Valve

AndyT

AndyT

AndyT

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Just been reading some of the other EA/THQ threads here where people are giving both of these developers/producers a really hard time. Maybe rightly so, maybe not.

As I was reading both I noticed that Valve was brought up as the shining example of all that is great about PC games. They are held aloft as a sacred beacon of awesomeness in a mire of self-serving cash-cow milking developers. Hailed as the only true pure thing left in the industry. God save Valve etc.

This type of thing almost always comes up in threads like those mentioned above and it got me wondering, when will Valve's reputation slip, as it surely must at some point?

To be honest, yes they make/made good games. Steam is great as a platform for buying, storing and playing games, but really, what has Valve they done recently except flog you more games you don't even want?

Are gamers that short sighted to realise that Valve has become just another big business built purely to flog you games. EA sell a lot of sub-par games, but so do Valve. Steam is bloated with a load of tat that you don't want, but everytime you load it up it tries to offload some of it onto you. The seasonal sales are marketing genius. The amount of games sold and never played is incredible. There are countless confessions on this forum of players who have bought a load of games off Steam and never even installed them - I am one. We seem happy to forgive Valve for this, probably because of Half Life, Portal etc. and Steam itself. Yes they have done loads for PC gaming, but these days they just sell us things really. Don't they?

There are no ground breaking game-changers forthcoming, not that I'm aware of anyway. So really, what is there to keep Valve on the pedestal that they (rightly) earned, but probably should have fallen off by now.

Lets be honest, the forthcoming Steam console is just another way of selling more PC games.

Valve's reputation grew out of it's games development. Recently there hasn't been much of note and Dota 2 just looks like another run of the mill clicky-clicky-stabby-stabby-spells game.

I have nothing against Valve EA or any other developers really and I don't want to see any of them fail. I have great respect for Valve and hope they produce more great games, but when I read about the hatred for EA etc. I do question people's loyalty to Valve. Surely the most evil of all corporations is the one who sells you stuff you don't want or will never use. In this sense, what makes Valve any different from EA?

So, what are your thoughts?

EDIT: As some people are clearly missing the point, this is not a rant at Valve. It's just a discussion about why gamers are so keen to slate some developers and defend others
 
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I dont think they sell you stuff you dont want, just that you dont have time to play them all.

I bought a shed load of games in the last summer sales, total cost was abou £100 for 60 odd games.

Only played probably around 10 or so of the games, but with even them 10 only played i feel i have got my moneys worths for the total spend. And still have all the other games to play when i get chance.
 
Personally I couldn't give a damn. If a company makes a good game then ill buy it who cares if they are money grabbers ? People are too fast to jump on the band wagon when somebody else starts moaning about something. Should you be the same if it was your company? Surely you would want to make money...
 
Craterloads said:
I dont think they sell you stuff you dont want, just that you dont have time to play them all.

I bought a shed load of games in the last summer sales, total cost was abou £100 for 60 odd games.

Only played probably around 10 or so of the games, but with even them 10 only played i feel i have got my moneys worths for the total spend. And still have all the other games to play when i get chance.
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OK, maybe you are right in some sense, but my real point is that their output of quality games is fairly slow, yet they sell loads of other peoples games and make a lot of money out of it. Which seems to be pretty close to the reason everyone hates EA.
 
one mans tat another's fun I guess

You aren't forced to buy any of it, however if you wanted to there are some top deals on steam

Be honest, how many people would have bought games like Orcs Must Die, FTL and S.P.A.Z if they weren't headlined on a steam sale?

Now with steam greenlight there will probably be more 'tat' but its the gems that make it all worth it.

And I think you missed the mark with reason hate EA, they don't hate them because they try and make money they hate them because of the way they do it (a reputation built over years).

