Piracy, Not Consoles, Killed the PC Exclusive

[Waaghpowa]

You mistake me. I have my own reservations about the shift from pc to consoles, there are some very negative aspects of it that you pointed out, EULA type user agreements, the inhibition of modding and one to one sharing for, well, one.

I NEVER repeat NEVER said that consoles are superior, just more profitable. For one, piracy isnt nearly as big a problem for console exclusives. TO pirate on consoles, you really have to jump through some hoops, on pc, all you need is already there.

So my question is what do you think Im in denial about? Im fancy myself a realist so I take a comment like that seriously.

1) I was referring to superiority in profit, not technical superiority. Though the only reason consoles make so much money is because they sell significantly more than PC games. Console games are actually quite expensive to develop so they rely on large sales numbers.

2) It's already been established that console games are harder to pirate than it would be for PC, but to ignore it is just silly. As stated numerous times, getting rid of PC gaming wont stop pirating, it will just migrate to consoles. Then everyone will be whining about how X console has Y amount of piracy, so we're going to stop developing games for Z.

3) Your denial comes from the belief that PC gaming is at a decline, it's simply in a phase where the market is adapting to new means of distribution along with the internet. Many of the CEOs and heads of these companies are similar to some American politicians, dinosaurs. They're having difficulty making the transition into the digital stage of society and are at a loss for what proper action to take in regards to piracy. No DRM scheme has worked, ever. Yet they insist on enforcing it. They waste time and resources doing so, and for what? So that they can ensure that their honest paying customers are being honest? Pirates aren't honest, and they don't suffer from any of the DRM that publishers think is their miracle cure. As time passes, younger generations will fill the spots of these company heads knowing well enough that DRM doesn't work, and constantly fighting with it is a waste of time. With this new generation, ways of thinking will change.

As usual, CD Projekt Red is a great example. They refuse to put DRM on their games because all DRM does is punish your honest, paying customers. They also realize that regardless of what measures they use to protect their software, it wont matter. Yes, they're game got pirated, but as stated before, it would have been pirated regardless of what they did.

 

[Treblaine]

Look, people aren't leaving Team Fortress 2 to play Farmville.

Well of course they aren't, but that's not the point. For every auteur game developer that is in the business to bring new, fresh ideas to the medium (Assuming there ARE any of those that aren't indie developers) there are a dozen companies that are only interested in the most cost-effective method for building their gold-plated car engines that run on hundred dollar bills. I was being somewhat facetious when I said it was a cataclysm, but what happens when it becomes clear to even big-name developers that micro-transaction browser games are going to bring in all that fuck-you money they so desperately want?

There's no way I'm leaving Team Fortress for Farmville (No, I'm leaving because after almost five years I think I'm finally bored, but that's not the issue), but what happens if we find ourselves in a situation where the Team Fortresses have been REPLACED by the Farmvilles not by us, but by the developers themselves? I'm honestly sick to fuck of seeing ads in my big-box titles to "Go and play our stupid-ass Facebook game and earn shit for the game you just bought!" I'm fine with DLC if it adds something to a game I like, and I don't begrudge a developer the right to charge me for it, but it's becoming an ugly trend where the paranoid among us (i.e. me) see it less as a trend and more as a sinister sign of things to come. I don't like being punished for not having a Facebook account by having content withheld from me, but at least it's only like weapons and armor... for now.

But to bring the original topic back around, think about it... true or not, the industry's big media focus right now in regards to PC gaming is piracy. It might be bullshit or they might be right. I'm not an economist, but you know what? It is really hard to pirate micro-transaction add-ons to ostensibly free but incomplete games. I don't know if they've figured that out yet, but I hope they don't...

Well here's the thing, being in any business JUST for the money can only get you so far. You have to have passion in this industry and money can't just be embezzled (or the legal equivalent of that) away, it has to be re-invested in further content or in more games.

See as good as micro-transactions are with meh-games like Facebook, they can only do better when applied to games that are appealing in and of themselves.

If you think about if Team Fortress 2 has ALREADY been replaced by farmville... or at least it's micro-transaction model.

Look, Facebook has an install base of around 900 million. That is huge and Farmville has exploited the particular social links to spread like a virus, the banner ads just add to it. I think this is far more an issue of how easy people are to manipulate in social networks with something that happens to be a game than it actually indicative of actual trends amongst established gamer demographics.

