Pitchford calms Valve feud

Having made the headlines for suggesting that Valve’s ownership of digital distribution portal Steam lead to a conflict of interest” last year, Gearbox boss Randy Pitchford has moved to calm the waters surrounding his comments.

Look, Valve and Gearbox have had a relationship for a long time and it’s incredible that anyone would believe there’s a problem,” Pitchford told MCV in an interview and DICE.

All the Brothers in Arms games are on Steam. We launched Borderlands on Steam. We did a unique deal on Steam that we didn’t do anywhere else. It was great and I’m happy to have access to Valve’s customers.

Let’s not even talk about the game industry for a moment. Look at iPod. I used to have to buy music from iTunes if I wanted to play it on my iPod, but what if I want to play my music on something that isn’t an iPod. I’m fucked. So now I buy my MP3s from Amazon and I can load it onto my iPod and it’s cool, but I can also play it elsewhere.

Wouldn’t you like that as a customer? Who wouldn’t? So that’s what I was saying. I love Valve. Steam is very cool. They led the way, but there are some things that, if we weren’t so afraid of keeping control of our silo, we could improve things and that would be better for everyone, including ourselves.”

Pitchford went on to attack the way his comments were reported by the games press.

You know, I love to talk about the business and I am happy talking to a developer peer or a publisher peer or a journalist,” he added. Unfortunately, if a guy like me looks at the industry and some bit of it is anything less than respect, that little bit can be taken out and it becomes an attack.

My view now is how astonishing it is how good gaming journalists are at understanding what the hot buttons are going to be and to pull those out to motivate readership. I’m so impressed with that.”

Check back to the site on Monday for the full interview.