Valve president Gabe Newell has reportedly told an anxious fan that he believes there is "a groundswell to abandon" DRM in PC games.

"As far as DRM goes, most DRM strategies are just dumb," Newell, who is well known for corresponding directly with gamers via email, supposedly wrote in an exchange spotted by Tech in Hiding.

"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).

"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," he concluded.

We've contacted Valve to confirm whether the email's genuine, but it certainly sounds like Newell.

He is of course one of the PC's most dedicated proponents - Valve even flew journalists out to Seattle earlier this year to eulogise the format and discuss community features for distribution service Steam.

With DRM constantly in the news thanks to SecuROM and other unpopular measures and their impact on the consumer experience, his comments are likely to resonate with gamers who feel that DRM-embracing developers and publishers are misguided.

Check out our recent editorial on DRM, called "Hated and Broken", for more.