I look at the growth of these facebook games as simply more people gaming, sure it's not the best start but one in the hand is better than two in the bush.

 

[NinjaCatStudios]

Bullshit.
There's tonnes more PC exclusives than for anything else.

 

[Waaghpowa]

1) I dont really see the argument here. Consoles are more profitable than pc games, end of story.

Never said they weren't, but their high cost is simply reality.

2) You can make an argument that if pc were to cease to exist, then consoles, the only legitimate avenue left, will see a significant rise in piracy. I reject that argument given the cost and hassle of chipping a system and burning games onto disc remain huge obstacles to the average joe.

Chipping isn't the only avenue, there's also soft modding which involves using a flash drive to change the firmware. It's not nearly as difficult as you seem to believe.

3)Boy, thats what they said about the music industry back in the 70's, the young guns were going to run the show and we were going to live in a musical paradise where people would get a hand jobs from their radio and every new song you heard was going to be better and more originaler than the last. Its like the late great frank zappa said, we were better off with the suits in charge because they didnt have an opinion of the music, now that weve got young guns in charge, they only greenlight the stuff they like to listen to.

Comparing the music industry from the 70's to modern games industry isn't much of a comparison, seeing as that's 40 years ago. The internet has only been widespread for about a decade or so. If you want to use the modern music industry, they seem to be doing just fine with adapting to the internet. The number of units sold for music, album and singles, have increased significantly since the introduction of online music stores. Online services such as Zune and iTunes have done well for that. Video games have yet to reach the same point as music.

No ones arguing about DRM, its a ham fisted way of dealing with piracy that has extremely limited effectiveness and huge downsides for the legitimate fan. However, using CD Projekt as an example doesnt come across as very effective to me, especially considering that witcher 2 was the most pirated game last year (over 5 mm copies pirated).

1) Piracy numbers are never accurate
2) It would have been cracked and pirated regardless of any counter measure put in place, you seem to be missing the point. Find me a game that isn't free to play or an mmo that has little to no piracy. The goal was not to convince you that piracy wasn't bad for them, but trying to stop it is futile.

Im not saying that pc is dead, just dwindling. Its a consistent trend that can be mapped over the course of the past 25 years, from its pinnacle, to the sorry state that it is in now, and unless something really major happens (like another MMO type revolution), then the platform will continue to die. How long that will take, god knows, it might never happen, PC as a gaming platform might subsist on DLC games and zynga crap 20-30 years down the line.

The fact that it's kept going for 25 years should be indicative of it's ability to keep going. It's never going to disappear no matter what your opinion is. The fact that people have been saying it's dying for over 25 years just seems stupid at this point. It's like that Church led by the one guy who predicts the rapture, and has gotten it wrong every time, then says "oh well my predictions were off, it will come soon I promise!". Except the whole "PC GAMING IS DYING" has been going on for 25 years, give it a break already. At this point, provide irrefutable evidence that it is, or just be quiet about it. As far as I can tell, Steams daily concurrent users beating out the combined totals of the Xbox live network and PSN is evidence enough.

 

[Waaghpowa]

snip

would you mind giving me a list of console ports to pc while youre at it? I think that list is probably twice as big as your list of MMO's and FPS's. Also torchlight 2 isnt PC exclusive, neither is Tribes ascend, so again, I question the validity of this list.

But the most important thing to remember is how many games specifically made for consoles are being ported over to PC. This is by far the more important thing than number of exclusives, because it gives you an idea of where triple A priorities are, because thats where the money is, and if its one thing ive learned in the past 20 years, its that money, always, wins.

Why are you people so hung up on exclusives? Exclusives are bad for everyone and only exist to push proprietary hardware. I couldn't care less about what is exclusive and what isn't and neither should any of you. The more people who can play a game, the better. The only reason to have an exclusive is due to hardware restrictions.

Also Torchlight 2, though it may be available for consoles, is not the same game compared to the PC one. The first one was turned into a God of War hack and slash clone when they realized that console players can't click individual targets and implemented a frontal arc attack for every swing. Also Tribes, for the time being, will remain PC exclusive so long as Microsoft prohibits Hi Rez studios from using their micro transtation system.

 

[Waaghpowa]

I literally just said that exclusives werent all that important.

