A gamer emailed Valve, asking them why does EA's logo appear in Left For Dead's advertisements. He stated that he wants to buy Left For Dead through Steam, but he doesn't want to support EA after Spore's DRM debacle.
Replying on behalf of Valve was no other than Gabe Newell, who explained that "Left 4 Dead is developed entirely by Valve. Steam revenue for our games is not shared with third parties. Around the world we have a number of distribution partners to handle retail distribution of our games (i.e. make discs and boxes). EA is one of those partners."
Mr. Newell then took the time to elaborate on the "stupidity" of current DRM systems. "As far as DRM goes, most DRM strategies are just dumb. The goal should be to create greater value for customers through service value (make it easy for me to play my games whenever and wherever I want to), not by decreasing the value of a product (maybe I'll be able to play my game and maybe I won't)," he wrote. "We really really discourage other developers and publishers from using the broken DRM offerings, and in general there is a groundswell to abandon those approaches."
