• taiyang@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    Pretty sure at this point valve just does things for the love of the game. They don’t need VR or handhelds and they certainly don’t need their own games, but they do it anyway.

    And I don’t say that just cause 30% profit off their store is enough; Apple and Google both do that on mobile and they still stick their grubby hands on everything (their stores are probably a fraction of their profit anyway).

    Nah, it’s cause Valve doesn’t have shareholders and doesn’t seem interested in the myth of infinite growth. They just want to tinker; Portal was self reflecting parody, haha.

    • cm0002@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      That’s what you get when the Company CEO is also the original (or at least one of) Founder

      Every time the founder CEO steps down and is replaced (Unless the founder directly, hand picks their successor (and even then sometimes not)) the company goes to shit soon after

      It happened with Google, it happened with Apple, it happened with Reddit (Little more complicated, but there were multiple founders, the one with the vision and the one with only money on the mind, you can guess which one is currently at the helm) and it’ll happen with Valve too

      • blazeknave@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        I’m terrified when Gabe dies that my library of temporarily licensed software will be stripped away.

        • Coelacanth@feddit.nu
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          3 months ago

          We really need to find a fountain of youth for Gabe like, yesterday. I genuinely dread his passing.

          • blazeknave@lemmy.world
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            3 months ago

            So did you know that you can’t will your library after death? Maybe as he gets closer, he’ll rethink that 🤷

            • Jiggle_Physics@lemmy.world
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              3 months ago

              Damn, he has, last time I saw him he had lost a lot of weight, but that still meant he was like 100lbs overweight. Then I saw a newer pic a few years later and he had gain a bunch back. So I just figured he was in the yo-yo diet game. Good to see he seems to be progressively getting better. I mean, he does have billions to afford dieticians, personal trainers, private chefs, etc., but addiction, is addiction.

      • jonne@infosec.pub
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        3 months ago

        Yep, as soon as you’re beholden to shareholders, you’re forced to take the short term view on everything, at the expense of long term returns.

      • Xenny@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        I doubt Gabe actually steers anything these days. Valve as a company might already be on autopilot. Their culture permeates through every employee who works there. I am not looking forward to the day Gabe dies but I don’t think vavle is gonna change much when he does. They are already winning without trying. And if they keep the company private they have no incentive to fuck it up.

        If valve goes public that’s the day we panic.

      • abbadon420@lemm.ee
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        3 months ago

        That is because everything an original CEO steps down to make place for a different CEO. It is because the new CEO will make the company grow. (It also means they ruin the company, but they don’t say that out loud)

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      They don’t need VR or handhelds and they certainly don’t need their own games, but they do it anyway.

      Releasing a handheld was a fairly savvy marketing strategy, given how lucrative the console marketplace has proven to be. Idk if I’d call that “love of the game” so much as “optimal play at the production price point”.

      Valve doesn’t have shareholders and doesn’t seem interested in the myth of infinite growth.

      Plenty of Valve’s store content is absolute dogshit. I refuse to believe they are immune to the allure of infinite growth through the distribution of MOBAs and other FTP games. But they’re not munching on their seed corn in pursuit of stratospheric growth, like Apple and Microsoft. They’re also coasting on an environment where things are getting worse and they’re just kinda treading water.

      Not getting worse is the new getting better.

      • desktop_user
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        3 months ago

        proton is definitely an improvement, and them actually maintaining all their functionality is better than most tech companies are doing.

    • The Picard Maneuver@lemmy.worldOP
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      3 months ago

      I’m glad they do these things.

      It also makes me more likely to put time into Deadlock, because I know they’ll support it for a while.

      • skulblaka@sh.itjust.works
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        3 months ago

        I was talking to my friend about it today. The jury is out on whether Deadlock will be free to play or not, but I expect it will and I expect them to set it up as the new generation’s TF2 - i.e. Valve’s home cooked free to play game, and this thing might have a tail of 15 years or more.

        I might be wrong, but I hope I’m not. I like Deadlock so far.

        • 🍜 (she/her)@lemmy.ml
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          3 months ago

          The problem is, if Deadlock goes free to play, then they will have so many problems with cheaters and bots, as any other free to play game.