I mean it as a general statement, this whole obsession with exclusives is rather annoying and needs to die

Fair enough on torchlight, they will play like two different games like diablo 3 will be, but Im sure both will be fun.
As for tribes, Im sure there will be some kind of console port at some point, if thats the only thing holding it up. I mean, people break exclusivity contracts all the time, which speaks to how little they really matter.

But Tribes has nothing to do with exclusivity rights, it's purely caused by inherent problems associated with Microsofts console policies. Based on what I've seen with Microsoft, I highly doubt it will be released any time soon, if at all. Valve wanted to patch TF2 for consoles with the same PC update, and Microsoft refused to let them unless they charged for it, which Valve refused. Hi Rez aren't exactly a big company compared to other studios and they rely on their F2P micro transaction model to survive. If microsoft wont allow, that, don't bet on a console version. Plus, if you ever played Tribes, you REALLY need a mouse.

Its all the console porting that has me worried for the pcs future, tbh Im worried about gamings future in general. I know people hate hearing about the casualization of gaming, but its true, games are easier. Im more worried about single player dying tbh

Console porting isn't as big an issue as people perceive it. I have no problems with ports, I have a problem with lazy development. Good devs take the time to optimize the game for PC, doesn't need to be a full overhaul, but some attention. Deus Ex Human Revolution is one of the best examples. They had separate teams work on console and PC version of the game, giving the PC version special control features. Now the PC version is the definitive version.

 

[Therumancer]

[
Just because the PC industry didn't fall or go away, does not mean that piracy does not have a significant effect on the market, it simply means that the industry is adapting, and it is this adaption which is a problem, because it may just be that it is not adapting in a way that is for the better of the PC gamer. Up until now PC game companies have been doing two things to counteract the rampant PC piracy, either migrating to less piracy-prone platforms, or adjusting business models to try to capitalize on the remaining strong points of the PC platform, in some cases both.

Again, the below article is a close examination of piracy specific to the PC and the consequences this has had for the PC.

http://www.tweakguides.com/Piracy_1.html

What it means is that the current ridiculous trends based on piracy are ridiculous, and based purely on greed. The gaming industry tries to present itself as not making any money due to piracy, or like piracy makes developing on the PC risky in terms of ever seeing any returns. That's pure BS, because piracy has always been there as the industry has grown, and has been even more rampant than we're seeing today. What your seeing is a bunch of spoiled, butthurt, children throwing tantrums and threatening to take their toys elsewhere because they can't have their cake and eat it too. This is why so much of this comes down to arguements about "what we could have made instead" rather than people in the industry claiming they LOST money due to piracy. Those that do claim they lost money due to piracy
are frequently those with crap products that just didn't sell, as a decent product will make money even with piracy, and this has always been the case.

As far as the rest goes, most of what your saying seems to be based around you never having had the oppertunity to make purchusing desicians based on reports by pirates. I'll take this at face value, despite wondering how someone who could have written all of that in an informed fashion on a fringe website like this one could be so naive.

Let me be blunt, head on over to say Gamefaqs or Youtube, and check out a lot of the forums before a game is released. Whether a game is PC or console you'll ultimatly run into people who have copies of the game a week or two before release and are talking about it and answering questions. Some are even working on FAQS (and I believe Gamefaqs came up with a policy preventing people from putting up FAQS for games before release due to this). These are the guys who managed to score a pirate copy of the game, or cracked it themselves.

The source for pirated games are not magical conjurings, MOST are review copies that got leaked, were passed out by developers to generate hype (this is an issue frequently overlooked, devs leaking their own games for press, since people complaining about piracy is still press. I think it's typically done without the publishers though, still there are recurring stories of this as the initial source of many pirated games), or were pulled from warehouses or retail early. Retailers will sometimes have games WEEKS beforehand and people get their hands on them early, oftentimes having paid for them, or gotten them from a clerk at a store that didn't have the street date sorted.

At any rate, the bottom line is you can find plenty of Youtube reviewers, posts, and other things on most games, including a lot of console ones beforehand. This is where a lot of games get blasted by the pirates, they typically DO have something akin to a finished, final copy of the game. This is why pirates saying a game is a buggy mess is a big deal, and why the copy protection for things like "Titan Quest" backfired.

Given the way the game industry misrepresents itself so heavily a lot of people don't want to take leaps of faith and risk getting garbage, and ninety nine times out of a hundred, that guy who got a copy early is going to be right about the final product.