To elaborate a little the main points:
- Excessive Micro-charges, e.g. Disc locked content, Day One DLC, additional charge for multiplayer in second hand games
- Treating their customers like criminals e.g. DRM, if you dont use your origin account within 2 years you lose all your games (its deleted), a game ban results in a ban on your account (bye bye games)
- Buying out quality studios and gutting them e.g. Bullfrog, Westwood studios, Pandemic, Zynga

Not so valid reasons but you can see why they play a big factor:
- They are more visible, last year they spent $747 million dollars on marketing
- They release more games = higher likelihood of lemons, and given their reputation the lemons are paraded among the communities
- Early shutdown of servers, most companies some sort of skeleton infrastructure behind for legacy games (See steam)
 
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H3RBSKI said:
Personally I couldn't give a damn. If a company makes a good game then ill buy it who cares if they are money grabbers ? People are too fast to jump on the band wagon when somebody else starts moaning about something. Should you be the same if it was your company? Surely you would want to make money...
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Like I said, I doesn't bother me in the slightest, I buy my games and play them. I don't care where they come from or who makes money out of it. My point is that gamers seem so happy to slate certain developers yet defend another to the death. It all just seems a bit ridiculous to me when you look at it.
 
EA make/publish the games that people hate.

Steam is only selling you other peoples games, it would be like getting mad at Amazon for selling you a badly written book!
 
Main reason i think they get credit is because in a time where the PC has been under threat as a gaming platform they have been one of very few companies to continue to invest heavily and put PC games first.
 
Firstly I think this would be better in PC Games and not GD.

Secondly I agree with you that Valve are just a business like any other and are there to make as much money as possible. Look at the ongoing WarZ release debacle on how how Valve / Steam can make mistakes.

I can remember hating steam when i used to play CS back in the day because it seemed like they spent most of thier time developing that and not CS.

Having said all that, the very fact people have unplayed games in thier steam library (I don't as I tend to be more careful about what I buy) shows how sucessful the service has become. Steam arrived when high street retailers were scaling back thier PC Games department and offered a service which had a large catalogue of games both new and old which you could download in the comfort of your own home.

Coupled with features like automatic patching, friendlists, forums etc. it has become a hub for PC Games like Google Search or Facebook.

It has become the home of PC gaming thats why its sucessful
 
AndyT said:
I'm not sure what you mean?
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EA and Activision for example have **** on gamers time and time again, they are all about the money, that is FACT and are ran by people in suits with no passion for the industry, just its bank balance.

Valve have Gabe.

Gabe is AWESOME.

/thread.
 
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Love: Getting stuff almost instantly via Download, no DVD/CD needed to play, easy updates.

Hate: Prices are not competitive enough even in their big Sales.
 
I can't see Valve slipping anytime soon, unless they do a blizzard move and merge with another developer, but that was purely down to money reasons (i think).

Take dota2 for example, they bought out the rights for a game that the public wanted, hired the original developer (icefrog) and made a awesome game. It has been in beta for ages, frequent patch's, frequently released new hero's and expanding the user base constantly to test servers (they keep releasing beta keys). They also do special stuff for holidays (halloween, xmas etc..) and most importantly they don't rush, they wait until it is how they want it then release it.

If they keep up support that have been doing for this game and all others in the past, their reputation wont slip.
 
Cold Fusion said:
Look at the ongoing WarZ release debacle on how how Valve / Steam can make mistakes.
Click to expand...

?

So the AAA publishers can release what the heck they want be it in your eyes good or bad.

Another publisher/developer releases something you do not like and that is a mistake on Valves part?

WarZ has a **** load of dirty politics around it for a start by a very small section of the community.
 
Yes, the console is another way to sell games, but that's what they do. The Steam platform is held in high regard because it works. Take Origin for example, when it came out it was broken and buggy as hell. So was Steam when it first came out but now it is stable and not a total resource hog.

The greenlight thing with Indie games is also really good. I've bought games I'd probably never have heard of without it, so much so that I tend to focus on Indie titles over AAAs for gaming.

I'll also admit to having games that I've not even installed, mostly down to buying bundles during sales, but I do end up playing them eventually, even if only for a short time, but the time I put into other games in the bundle makes it a worthwhile purchase for me.

As for Valve selling you stuff you don't want (not you personally obviously), well that's not their fault. If people can't resist buying from them then that's their problem.

And finally, being able to launch anything on my computer through Steam is a bonus, I think all of my games launch through Steam and I have friends who run anything from Reason to CAD programs, even their internet browser from Steam. Although to be fair it's probably just as quick to launch it normally.
 
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