Valve, why are they loved?

[Tayh]

valve is like a cult.
Once you join there's no escape. You will be controlled in every aspect of your life, be expected to regularly pay tribute, you must worship its creator... And when all that's said and done, you will thank them for it.

 

[Nouw]

Steam Summer-Sale baby, that's why! Ridiculous discounts for the freaking win.

 

[Jaxs]

Steam is good but not awesome or Revolutional. Steam is still DRM and DRM is bad because of the problems and potential problems that come with DRM. In a nutshell, it's Apple of all DRM which in itself is a kinda good and bad thing. simplification may seem good but it removes options.

Actually, Steam was revolutionary, before Steam, video game digital distribution was practically non-existent and if it did exist then it did a very poor job.

And the only DRM I have ever encountered using steam is that i'm required to input a 5 digit code that they e-mail to me every time I install Steam which is roughly once to twice a year; which isn't a a problem at all.

 

[Aerosteam]

Isn't there a sale on Steam like... All the time?

 

[mindlesspuppet]

nonsense snipped

The only true valve games are the half-life ones. All the other games are either: Mods, made by another company that is taken over by valve and the game is relesed with a valve logo, or a remake of another developers game "dota 2 anyone?"

So let me get this straight, you're criticizing Valve for giving modders and small indie teams the chance to have their hardwork turned into a full fledged, top quality product?

This thing you're complaining about is one of the reasons people love Valve. Valve tirelessly supports their modding community, and rightfully their community supports them back.

As for DotA2. Valve allowed Icefrog to retain full control over it. This is why Icefrog chose Valve instead of the dozen or so other game studios trying to hire him.

At least EA allows the company to keep their logo on their games.

Valve tends to hire small teams or unestablished developers. EA doesn't "allow" companies to keep their logo on the games, EA exploits the name of once acclaimed studios, eg. Westwood.

Also valve is sorta sadistic, remeber that April's fools joke? the one about half-life 3?, the only developer that could that is valve, and get away with it.

Meanwhile Half-life 3, or episode 3 are becoming the new Duke Nukem Forever of gaming, jokes and all.

HL3 is nothing like Duke Forever. First of all, Valve has remained active and hasn't been draining funds from investors as 3D Realms did. Secondly, it really hasn't been that long since HL2E2.

Yes valve may be friendly to theire fans and customers, but what about other developers? how many games have you brought retail and yet needed to install steam to use? How many developers have lost their titles to the valve beast? How long till the gaming culture is overrun with valvies?

I don't know if you noticed but a ton of developers love Valve. Many indie devs have found incredible success thanks to Steam.

The only example of "losing their titles to the valve beast" might be Turtle Rock Studios (l4d). Who are on good terms with Valve, were offer the opportunity to stay, they simply chose not to.

Valve may be a good developer, but there also the worst kind of evil"the one that looks and acts nice, but fools into doing there every order, so your helpless to fight back when they attack."

Now to head to my deep underground flame, acid, bullet, bomb, atom bomb, magic, and any other weapon you can think of bunker.

So here's the thing. You seem like you have absolutely no clue what you're talking -- this is why you'll get flamed. You seem to be doing little more than trying your best to go against the grain, all while being terribly uninformed on the issues you present.

 

[Tharwen]

If the servers went down for any random reason you wouldn't be able to play you're single player games since, at least last time I checked[footnote]Granted last time I checked was quite some time ago[/footnote] steam offline didn't work at all

Yeah, it still doesn't. At least not in any useful way.

That and steam support seem to be the main issues with Steam at the moment.

 

[ChildishLegacy]

Another thread that fits the template: I don't like X, therefore nobody has any reason to like X!

I do have my opinion on VALVe and Steam (very positive ones), but I just don't want to contribute to discussion like this.

 

[Karoshi]

I don't give a damn about motives

The only true valve games are the half-life ones. All the other games are either: Mods, made by another company that is taken over by valve and the game is relesed with a valve logo, or a remake of another developers game "dota 2 anyone?"

False. They also gave us Portal, Team Fortress, Left 4 Dead and a handful of others.

No, Portal, Team Fortress, and Left 4 Dead were all originally mods and or developed by people outside of valve and then brought in.

And when they brought the games in, Valve added their fantastic humour, made a great story and polished till it was awesome. They did not invent the idea, thats for sure, but they brought the ideas much further, than they would have gotten on their own.

I do not see Valve as the Messiahs of the gaming industry, but I find them reliable. Good story, lack of cut-scenes, cheap prices. What's there not to like about them?

 

[Sandjube]

Because of the summer sale on right now.

 

[veloper]

The only company that may rival Valve for releasing their games in a better state and doing patch support for years, is Blizzard and Blizzard/activision make different problems to push them away from the top spot.

You may not like the type of games Valve make, but if other companies did half as much quality control as Valve, gamers had much less to complain about (except maybe the release dates for the terribly impatient).

Final consideration: loyalty. Most Escpapist members play games primarilly on the PC. While companies like Epic have openly abandoned the PC at one time or another and studios like Bioware have begun to cater to a different audience than the old D&D-loving fans, Valve may have branched out, but they also stuck with their FPS fans on the PC.