Honestly one of the things I think the industry gets upset about is how when they spend millions of dollars creating a turd, they still want to polish up that turd and pretend it's sold gold, and at least recoup part of their expenses. Basically passing off a "lemon" to the gamers. Pirates make such deceptions more difficult, and prevent the industry from holding all the cards until after they have your money. In a market increasingly dependant on pre-orders to get the most from game conent, or even guarantee a copy, pirates are actually increasingly providing a valuable service.

Now this does not mean piracy is RIGHT, I'm speaking within the constraints of a very narrow arguement here. As I've said before, the whole situation is two groups of bad guys going at it. Like gang bangers fighting the mafia. In this case the pirates robbed someone that is trying to con people, preventing the con artists from making money. Everyone involved is a jerk. While not the standard state of affairs do not underestimate the impact vocal companies who produced garbage and were prevented from passing it off to unsuspecting customers have had in blaming pirates for their fortunes, when really it wasn't the number of thefts so much as the exposure of shoddy goods.

 

[LiquidSolstice]

you just blatantly denied that people pirate movies , books or music

I stopped reading and caring about your post right there

....please do show me where I "just blatantly denied that people pirate". I've never denied that piracy happens at all, I just take issue with you seeing it as the most amazing and positive thing ever made after bacon. I seem to be unable to find where I said that. (Because I never said, you just don't know how to respond to any of my points so you made some shit up about it instead)

No seriously, please do fucking show me where in my massive post I said ANYTHING to the effect that I think people don't pirate. (Use CTRL F if you need to, I don't mind)

 

[LiquidSolstice]

sure enough, here I'll prove some worth to the claims devs make

or try

Me in theory pirating your game is you losing a sale

well
that argument is based on jackshit, because if I have 50 euros, and I want to buy 2 games
and 1 game costs me 50 euros

No, that argument is based on the fact that you didn't pay for one of the games that you were supposed to pay for. The moment you chose to do that, you've experienced a game without paying for it and you have no logical motivation to pay for it after the fact (whether or not you do is completely irrelevant because I know you will simply lie and say that you would always buy it after.

and the other I can't buy

then well I didn't buy that other game

then you didn't lose a sale, to me but it goes to the competitor

If I have no money whatsoever, then I would not have been able to buy your game anyway, so no sale was lost

...are you even reading what you're saying? Apart from the fact that most of it makes jackshit sense, here's a reality check for you;

Dude makes game.
Dude asks money for you to experience game.
MASSIVE GAPING HOLD.[b/]
You choose not to pay dude.
You experience game anyway.

Do you see the massive gaping hole in that process? The part where you were supposed to pay and you did not? Let me break it down further for you, since I'm sure you'll find some way to rationalize it to yourself. The heart of commerce is simple; in return for your money, you are compensated with a product or experienced.

You, in this instance, were compensated, but you paid no money.

See what you seem to be forgetting is that when I take 1 cookies out of that batch, the cookie dissapears for good, for 1 copy of a game I pirate, I do not go into a store to smash a copy
Someone else will buy the copy I might have bought in my local store.

...What?!? So it's okay because someone else will pay for the experience you received for free? Do you even READ what you type before clicking the post button? I'm not sure you are...

Why? because the game remains on the shelve till someone buys it.

And what about when it's not sold on a shelf? What if it's digital? And why are you expecting someone else to pick up the tab for YOUR immorality?

And if it is a first hand sale then a margin still goes to the dev

This is completely irrelevant to what you're saying. A few tips here:

1. Stop pressing "Enter" so much. It makes your nonsensical posts even harder to read.
2. Be more descriptive, jumping from " 2 games" to "1 cookies[sic]" doesn't help me understand what you're trying to say.
3. Stop, and before you hit post, try and read what you've just said, because the gist of your post is as thus;

"My piracy is not a lost sale because someone else will buy it after me." Which is (and yes I'm actually about to say this) simply pants-on-head retarded.

 

[LiquidSolstice]

-Valve's games have been so unique-

I'm sorry but Valve's "game list" consists of the following:

Half-Life series (HL1, HL Opposing Force, HL Blue Shift, HL2, HL2 Episode 1, HL2 Episode 2, Half Life Deathmatch)
Portal series
TF2 & Classic
L4D 1 & 2
Alien Swarm
Dota 2 (Soon (tm))
Day of Defeat (you forgot)
Counterstrike (also forgot)

The only games on those list that they've actually made themselves are the first two, the rest are quite literally a former Half-Life mod, a former Counterstrike mod, a former UT2004 mod and a rip-off of the Dota map from Warcraft III.

