Gaming
Valve: 'Steam sales aid physical retail'
Published Saturday, Jul 4 2009, 18:40 BST | By Mark Langshaw
EA's Left 4 Dead
In an interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Valve PR executive Doug Lombardi claimed that "free weekend" sales on Steam and other online storefronts are beneficial to the industry.
"Recently we've seen data that shows Left 4 Dead free weekends increase the sales of Left 4 Dead on Steam, at retail and on the Xbox 360, which we would never have guessed could have happened, but it's just that word of mouth," he explained.
The marketing head also dismissed reports of bad blood between his firm and US retailer GameStop.
"We spent more money at GameStop in the US promoting Left 4 Dead than we did at any other chain... We sold more copies of Left 4 Dead at GameStop than we did at any other chain... For us, whichever cash register you want to pay at, that's fine."
Steam currently stocks a total of 736 games and has over 20 million registered user accounts.
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