Valve says Steam promotes sales at physical and online retailers

Doug Lombardi has said that "free weekend" sales on Steam assist retail and online game stores.

"When we do our free weekends on Steam for our products we see an increase in player numbers, obviously, and then we'll see a spike in sales at the end of the weekend on Steam and at retail," he told Gi.biz. "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.

"A lot of the 'Steam is there to compete with retail' stuff is sort of sensationalized. We spent more money at GameStop in the US promoting Left For 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.

"[Steam is] about making the games better. It's currently a great marketing and promotions channel, and yeah we sell games over it and that's great, but whether people buy games at GameStop, or GAME UK, or on Steam, we get paid. So for us, whichever cash register you want to pay at, that's fine."

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