If any other studio were to do even a quarter of this Earth's Atmosphere would probably become about 95% complaints and lawsuits.

17 games in 13 years. Pretty good for one studio.

"The only games on those list that they've actually made themselves are the first two"

Incorrect, all of those are developed by people employed in and integrated with Valve. If you are employed by valve and you make a game for them... that makes it a Valve game. Without any ambiguity. It's a blatant falsehood to state otherwise.

Valve don't steal ideas from modders THEY HIRE THE MODDERS! That is the RIGHT THING TO DO! Hire the talent and employ their good ideas into a game more refined that would be reasonably practical as a mod made in spare time distributed for free.

Activision did the same thing, they hired the developers who made Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, who would go on to form Infinity Ward and make the Call of Duty series. No one objected to Activision doing that. They objected to other things activision did, but not that.

It seems your strategy when presented with any kind of inconvenient truth is to simply call it a "blatant falsehood". I'm done arguing with you, you just refuse to see Valve for what they are (which you can see at the same time as loving their games, it's not an either-or thing). I'm not saying Valve is bad, I'm just pointing out a well-known fact about their lineup, and you're taking it as though I've just stabbed your children and then took a dump on their dead bodies.

I get it, Valve is a gaming God to you. That's awesome, but every single time someone tries to point out to you the obvious, you always have an excuse ("They're using the same engine, so what" , "they charge WAY less" , "they don't STEAL IDEAS FROM MODDERS", "their games are unique" etc etc).

 

[LiquidSolstice]

Yeah, who could resist such unassailable truths as:

"(Half Life 2 and Team Fortress 2) play the exact same way. Almost same UI, slightly different guns, exact same controls"

To other Valve games being different from Half Life 2
"No, they're not. They have different textures and only slightly different objectives"

Its easy to prosthesis doom for PC - they've been doing it since 1985 - but not so easy when people actually challenge the assertions and you have revealed a remarkable ignorance of games in this regard. Your assertions and predictions are clearly worthless.

"I don't like the way you see my games. Ergo. your thoughts are worthless. YOU JUST IGNANT!"

This just proves my point from my above post. Newsflash, buddy? I've played every single fucking Valve game, each time expecting something fresh, and only finding it within Portal. So you can shove your holier-than-thou attitude back up from whence the fuck it came, because I'm getting a little tired of your entire point consisting of you belittling anyone who does not think Valve is amazing and godly and unique and awesome.

 

[UnnDunn]

If I may interject at this late stage...

I think this "debate" between game publishers and those who participate in game piracy has reached the level of a religious war, which in my view, is nothing more than a useless squabble between parties who are too immature and closed-minded to make any sort of real progress. Think Republicans vs. Democrats, Pro-Lifers vs. Pro-Choicers, Giants fans vs. Patriots fans.

As usual in these debates, hyperbole and rhetoric are the order of the day, compromise by one party is savagely abused by the other, and as such there is no hope of reaching any sort of real solution that satisfies both parties.

The problem for gamers is that, in this particular squabble, the gamers are vastly outgunned by the publishers. The publishers decide which games to release, when, and what DRM to use. They dictate the terms of each engagement. They're like the Israel to gamers' Palestine.

It occurs to me that getting into a shouting match with someone who has bigger guns than you is not a good idea, in general. In other words, those who participate in game piracy were and are idiots for thinking that the publishers would not retaliate, with stronger and stronger DRM or by withholding or crippling releases.

The next DRM frontier will be on computers with locked bootloaders, sold through the Windows 8 Marketplace, with DRM built on Trusted Computing principles. While I'm sure the pirates will find ways to continue pirating, I'm equally sure that the publisers hope such piracy will become so difficult and tedious for average gamers, that the level of piracy on PC will dimish enough to make AAA single-player PC exclusives a viable proposition again.

I hope that is the case. Piracy is unjustifiable, and those who attempt to do so come of as immature fools, in my opinion.

 

[Treblaine]

snip

would you mind giving me a list of console ports to pc while youre at it? I think that list is probably twice as big as your list of MMO's and FPS's. Also torchlight 2 isnt PC exclusive, neither is Tribes ascend, so again, I question the validity of this list.

