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Valve’s abandonment of all notable blockbuster franchises and their lack of forthcoming communication has ruined my perception of them(See Staff Post)
- Thread starter BAD
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I share your frustration with them, but it's a whole change in business and direction. They still make a few PC games which 100% don't appeal to me any more, but they don't care about traditional single-player games any more, and especially not about console gamers.
I thought it was okay, but quite overrated. The puzzles were repetitive after a while and the pacing in the middle section was really poor.
You might want to add that you're talking about your perspective as a console-only player and not from a PC point of view.
I feel like this is a very important information for your thread. Otherwise you're just promoting the archetype image of an ignorant console fanboy.
I feel like this is a very important information for your thread. Otherwise you're just promoting the archetype image of an ignorant console fanboy.
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Yeah, I feel that Valve's love strictly exists in development at a platform level, not at a games level.
Valve was absolutely a successful, wealthy company already in 2009 when they quit supporting their console title TF2. The console versions also sold very well, and saying "well they weren't the majority next to PC overall" does not change that they were major successes. PC sales are not relevant to the success of their console releases. Hence their continuous releases on consoles in years after The Orange Box. And it therefore also doesn't explain why they'd release another online game only to not support it, after they already had dropped their previous one years prior. They made poor decisions for their customers.
Valve not communicating about internal developments is precisely because of this kind of nonsense, which they've already explained multiple times
Here's what happens when Valve announces something, and the nature of their company allows them to change things whenever they feel it is necessary:
-Valve announces thing
-Gamers speculate and rumour-monger in feral hype bubbles
-Valve delays / changes direction, which is unlike your average public "AAA" dev
-Gamers are angry, crying blaming and yelling at the devs for the change (shit we just saw this in the other thread out of nothing)
It's happened pretty consistently with most of Valve's games or products, so now they rather invest their time on the product - then bring it forward as it is concrete. It's preferable to me at least. Proton is a great example, in dev for years and then surprise release. SteamVR has been much the same and a huge effort since 2013. I'm glad Valve's isn't the perpetual sequel driven "AAA" machine, when they also do so much more that is of benefit to PC gaming - that is at their core.
Here's what happens when Valve announces something, and the nature of their company allows them to change things whenever they feel it is necessary:
-Valve announces thing
-Gamers speculate and rumour-monger in feral hype bubbles
-Valve delays / changes direction, which is unlike your average public "AAA" dev
-Gamers are angry, crying blaming and yelling at the devs for the change (shit we just saw this in the other thread out of nothing)
It's happened pretty consistently with most of Valve's games or products, so now they rather invest their time on the product - then bring it forward as it is concrete. It's preferable to me at least. Proton is a great example, in dev for years and then surprise release. SteamVR has been much the same and a huge effort since 2013. I'm glad Valve's isn't the perpetual sequel driven "AAA" machine, when they also do so much more that is of benefit to PC gaming - that is at their core.
People aren't obligated to be happy about Valve's business practices
The problem is you are saying the Orange Box was successful so therefore TF2 was successful. We just don't know. For all we know there was only 10 players after the first month (hyperbole I know). So yes they probably could afford to push the patch, however there may not have been the player base to support it.
That would work better if OP didn't use conjecture to drive home his point ;)
Yes but that Age of Empires thread opened my eyes that a large subset ERA seems to he hostile to pc gaming and this thread isn't really helping to take off that impression. It's become so toxic that many of the pc gamers left and started their own site.
Valve's focus is clearly on pushing pc tech forward and getting as many people to play such as Linux drivers, streaming, Openvr, etc. The only games they focus on now are GaaS titles, mainly Dota 2 and CS:Go which still have massive player bases and bring in a ton of revenue. They just don't care about consoles anymore and with how popular their Gaas titles are, they don't have to. The only single player experiences you should expect from them in the future are VR titles.
No one is stopping Valve from adding aim assist or the multitude of features that have made FPSs on consoles viable. Siege's team figured it out so I don't know how Valve couldn't make it work. Also Valve apparently figured it out on the Xbox so I doubt they could probably do it again.
CS was the big online shooter in the early 2000's? Maybe on PC but on consoles it was going up against Halo and Wolfenstein.
Maybe in the US. I've never even met a person that has played Halo lol
The big shooters of that era were CS, UT and even still Q3 Arena and similar titles.
Counter-Strike released on Xbox in 2003.
