Valve Pays Royalties for Fan-Created Items in TF2

[Enigmers]

This is why I love VALVe.

<3

 

[Gaderael]

I'm so freaking jealous. I wish I had the time to learn to do what these guys have done. That being said, I am happy for them. It's always nice to see people being awarded for their creativity.

Once again,Valve show that they are the best devs on the planet.

 

[ImprovizoR]

I feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Valve is an awesome developer. They actually care about their customers unlike 90% of developers out there that only care about one single thing - money. I'm not delusional though. I know Valve does it for the money too, but not just for the money. They understand their customers, they know that they wont go broke if they give away free stuff. It will increase their popularity and gain them more customers. That's something Kotick can never comprehend. Because he's an idiot.

 

[samsonguy920]

Fortunately I can still type with my jaw on the floor, but it is distracting and reminding me I need to vacuum.
But much as I love Valve I have to wonder if this might just turn into a gamebreaker for TF2. I think someone else [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/comics/critical-miss/8216-WTT-Dignity-4-Fez] is seeing this, too.

 

[Scars Unseen]

Huh. I need to start buying more Valve games. This sort of behavior should be encouraged. Anyone got any suggestions? I only play single player and already have HL2 and Portal.

 

[spinFX]

Sucks for the creators of the OTHER community items. The one's that came before this.

 

[Fr]anc[is]

anc[is]I'm happy for the creators, but $20 for a hat is insane. Plus I still despise that new knife

Are you kidding me. The new knife is the best weapon out of the entire update. I rock so much with it, while I used to suck with the old knife.

Exactly my point, you shapeshifting rat

 

[Zhukov]

Games Industry to Valve: Please Stop Being Awesome, You're Making the Rest of Us Look Bad.

 

[Therumancer]

I have a sort of Deja Vu about this. While being handled a bit differantly I can't help but feel we've been here before with "Second Life", and that didn't end all that well.

Still, I am happy for those who got the checks, and I hope Valve employees have some standing prescriptions for "use as needed" painkillers because with the upcoming headaches I think they are going to need them. The inevitable Plagerism battles someone mentioned only being the tip of the iceberg here I believe.

 

[LawlessSquirrel]

Wow, congrats to the modders that got in on this, and bravo to Valve for supporting it. It seems a good step toward massive-content games powered by the communities they're built for.

This situation has got me thinking. I'd love to see this kind of treatment get picked up more often and on a larger scale.

 

[Chamale]

Oh wait... they were trying to directly counteract the claims that microtransactions = sell-out. Fine. You know what, Gabe? Just keep doing that. Silence the irrational hatred.

Doesn't change the fact that they changed TF2 into a freemium game. Silence the irrational hatred by letting me trade in games on Steam [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/104364-Pachter-Valve-Will-Offer-Trade-ins-on-Steam], so I can get rid of TF2.

so I can get rid of TF2

Fuck, typing those words made me sad. But TF2 is utterly ruined by the Mannconomy update. Is there a way to unpatch a Steam game and play older versions of it?

 

[Kollega]

I still don't trust Valve. They have started to close entire Steam accounts due to flimsy accusations of scamming in TF2. Frankly, i don't want to play TF2 anymore, and rewarding the select few with huge amounts of cash for making these items is hardly an effective remedy.

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

I still don't trust Valve. They have started to close entire Steam accounts due to flimsy accusations of scamming in TF2. Frankly, i don't want to play TF2 anymore, and rewarding the select few with huge amounts of cash for making these items is hardly an effective remedy.

Fuck, typing those words made me sad. But TF2 is utterly ruined by the Mannconomy update. Is there a way to unpatch a Steam game and play older versions of it?

Guys...take a sense of perspective here. One guy has his account looked at because of an abuse of the report button and you're accusing them of selling out? Valve are known for trying new things, and if you want TF2 vanilla - there's enough servers that support it.

Simply vowing never to trust a company for one thing you don't quite agree with is slightly nuts, don't you think?

 

[Delusibeta]

1) Holy cow, Valve's giving away (approximately) $200,000 in royalties. I can't think of any other company to do that.
2) Holy cow, if $200,000 (approximately) is in royalties, how much money is Valve making from the store as a whole? They must be making a mint.

 

[tkioz]

You know reading a story about people doing the right thing without being forced to do so for once just gives me the warm and fuzzies.

Most other companies would have pulled some crap about EUAs or some other legalise and claimed that because it was made for their game they owned the content and didn't have to pay anything; but not valve, they didn't need to be sued, or even threatened, they did the right thing. That's integrity and intelligence (it's smart to pay these people, because it gives good press, the old adage about "any press" is dead) for you, something sadly lacking in today's business world.

It's doubly cool because I doubt the people who made the content ever expected to see money for it, they just made it for their own personal reasons, and now they are getting "new car" / "half what's owning on my house" type cheques.

 

[kingmob]

This kinda sounds more like an article covering the idiocy of "microtransaction" consumers, that apparently paid well over a million $ (assuming their cut is somewhere around 10-20%... maybe even less) for a few item models they probably spent a few (maybe a few dozen) hours on... it makes me literally lol

"At a time when content creators are struggling with changing markets and evolving technologies, the Steam community is sending a clear message with these checks,"

"There really is no doubt at this point that there's a huge demand for community-created content in TF2 and, hopefully, more games will start to tap into this demand."

And these quotes make me facepalm myself. Thanks to all the people out there paving the way towards getting clothing, ranks or unlockable weapons only with a bill in the near future...

I agree, we already know what Battlefield 3 will be like...

 

[Chamale]

Fuck, typing those words made me sad. But TF2 is utterly ruined by the Mannconomy update. Is there a way to unpatch a Steam game and play older versions of it?

Guys...take a sense of perspective here. One guy has his account looked at because of an abuse of the report button and you're accusing them of selling out? Valve are known for trying new things, and if you want TF2 vanilla - there's enough servers that support it.

Simply vowing never to trust a company for one thing you don't quite agree with is slightly nuts, don't you think?

I never said that at all. I said that making it freemium has ruined TF2. I still love Valve, even though they made a terrible decision. I wish Valve would give me a refund for TF2 after making such a significant change, but I'll keep supporting the company even if they're less than perfect.

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

I said that making it freemium has ruined TF2.

I'm just trying to get why you think that. I've not spent a dime/penny and I'm still having as much fun.

Just don't get the "ITS RUINED" idea.

 

[Chamale]

I said that making it freemium has ruined TF2.

I'm just trying to get why you think that. I've not spent a dime/penny and I'm still having as much fun.

Just don't get the "ITS RUINED" idea.

It's a principle I have, that no PC game should be freemium. I've played games that added this "feature", and it ALWAYS ended badly. A few people made money, while the fandom was torn apart by arguments over the new equipment that can be easily unlocked for free. I've seen this situation before. I didn't want to watch it happen in TF2 (and it WILL happen, unless the fandom can smoothly split up right now), so I got out of the game.