Valve

[maxtortheone]

Anyone here still thinks Valve is a good company? I really don't even though you can see in my sig I mainly use Steam for gaming.

Let me bullet-point everything that pisses me off:

• Completely ignoring the Half-Life fan base that made them rich, famous and successful;
• A more and more money grubbing attitude;
• No communication;
• A Steam client that's getting worse and worse with daily downtime attributed to DDOS attacks some random douchebag claims on twitter;
• Popularising a F2P and P2W gaming industry, alongside microtransactions;
• The death of expansion packs, now we get DLC;
• Pushing their OS to fanboys and gamers in order to maintain a market dominance;
• A do what you want attitude towards their employees. It's cute and all but it doesn't get work done;
• Ah yes, opening the store to every single developer in the world by getting rid of GreenLight, not that every single crap game is released on Steam already;
• Early-Access. If this becomes a trend for AAA games, we're basically screwed. Pay up front for an Alpha, maybe get the final product;
• Their awesome touchscreen controller is just a regular controller now;
• Ending your most loved series on a huge cliffhanger and not releasing any info since. I just can't get past this in any way. 7 god damned years have passed with no news. You can't top HL2, give up.

Of course there are some positives:

• Steam sales
• SteamWorks
• Developer released patches, updates
• Developer controlled sales

http://messagetovalve.com/

Oh and for anyone that cared about Oculus VR, Valve was in deals with them but pulled back to let FB intervene.

This started as a post in Random Thoughts Entertainment edition but I thought it's worth a thread.

 

[Topgearfanatic]

I've been having similar feelings, they seem to have gone offtrack with what they are doing and I think Gabe's vendetta against Microsoft hasn't been the mostly healthy thing for their company.

 

[Viper007Bond]

Anyone here still thinks Valve is a good company?

I do.

Completely ignoring the Half-Life fan base that made them rich, famous and successful;

Would you rather Half-Life turn into Call of Duty where there's yet another garbage release every year? Repeating the same thing over and over? I like that they work on new and interesting things rather than pumping out more of whatever has made them money in the past.

Don't get me wrong -- I want to play HL3 as much as the next person but I would rather they wait until they can come up with a good story line and a quality game rather than dealing with arbitrary deadlines that forces them to put out a subpar game.

A do what you want attitude towards their employees. It's cute and all but it doesn't get work done;

I strongly disagree with you here. Since when is it bad to have employees enjoy their job and work on things that they find interesting? Take Google for example -- some of their best products have come about due to them letting their employees have time to work on projects they love. Gmail for example.

Their culture is one that is widely admired and allows for the production of some really cool stuff.

They want to work on what they want, not necessarily what will make them the most money. I find that admirable.

Popularising a F2P and P2W gaming industry, alongside microtransactions;

Like it or not this is the future (F2P, not necessarily P2W). Not for all games but for a lot of them. And it's not Steam/Valve's doing. DOTA came along long after other games that were forced to go from a subscription model to a F2P model due to low sales.

The death of expansion packs, now we get DLC;

I don't see how this is Valve's doing. Developers are responding to what sells better, especially developers like EA. See: Battlefield.

Pushing their OS to fanboys and gamers in order to maintain a market dominance;

Psst: companies are out to make money. I know, shocking.

Ah yes, opening the store to every single developer in the world by getting rid of GreenLight, not that every single crap game is released on Steam already;

Some shit games make it through for sure but overall I think this is a huge positive. It allows indie developers easier access to consumers. The next Minecraft will likely have an easier time coming to market thanks to Steam.

Early-Access. If this becomes a trend for AAA games, we're basically screwed. Pay up front for an Alpha, maybe get the final product;

This has nothing to do with Valve. EA has been doing this for many, many years. It's a way to get more sales. Plain and simple.

Their awesome touchscreen controller is just a regular controller now;

You're misinformed here. The goal of the controller is to replace games that would normally require a mouse and keyboard. The inputs are still touch. What they got rid of is the touchscreen display which they found during testing wasn't all that useful as you had to look down to use it -- no tactile feedback which is essential in a controller. They've replaced it with real buttons.

 

[Quiky]

Is this related to the part where you just got hired by EA and now shilling for them..?

 

[Ramseus]

Steambox controller is and always has been awful. The steambox itself is fine though, the streaming works pretty seamlessly which is really all you need if you don't have a computer hooked up directly to a TV, I don't see much use for the uber powered steamboxes though.

Other than that, personally I like valve and steam a lot.

 

[maxtortheone]

Is this related to the part where you just got hired by EA and now shilling for them..?

Nope, I've been whining about Valve for a while now. And EA is Valve's retail publisher so all that conflict between them is not all it seems.

