Gearbox’s Randy Pitchford had some harsh words for Steam recently. While he admits he trusts the guys from Valve on a personal level, as an industry competitor, not so much. Steam, Valve’s digital distribution service, helps sell games but it also suffers from an unavoidable conflict of interest for Valve as it assumes the roles of both creator and distributor. Pitchford also asserts that the studio is using it to take unfair advantage of other developers, particularly the smaller guys.

Pitchford said he’d like to see Steam spun off from Valve. “It’s actually really, really dangerous for the rest of the industry to allow Valve to win,” he said. “I love Valve games, and I do business with the company. But, I’m just saying, Steam isn’t the answer. Steam helps us as customers, but it’s also a money grab, and Valve is exploiting a lot of people in a way that’s not totally fair. Valve is taking a larger share than it should for the service its providing. It’s exploiting a lot of small guys.”

Oddly, Pitchford would like to see Microsoft at the head of the digital distribution charge, though he admits that the company might not agree with him at this time. “Gamers can see the prioritization. Microsoft is focused on the console platform. For the time being, that’s nice, because some of us aren’t sure we want Microsoft to control [distribution].”

And he would be correct. Some of us are unable to see the difference in conflicts of interest between the two companies. A company such as Amazon or GameSpot might be seen as a much more neutral party.

Sources: The Escapist, Maximum PC