Are You Listening, Microsoft?

Valve shows that it gets the obvious:

“You buy the product, you get the content,” Team Fortress 2 designer Robin Walker told us. “We make more money because more people buy it, not because we try and nickel-and-dime the same customers.”

“[In multiplayer games] the content you’re playing is being created by the players you’re playing against, so the more people that get into the game, the more content you’re going to have,” Valve’s Charlie Brown concurred.

Valve’s marketing director Doug Lombardi admitted the company had “pretty strong opinions” about how to handle post-release content. “Our philosophy there is, if you buy the product, we put more content out to keep the game interesting, we sell more products.”

“Counter-Strike is number one and has been since ’99 because we kept the game interesting, not because we tried to charge people more, and that’s come back in sales of Counter-Strike,” he added.

Sure, the interview ends with Valve’s confessions that they’re dipping their toe into the pool of in-game advertising. But if two wrongs don’t make a right, I’m sure one of each cancels themselves out.