Good Old Games: Pirates Are Our Competition, Not Steam

Good Old Games says its ultimate goal is to be as easy to use as a torrent tracker.

Good Old Games, the digital distribution service famous for bringing us, well, good old games with absolutely no DRM, recently talked to games.on.net about its thoughts on pirates, Steam and censorship. “We see pirates as our competition,” said Trevor Longino, Head of Marketing and PR at Good Old Games, adding that “We don’t see Steam as our competition.”

“Our goal is to be as close to the ease of use as a torrent tracker, where the process for finding a game on a torrent tracker is your search for the game name, you download it, you play it, that’s it. In our case, you search for the game name, you pay for it, you download it and you play it. And you really can’t subtract any of those steps and still have a legit enterprise happening here.”

Longino says that the additional flimsy steps that many publishers force on gamers, such as having to make accounts with several different online services in addition to having to “check in” to online servers, is what makes people turn to piracy. He seems to understand that not all pirates are criminals, they are just trying to cut through all the DRM restrictions and simply play the games they want to.

Longino is also not convinced that the popular notion of Valve making all games DRM free should its Steam service ever fail is entirely genuine. “I would not put my faith in ‘If Steam goes bankrupt you will magically have all your games to play,’ I’m pretty sure you will magically have none of your games to play,” he said, adding that many people believe Valve head honcho Gabe Newell assured gamers their Steam libraries would be playable if the service shut down, when there is actually no record of him ever having said anything of the sort.

Check out the full interview for more of Longino’s thoughts.

Source: Games.on.net