But the most important thing to remember is how many games specifically made for consoles are being ported over to PC. This is by far the more important thing than number of exclusives, because it gives you an idea of where triple A priorities are, because thats where the money is, and if its one thing ive learned in the past 20 years, its that money, always, wins.

Look, console and PC architecture is so similar you can't say whether it is a "console-to-PC" or "PC-to-console" port. They are co-developed on both PC and console.

The important thing is that that even developers with a history of console preference are giving consistent day-and-date release on PC with console release:
-Darksiders 2
-Borderlands 2
-Mass Effect 3
-Resident Evil 6
-Max Payne 3

The important thing is not only does PC have so many GOOD exclusives, but that PC isn't majorly missing out on anything. We're not being excluded like Wii which isn't getting a Max Payne 3 any time ever. Even where a game has been made with consoles in mind, it still plays better on PC.

"if its one thing ive learned in the past 20 years, its that money, always, wins."

Is this you conceding that PC gaming is NOT dying? As I've shown:
-Valve's profitability
-EA's investment of MONEY in Origin
-Also larger investment of On-Live which is totally dependant on PC-games market.
-Massive earnings from MMOs
-how lucrative the micro-transaction Free-2-Play model is.

You follow the money - as you claim to do - and you'll see PC gaming is VERY lucrative.

 

[AhumbleKnight]

-- snip --
Can you see how things can be made more convienent and easyer? As has been pointed out by many people, people don't pirate because of cost (some probably do but as for how many is anybody's guess(and nothing but a guess)).

Certainly, I can see how it is easier. But I still am not ready to believe that it "being pointed out by many people" somehow qualifies it as fact that there are even an theoretical higher number of those who do it because of DRM vs those who just want it for free.

I was referring to people talking about the pirating of the 'Humble Bundle'. Sorry, I should have been more specific. I don't like to talk about or even hear about how many pirate because of X reason because it is all theoretical based of unknown variables or guess work. My point was, people pirate for various reasons. Convenience, ease and accessibility can be improved.

-- snipped me having a stab at DRM --

All due respect, that's a pretty skewed view of DRM-based games. Not saying that it doesn't happen, but I don't believe it happens as frequently as it's made a fuss about. The popular games that are filled with DRM aren't just best-sellers because they're popular. I'm willing to bet a ton of money that DRM works just fine with most people, and that only an adamant minority of gamers take issue with it.

It happens frequently enough for it to be an issue and it is bloody annoying when it happens. People tend to make a lot of noise when they have paid money for a product that does not work (arguably faulty). There is no return policies for games. I would happily shut up about DRM forever if I could take my game back or contact my digital distribution vendor and say 'this game isn't working for me, I wont my money back'... like you can with everything else you spend money on.

I hope this helps you understand why people who pirate are not going to see paying for a game with DRM as being in any way easyer.

I never said this, I actually said the opposite; people who pirate now will simply see their piracy as a hell of a lot easier if there was NO DRM at all.

Fair enough, except for the 'hell of a lot' easier part. It will be a bit easier. I don't see how piracy being easy compared to piracy being very easy will make much if any difference.
Edit: DRM makes things slighly more difficult for the paying customer while DRM free makes it slightly easyer for the pirater. I like the option that has the paying customer happy.

 

[AhumbleKnight]

Meanwhile, back on topic.
If piracy is killing PC game development and PC gaming is on the decline... then why have sales increased by 20% from 2009 to 2010? This was curtsey of The PC Gaming Alliance who's next annual report should be coming out this month. They also expected continued growth over the next few years.

 

[Treblaine]

17 games in 13 years. Pretty good for one studio.

"The only games on those list that they've actually made themselves are the first two"

Incorrect, all of those are developed by people employed in and integrated with Valve. If you are employed by valve and you make a game for them... that makes it a Valve game. Without any ambiguity. It's a blatant falsehood to state otherwise.

Valve don't steal ideas from modders THEY HIRE THE MODDERS! That is the RIGHT THING TO DO! Hire the talent and employ their good ideas into a game more refined that would be reasonably practical as a mod made in spare time distributed for free.

Activision did the same thing, they hired the developers who made Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, who would go on to form Infinity Ward and make the Call of Duty series. No one objected to Activision doing that. They objected to other things activision did, but not that.