Halo's first online release was 2004. Unreal Tournament was a bigger competitor in the online field than Halo, but CS was the defacto online shooter in the early 2000's yes. Ignoring all this and just blanket going "people liked CS on Xbox" is reductive and doesn't take into account literally anything.
Also aim assist literally destroys CSGO. Rainbow Six Siege was ALSO designed with consoles in mind so it's another useless comparison. Using "aim assist" to keep your crosshair doesn't do shit when you need to literally aim away from the person to hit them in Counter-Strike.
What's your solution for "aim assist" fixing up the spread of the AK-47 in CSGO vs the direct aim in Rainbow Six? This is only if you're standing still, doesn't account for spread and inaccuracy from movement. CSGO aiming is VERY precise, and unlike any of the other games you're referencing.
That middle ground is where you let the developers go and try out new ideas for a different franchise.
Sometimes it works out (Unreal Tournament -> Gears of War), sometimes it's a let down (Halo -> Destiny).
If the expectation is that they can just release a perfectly polished game in the same series every 5 years, too many people will lose their jobs in the process and the game will never come out. Or come out in a butchered state due to dozens of turnovers happening in the development cycle.
Sometimes great franchises/ideas with some juice left just get left to die.
The Valve that made Half-Life 1 and 2 is long gone and it's beyond time the gaming community moved on as well.
We all know that Valve is a talented dev and that same talent has developed a series of multiplayer games that are extremely well polished and supported. That's the space that Valve operates in now. If you like multiplayer games AND Valve single player quality, then you can appreciate that same quality and care that they bring into the multiplayer space. Counter Strike and DOTA 2 are both fantastic games that are just as worthy of praise as Half Life and Portal are.
We all know that Valve is a talented dev and that same talent has developed a series of multiplayer games that are extremely well polished and supported. That's the space that Valve operates in now. If you like multiplayer games AND Valve single player quality, then you can appreciate that same quality and care that they bring into the multiplayer space. Counter Strike and DOTA 2 are both fantastic games that are just as worthy of praise as Half Life and Portal are.
If you ever make a thread pointing out that Valve hasn't been good at communicating with fans in a solid decade you immediately get 20 people who swear that VR is the future telling you that actually they're true innovation at work and you're just not an elite PC gamer you wouldnt understand
Was that because of the epic vs steam stuff or was it something else? I game primarily on pc but I must admit I don't really really bother with any of the specific platform topics.
Aye, like 2 of the top 5 mp games around for years now. This board really doesnt value the effort it takes to make and maintain such titles.
Look at the post directly above yours. If people get repeatedly told they are not welcome they'll leave. Simple as that.
Maybe it's not a good idea to start a thread on the false premise that PC games do neither exist nor do they count for some reason.
Was that was what the thread was about? Or was the thread about multiple things and mostly everyone agrees about the miscommunication from Valve and they're discussing the other things?
Threads will stop getting made when Valve makes another narrative singleplayer game.
See you in the Cyberpunk future bubba
I dont think anyone can say Valve is good at communicating with a straight face (although some of their lack of communication can be understood, not in most cases)
Does VR single player count as single player?
I actually have no clue other than the surface understanding that it happened. I also primarily game on the oc but don't pay attention to specific platforms.
I think they definitely view it that way, but I think a lot of the tension between Valve fans and people who are really frustrated with them nowadays comes from the view of the frustrated crowd that Valve just isn't making games for a wide audience right now. DOTA 2 and CS:GO are obviously mega popular smash successes, so I don't mean that they aren't popular, just that they don't have a wide effect on the overall gaming landscape (both because of their rather tight knit communities and the PC exclusivity).
Even a AAA quality amazing Half Life 3 campaign in VR would suffer from the same sort of sentiment I think, because ultimately you're still gating off the game to an extremely small percentage of people who love Half Life.
It's not to say that a lot of these threads repeat some very very tired talking points, but I totally get why people (especially console gamers) are sort of sick of Valve's business strategy.
I don't get the "lack of forthcoming communication" thing.
What do people expect? Them announcing a prototype for a game and then cancelling it two months later because it didn't work out? Them saying "Half Life 3 is never coming" or just random shit like "Pretty big things are coming, stay tuned"?
If they have something to announce they announce it, if not they don't. I don't see what the problem here is.
What do people expect? Them announcing a prototype for a game and then cancelling it two months later because it didn't work out? Them saying "Half Life 3 is never coming" or just random shit like "Pretty big things are coming, stay tuned"?
