One thing that we have learned is that piracy is not a pricing issue. It’s a service issue. The easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting antipiracy technology to work. It’s by giving those people a service that’s better than what they’re receiving from the pirates.

– Gabe Newell, co-founder of videogame company Valve, which publishes Portal and Half-Life

This one, based on the crazily addictive and popular Portal games, is great. It’s also free, and short — a mere seven minutes long. And really, the last 90 seconds are credits, so you can knock this out very quickly.

“Portal: No Escape” comes to us via director Dan Trachtenberg, whose resume to date seems to consist primarily of commercials and some hosting work at Revision3 video podcasts; note that Diggnation co-host Alex Albrecht is billed as one of the guards.

This looks like it went up on YouTube just a day ago, and it’s getting very popular, very quickly.

Love to know the backstory on this one — it’s clearly not something Trachtenberg put together on a whim, but there’s no indication that there’s a formal tie-in with Valve here.

Well, perhaps it does. But more likely it’s after Valve for its Steam distribution platform. With its robust digital rights management scheme and a Distributed File System that allows games to launch before they’ve been fully downloaded, Steam is likely the the premier digital distribution network for computer games. Were Google to acquire it, the company could expand it to encompass all manner of digital goods.

UPDATE: Reached for comment, Valve described The Inquirer’s report as a “rumor” and then dismissed it as a “complete fabrication.” Guess those sources weren’t so well-placed, after all.

Well, perhaps it does. But more likely it’s after Valve for its Steam distribution platform. With its robust digital rights management scheme and a Distributed File System that allows games to launch before they’ve been fully downloaded, Steam is likely the the premier digital distribution network for computer games. Were Google to acquire it, the company could expand it to encompass all manner of digital goods.

UPDATE: Reached for comment, Valve described The Inquirer’s report as a “rumor” and then dismissed it as a “complete fabrication.” Guess those sources weren’t so well-placed, after all.