, am i the only one that thinks he actually has a point on both things?
First, neglecting the PS3 for no real reason is moronic but they’re free to do so, so that’s right.
Second, i like Steam and the idea of having something that records my achievements much like the consoles do, but Steam’s bullshit. One outta twenty games have achievements in Steam, it’s costly on memory usage and doesn’t offer a single thing xFire doesn’t do better. And it’s mandatory install and requires an internet connection to play.
So i agree with Randy Pitchford on both things.