If they have something to announce they announce it, if not they don't. I don't see what the problem here is.
It does, but we are on a forum where some people asked if they'll get their "Age of Empires with gamepad", so there's that.
I don't think people are using the business strategy thing to shut down conversation. It's just that Valve makes games that you no longer like and that's okay.
Personally I play a ton of CS (and used to play DOTA a lot) but of course I would trade either of those in a heartbeat for HL3.
I mean, it's not like Half Life 2 ended definitively and people really want a reboot. It was planned to be an episodic title, they literally announced the next installment and said it would be coming soon, and then ended the story on a massive cliffhanger.
I think they've worked themselves into a corner a little bit because years past when they would basically just be like "yeah Episode 3, probably next year innit" and people would get excited and now they just refuse to talk about anything in the future because it's bit them so many times.
What ruined my perception of them was looking at their library and thinking about how many of ideas were external to the studio.
Narbacular Drop -> Portal. Tag: The Power of Paint -> Portal 2. Counter-Strike, Left 4 Dead, DotA - most recently In the Valley of Gods. Buying partially formed projects then not really knowing what to do beyond them with the staff.
They're a good video game producer but I don't think they have an irreplaceable creative voice.
Narbacular Drop -> Portal. Tag: The Power of Paint -> Portal 2. Counter-Strike, Left 4 Dead, DotA - most recently In the Valley of Gods. Buying partially formed projects then not really knowing what to do beyond them with the staff.
They're a good video game producer but I don't think they have an irreplaceable creative voice.
I will say as somebody who plays CS and formerly played Dota. It feels like everybody but the Dota teams will just go silent on anything.
It's been 2 years since the last operation in CSGO, people are crying for a Krieg nerf and Valve has stayed silent. They are just slow when it comes to communicating sometimes and even people currently playing their games feel left in the dark.
Valve is a frustrating topic.
They didn't have to keep making single player games. But they couldn't even finish Half-Life. That's cynical and awful. A huge, profitable franchise that probably could've been wrapped up in a relatively short coda and make a big profit in the process. Just not the biggest potential profit compared to firing more people/driving talented people away and assigning the people left to build infrastructure to make money off community content.
It makes it impossible to feel any particular loyalty to them.
The only reason I generally prefer Steam is because it's actually a good service. I'd skip out on them pretty quickly if similar controller support features and a few other things existed elsewhere.
And then their run as a service game studio is... also really spotty at this point. CS:GO stopped getting operations. The BR wasn't very good. I don't play Dota, but that does seem to be supported a bit better? Artifact was a total botch.
They're not in a very good place as a developer. Their reputation rides on games many people are too young to have ever played. They aren't doing an amazing job maintaining the service games they have, or taking care of their legacy games. They kind of remind me of Google at this point, a company that will drop anything in a hot second even if it's profitable.
If they started a new franchise right now, would I even bother playing? It'd have to be incredible. I didn't launch Artifact once, and I probably would have if I had any trust in Valve like I used to.
They didn't have to keep making single player games. But they couldn't even finish Half-Life. That's cynical and awful. A huge, profitable franchise that probably could've been wrapped up in a relatively short coda and make a big profit in the process. Just not the biggest potential profit compared to firing more people/driving talented people away and assigning the people left to build infrastructure to make money off community content.
It makes it impossible to feel any particular loyalty to them.
The only reason I generally prefer Steam is because it's actually a good service. I'd skip out on them pretty quickly if similar controller support features and a few other things existed elsewhere.
And then their run as a service game studio is... also really spotty at this point. CS:GO stopped getting operations. The BR wasn't very good. I don't play Dota, but that does seem to be supported a bit better? Artifact was a total botch.
They're not in a very good place as a developer. Their reputation rides on games many people are too young to have ever played. They aren't doing an amazing job maintaining the service games they have, or taking care of their legacy games. They kind of remind me of Google at this point, a company that will drop anything in a hot second even if it's profitable.
If they started a new franchise right now, would I even bother playing? It'd have to be incredible. I didn't launch Artifact once, and I probably would have if I had any trust in Valve like I used to.
It's why a lot of pc orientated users left this site and why some choose not to get involved in garbage threads like this one full of dumb drivebys. They just stick to dedicated pc community threads.
Edit: Case in point above and I'm out.
Same. But "Half-Life: Alyx" is apparently being announced at the Game Awards, so i'll hold judgement until I finally see it.