Game publishers have been wracking their collective think tanks trying to dream up ways to prevent piracy of their games. One of the more popular new ways of doing that is DRM software that ships with the actual games, requiring players to be online while playing the game. DRM is annoying for gamers that legitimately purchase the game because if their connection drops unexpectedly they’ll lose all progress. Also, they can’t play unless their online and that usually requires signing up for a special account, usernames, passwords, larger digital footprint, etc. Ubisoft has been shipping all of their PC games with DRM since last year, frustrating their legitimate customers while hackers easily cracked the copyright code. They even left a message, “Next time focus on the game and not on the DRM.”

Wired.com reported on comments made by Gabe Newell, CEO of game publisher Valve, to a tech conference last week, who said, “The easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting antipiracy technology to work. It’s by giving those people a service that’s better than what they’re receiving from the pirates.” In other words, focus on the game service, and not the DRM. Newell says that gamers pirate out of convenience, not finance. If publishers make their games more inconvenient, like Ubisoft has with its PC DRM, they’re more likely to be pirated. Case in point, 90% of people playing Ubisoft’s games are playing cracked pirated copies.

Steam, a game distribution and download service provided by Valve, is revolutionizing the way that games are sold to their customers; an easily accessible Cadillac service of convenience compared to standard retail outlets. It’s partly been able to build it’s 30 million subscribers to its digital storefront by providing ways for customers to purchase and share games, and then compete with them online for achievements and bonuses. By ramping up the service of the retailer, and making it more interactive (which is what most gamers crave anyway), you make the game’s service more attractive to customers than what the pirate could provide alone.

“We use the fact that we’re connected to 30 million users in order to measure the consequences of everything we do,” Newell stated at the conference. The results of all that data mining? Positive rewards and incentives are much more effective than negative consequences in encouraging customers to follow the rules. In other words, invest in the carrot, not the stick.