It seems your strategy when presented with any kind of inconvenient truth is to simply call it a "blatant falsehood". I'm done arguing with you, you just refuse to see Valve for what they are (which you can see at the same time as loving their games, it's not an either-or thing). I'm not saying Valve is bad, I'm just pointing out a well-known fact about their lineup, and you're taking it as though I've just stabbed your children and then took a dump on their dead bodies.

I get it, Valve is a gaming God to you. That's awesome, but every single time someone tries to point out to you the obvious, you always have an excuse ("They're using the same engine, so what" , "they charge WAY less" , "they don't STEAL IDEAS FROM MODDERS", "their games are unique" etc etc).

"It seems your strategy when presented with any kind of inconvenient truth blatant falsehood is to simply call it a "blatant falsehood"."

Fixed.

I have proven what you have said is false. You ignore that proof and continue to assert your baseless untruth. Truth is a matter of evidence, not a matter of badgering people repeating your assertions till accepted.

And I never said nor indicated Valve was "perfect", you saying that I do is both inaccurate and irrelevant personal attack that dodges the objective refutation. Your claims of Valve games being indistinct remain untrue and I proved that without subjectivity. That is, it doesn't matter what my stance is, my argument stands on its own. YOUR assertion is entirely based on your word being worth more than facts, or worse, your word alone is fact.

To reiterate:
-HL2: futuristic fantasy-realism action-adventure First person shooter
-Team Fortress 2: Class-based, objective centred competitive-teams multiplayer retro-abstract-aubsurdist FPS on closed maps
-Left 4 Dead: gritty co-op zombie killing FPS through short campaigns with special-character counter-op.
-Portal: puzzle first-person game using space bending devices in test complex with homicidal AI program that has total control

Your game-engine logic is also flawed as you don't seem to realise how many different, varied and distinct games can use the same game engine, like for example the Unreal Engine 3:
-Batman: Arkham Asylum (third-person predatory stealth + beat-em-up)
-Gears of War 3 (third person cover shooter)
-Borderlands (First person stylised shooter RPG-lite)
-Kinect Aventures (third person waggle game)
-Mirror's Edge (Bright/clean First Person Platformer/Parkour)
-Shadow Complex (2.5D side scrolling Metroidvania game)
-Tom Clancy's Endwar (RTS)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Unreal_Engine_games#Unreal_Engine_3

You say all Valve games are indistinct just because they all use the Source engine... it is undeniable that by the same logic all these games are indistinct because they all use the Unreal 3 engine!

"you're taking it as though I've just stabbed your children and then took a dump on their dead bodies."

That's irrelevant and disgusting. Your posts are totally out of order.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/jump/7.343687.13831889

"I don't like the way you see my games. Ergo. your thoughts are worthless. YOU JUST IGNANT!"

This just proves my point from my above post. Newsflash, buddy? I've played every single fucking Valve game, each time expecting something fresh, and only finding it within Portal. So you can shove your holier-than-thou attitude back up from whence the fuck it came, because I'm getting a little tired of your entire point consisting of you belittling anyone who does not think Valve is amazing and godly and unique and awesome.

I'm not belittling anyone, you're the one hurling insults and referencing scatological infanticide.

I call you ignorant because you are, not as an insult. You really do seem to be ignorant of game design.

You post made-up quotes from me in attempt at a personal attack. I use your ACTUAL QUOTES to demonstrate how flawed your logic is something self-evident.

Playing Valve games does not mean you can post ignorance and untruths about them without being challenged. If you don't like intellectual challenge then just ignore me, when you see my replies in your feed, just delete them if you don't like them, but don't think you can censor me. I'm not PM'ing you, I'm posting for the wider forum discussion. And I'm not the only one, others have challenged you as well.

If it is your OPINION that all valve games are indistinct, well that's you're own weird opinion but it doesn't really add any discussion value. It is certainly not fact nor indicative of anything.

 

[DayDark]

[...] As far as the rest goes, most of what your saying seems to be based around you never having had the oppertunity to make purchusing desicians based on reports by pirates. I'll take this at face value, despite wondering how someone who could have written all of that in an informed fashion on a fringe website like this one could be so naive. [...]

Thanks for the informational reply.

The reason I haven't had the opportunity to make purchase decisions based on pirate reports is simply because of my environment (in real life), I don't socialize with particularly many pirates, and most of the ones that are pirates, aren't game pirates. I don't much trust reports based on pre-release game copies, unless from official sources of course, and even then I usually don't judge based on a singular report still.