          • skulblaka@sh.itjust.works
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            3 months ago

            Sure, but so does any game. And Valve has put a lot of work, pretty recently, into washing all the bots out of TF2. So they’re well primed for the war in that department.

    • stupidcasey@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      You don’t seem to have the billionaire monopolist mindset, when you reach the level steam is at you are no longer competing for money but power, steam could be making all the money in the world but that won’t stop Microsoft from shutting them down as they have already tried to do with windows store, if steam doesn’t have its own platform they are vulnerable and beholden to Microsoft, it’s true Gabe Newell could retire anytime he wants but that only applies to him not his countless employees, if steam can’t make enough money to pay a competitive wage to hire people from Microsoft, Nintendo, Apple or Sony then they will just work for them for more money so they have to charge the %30 Steam isn’t a public company but I guarantee the vast vast majority of its profits are poured directly back into the company its always that way or other companies will outcompete and they will die.

      • taiyang@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        I bet Microsoft also tried to buy them out at some point. They really want in on that PC gaming market share but the windows store is so incredibly bad that it’d probably be the end of PC gaming as we know it.

  • Rookwood@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    Since the games in the first image, Valve has released:

    TF2

    Left 4 Dead

    Left 4 Dead 2

    Alien Swarm

    Portal 2

    CS:GO

    Dota 2

    Artifact

    Dota Underlords

    Half-Life: Alyx

    CS2

    • KoalaUnknown@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      CS2 is a half-assed sequel meant to be the bare minimum necessary to keep Valve’s cs money printer going.

      • GoodEye8@lemm.ee
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        3 months ago

        Completely half-assed. They only:

        • Moved the game to a new engine
        • Rebuilt the codebase from scratch because the previous codebase was 100% spaghetti.
        • Made sure the game feels as close to the CSGO experience as possible. The resident CS nerd Ropz said the movement is 1 to 1 with CSGO which is not a small feat.
        • Rebuilt the server architecture for better online experience
        • Changed how smokes work which has noticeably altered the meta
        • Redoing all the maps
        • Reworked the audio
        • Made sure all the skins can be transferred over and look somewhat decent.
        • Bunch of minor QoL things that they didn’t need to do but did anyway

        Fucking lazy devs.

            • GoodEye8@lemm.ee
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              3 months ago

              They could’ve done nothing and CSGO still would’ve made them loads of money. They could’ve put a price tag on CS2 and ask extra money to transfer skins over. They could’ve easily monetized it but they didn’t.

        • owsei@programming.dev
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          3 months ago

          I’d say fuck deadlines or management over lazy devs, sure, there are some, but most of the time it’s a deadline thing.

    • webghost0101@sopuli.xyz
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      3 months ago

      What would you really add or change that would warrant a third game though? The second game can already be expanded into multiple full games thanks to the mod community.

      The first game laid out the concept, the second game refined it and expanded on it. While technically nothing stopping then from making more of exactly the same game such would be disappointing against most people their expectation of improvement and would be easily criticized from all kinds of corners. Weather it is fair or makes any logical sense valve today is who they are part because of their imago, maintaining there respectable and high quality standard is economic survival.

    • arefx@lemmy.ml
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      3 months ago

      Dota 2 is the greatest game of all time. Not video game, but game. Take video games, chess and board games, sports, all of it. Dota 2 is insane and simply the best. The sheer amount of mind energy that people can throw into the matches is unreal and the skill ceiling is seemingly endless.

    • MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz
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      3 months ago

      That people seem to be playing it because they like it, instead of despite hating it?

        • MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz
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          3 months ago

          I genuinely love it. It’s like water to my thirst after being unable to play Battleborn for the years since it shut down.

          • SkyeStarfall
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            3 months ago

            I’m sad every time the matchmaking closes and It’s time to end playing

            Deadlock is probably the most promising game of the year, and it’s 100% gonna become the next big thing (and it even kinda already is, even if it’s not even officially released yet)

            • bss03@infosec.pub
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              3 months ago

              It does seem cool and complex, but I don’t think I’ll ever get good at it, so playing it myself results in a lot of frustration and peaks with a rage-quit.

              I wonder if it will be interesting to watch. Day9 seems to like playing it.