 

[SpitfireMK461]

I still think Valve and Steam are the greatest things for PC since sliced bread.

 

[Adamar]

I still think Valve and Steam are the greatest things for PC since sliced bread.

Since when has sliced bread been a great thing for a pc?

VALVe is awesome, if only because of steam sales and automated install of patches and digital downloads and two-factor authentication and ...

Steam is for gaming what itunes and netflix are for music and movies. And i like them for it, they do what other developers and publishers don't. It's only after steam was around for 10 years that EA came with origin, and ubisoft with uplay, and those suck because A) they have no fucking games B) their UI is in french because they don't recognise that Belgium has more dutch speaking people than french!

 

[argatoga]

I have no issue with Valve. In addition to what Viper has said, they have been pushing Linux and Mac gaming support.

The problem a lot of people have with them now is that they are no longer an underdog.

 

[Mercury]

It's the bottom line that makes me agree with the OP. I've been a Valve fanboy since 1998, and I proudly admit it. I played every bit of the HL universe I was allowed, I was very active in CS 1.6 and CSS for many years with a pro team and all, and I even loved and played Left 4 Dead for a very long time (L4D1 much more than 2... it was just better for competitive playing).

But, and it's a big one. I look at the past 4-5 years and I try to think what exactly have I played that came from Valve? Almost nothing. In the same time, me, a big Valve fan and an even bigger EA hater played a hell of a lot more stuff on Origin than I did on Steam... This is due to the fact that Valve is no longer a game developer. Not by a long shot. They do other things, they get their money elsewhere and they've completely forgotten about the very gamers that made them as big as they are.

I wish Valve went back to making games... I would gladly hop on that train but what the last few years taught us is that we really shouldn't hold our breath for that. Valve has changed and we will probably all be in our 50s by the time HL3 comes. That's a slap in the face more than anything EA has ever done.

 

[Adamar]

Currently valve is too busy working on the bigger picture (steambox). They don't have time to work on games, other than porting them to mac and linux.

Even though there is a rumour of a new source engine and possibly even HL3, there is no proof. Valve is as secretive as apple. And as an added bonus we still have valve-time, so if it were true the release could still be 5 years from now.

 

[Karoug]

Relevant:

 

[smib]

People really need to get the fuck over them not releasing another HL.

 

[IceBone]

Have people also forgotten that 6 years had passed between HL and HL2, with HL2 being released almost out of the blue with next to no leaks? Just because it's been 7 years since HL2 EP2, doesn't mean that they're not working hard on it. Besides, Valve is working hard on Source Engine 2 and I wouldn't be surprised if HL3 will be released along with it, just like HL2 was with original Source.

 

[mpicco]

I never 'loved' Valve in the first place. But I do agree some of the Steam policies are quite stupid.
Saying Steam is working worse now is false though, I remember the early days of Steam when it was commonly referred to as "a Steaming pile" and it was just there to give you 2 problems where you were seeking 1 solution.

Don't agree with early access but I won't stop people from spending their own money if they wanna play alphas. If it's a bubble that needs to burst, it first needs to inflate to the breaking point till it goes away.
DLC does get out of hand sometimes.

I think Valve over all has been doing "new things". 10 years ago you wouldn't think that games would be bought and sold entirely in digital format, for example, and while doing these new things they every once in a while put out a decent title (looking at Portal here).

I do hope Facebook keeps its hands away too.

 

[D-Fence]

The only thing that really pisses me off is that Steam going offline bans you from playing games you purchased and want to play in single player because you can't enter offline mode without being online. I fucking HATE this kind of DRM and this is a main reason I pirate games I want to play single player.

 

[Ramseus]

Guys. Guys. Hey, guys. Have you even heard of this little known game called Defense of the Ancients Two? Yeah, that game's fucking obscure as hell. That's what the majority of the Valve's game developers have been working on. I know, I know, it's not even a game, it's a sport, so I guess you guys are right and Valve definitely has not produced any massively hugely gigantic games lately.

 

[Adamar]

Saying Steam is working worse now is false though, I remember the early days of Steam when it was commonly referred to as "a Steaming pile" and it was just there to give you 2 problems where you were seeking 1 solution.

I find steam to be too bloated nowadays. I loved it more when it was just an inventory for games without all the social bullshit.

 

[Luca]

I don't game much, and when I did, steam was just a launcher for CS 1.6.

 

[Quiky]

Have people also forgotten that 6 years had passed between HL and HL2, with HL2 being released almost out of the blue with next to no leaks? Just because it's been 7 years since HL2 EP2, doesn't mean that they're not working hard on it. Besides, Valve is working hard on Source Engine 2 and I wouldn't be surprised if HL3 will be released along with it, just like HL2 was with original Source.

Did you forget about the playable leaks?