Gearbox CEO: Valve has a “foolish” attitude towards PS3

The most recent issue of the Official PlayStation Magazine (UK) features an extensive interview with Gearbox Software CEO Randy Pitchford, who’s studio just recently released Borderlands under publishing by 2K Games. Pitchford tackles Valve‘s issue of disregarding the PlayStation 3 at all costs, calling it “childish”.

“The PlayStation 3 is awesome. I think Valve…I don’t know why they are doing that. It’s weird. but yeah, the Playstation platform’s really cool.” Pitchford told the magazine. “It’s different to others and it’s certainly a challenge to be able to develop software for. But that’s where the fun is, right?”

Pitchford takes on Valve’s public attitude, basically saying that the way Valve expresses their dislike towards the console is like a “fanboy”.

“I noticed something on the net not too long ago. Doug Lombardi (Valve’s VP Marketing) had to take a swipe at the PS3 again, and I thought it was foolish. I read it the same way I read fanboys. Like there’s a guy who brought the Sony platform and he’s a Sony guy, so he decides he’s going to spend a certain percentage of his time bashing Microsoft. And there’s a guy on Microsoft doing the same thing. Those guys are childish and narrow minded, It’s the same kind of thing,” he said.

“Valve think their own stuff is the only stuff that matters, to the point where they have their own distribution platform. It’s like, I don’t care about retail, about Marketplace, or PSN, I’m going to have Steam. It’s cool, it’s good, and they’re doing a good job but at the same time they’re reliant on the rest of the world. They had to do that deal with EA. When I see the L4D ad on the television I don’t see a Valve logo, I see a EA logo, and when I bought it, I bought it at a store”.

Furthermore, Pitchford continues on Valve’s lack of support for the PlayStation 3 version of The Orange Box, despite all the issues it’s faced.

“I’m actually kind of mad at Doug because with the Orange Box, he said the 360 and PC versions are the good ones and the PS3 version is like the stepchild because some other developer made it. Well you Valve don’t really think that, because look what you’ve done on the PC side. You’ve supported that, you’ve added all this content to Team Fortress 2, and you’ve left us hanging. It’s hard to accept that genuinely, because I know the business, I know you guys make half the money on the PS3 version because you’ve got other fingers in the pie, and other developers getting a cut. It benefits you if nobody buys that, and only buys the PC version, because you make the most money. There’s this underlying sleaziness. You know what, I thought the performance was a little slower on the PS3, but it Looked better. The colors were nicer, I thought the image looked better on PS3. It was a trade-off between the performance and the visuals. And I like visuals”.

Thanks, AnalogHype.