Valve’s reaction to my open letter
Well, when I started to consider my open letter in the Junk mail folder of all the so-called independent gaming news sources (not to mention the Lombardi’s one), Eurogamer managed to relay it directly to Gabe Newell in an interview about the new controversial in-game advertising patch.
From the Tom Brawnell’s article:
It [in-game ads] even led certain server administrators to write open letters to the developer questioning its stance. When asked whether it would be possible for server admins to get a cut of the income from ads further down the line, Newell said: “We haven’t really thought about that. If they want to talk to us about it then they can.”
The full interview is on GamesIndustry.biz (but without links).
It’s nice to see it was only an oversight and that Valve is open to discuss better terms for revenue sharing models when community-driven resources are involved in their advertising models.
As for using in-game ads to support independent titles, it could be a viable options, as long as the digital distribution fees are not draconian as those coming from Microsoft (running up to 70%), for example.
Of course a very special thanks goes to Eurogamer and Tom Brawnell who had the guts (and the influence) to get the matter straight to the Source! 