 

[launchpadmcqwak]

they make good games...

 

[3quency]

Good business savvy and strong PR. Easy as.
They appear approachable and friendly, and seem to genuinely mean it, and they take criticism in board and react to it, I mean look at their playtesting practices.

I would however take issue with anyone calling Half Life a "great story" - it's not finished yet. We don't have much of a story arc and we really have no idea what the hell is going on. But the games are fun and the characters are pretty compelling.

 

[Monsterfurby]

I'm not a Valve fan per se, I don't even like the Half-Life games, but I know they all are good games with great creative elements and near-flawless game design/craftsmanship.

 

[runic knight]

because they use the carrot instead of the stick.
Honestly, seems to be the gist of it. Instead of blaming gamers for their own faults, forcing unwanted drm, deadlines and sales figures, destroying ip with mandates and asshattery, valve just rewards people. You want to support them because they reward you. Games for cheap. Convenient networking and friend storage. Being treated like a customer instead of a criminal.
The answer is simple. Why does valve get so much more love compared to companies like EA? because they are a better company. They aren't mired with outdated ideas of what they should get. They don't try to screw you out of every cent. And they support smaller guys too instead of eating them up and shitting out the bones.

 

[mindlesspuppet]

It did suck. And I was against it up until like 2008 and now I love it. It's awesome. And I have no problem with the offline mode. Only that you can't get achievements is annoying.

Steam is good but not awesome or Revolutional. Steam is still DRM and DRM is bad because of the problems and potential problems that come with DRM. In a nutshell, it's Apple of all DRM which in itself is a kinda good and bad thing. simplification may seem good but it removes options.

I love how incredibly vague your reason is here "Steam is still DRM and DRM is bad because of the problems and potential problems that come with DRM,". How about mentioning some of those problems?

Steam's DRM isn't the draconian sort we've seen Ubisoft and EA implement in the past.

Publisher's want DRM, Steam offers DRM that is relatively painless to user, the alternative is much worse. Moreover Valve has done one step better and used its DRM to implement features that players do want in their game.

I see what you're trying to do with the Apple comparison, but it fails pretty hard. What options exactly does Steam's DRM remove?

I don't really see what's peoples problems with offline mode. It lets you play games offline. That's more that you can say, say about Origin or Uplay

More often than not, you need to be on-line to go off-line. Origin can at least go off-line without having to go on-line.

Whether or not this is down to poor shitty coding is still up in air but it does raise questions why it hasn't been fixed.

I own quite a few games on Steam, I've never encountered a time when I have to go online to play offline...

 

[royohz]

I don't think there's a quality to The Escapist that attracts Valve fans, as you seem to believe. I just think a lot of gamers appreciate their work/products. It's as simple as that. There's no Valve/Escapist conspiracy. If you really think that, then there's really no point in trying to explain it to you.

 

[Saelune]

They make good games when they actually put them out.
Plus they made Steam, something I have become very familiar with this summer.
I actually just bought the Complete Valve Pack. Replaying Portal 1, and playing Half-Life, since I already beat HL2 on my 360.

 

[captaincabbage]

Because Portal.

Also Half-Life.

Also also Team Fortress.

I'm not really a big fan of Valve, but those three series seem to be the most popular examples given for Valve's status as god of the universe.

Oh yeah also
*checks Steam stores*
Yeah, it's sale time. Again.

 

[Vrach]

Also, I sorta lied about the title, why is valved loved when they are more or less, a monopolistic company?

Because a monopoly is not necessarily a bad thing. It's just that it generally causes the company that's holding it to become greedy, inflate prices etc. Considering Valve is doing the exact opposite of that and using the fact they have a (relative) monopoly to bring down prices and give more back to the consumer than most companies, people don't generally have a problem with it.

The only true valve games are the half-life ones. All the other games are either: Mods, made by another company that is taken over by valve and the game is relesed with a valve logo, or a remake of another developers game "dota 2 anyone?"

Yeah, same can be said of any other company that hires people. Hiring people is good. The fact their logo is not there anymore means it was likely not important enough to the guys who made it (or they'd have fought harder/refused to work for Valve), they were likely content to have a Valve logo there instead and just work for the company.

At least EA allows the company to keep their logo on their games.

Not railing against EA here, but I'd rather see EA allow companies to keep many other things, like vision and such, than a stupid picture no one's gonna give two shits about.

Also valve is sorta sadistic, remeber that April's fools joke? the one about half-life 3?, the only developer that could that is valve, and get away with it.

Anyone who didn't see that joke coming a billion miles away needs to look up the word gullible. Careful, it's not in the standard dictionaries. Also, other companies have done the same tons of times over. Check Blizzard's history for example. It's basically done by any company that has character.

Yes valve may be friendly to theire fans and customers, but what about other developers? how many games have you brought retail and yet needed to install steam to use? How many developers have lost their titles to the valve beast? How long till the gaming culture is overrun with valvies?

Can you explain how or why that's a bad thing? I've bought games without Steam before and had a "you have x more times to install this game" during reinstalls. I consider it a much worse thing than having my games accessible and downloadable at any time, given an internet connection.

Valve may be a good developer, but there also the worst kind of evil"the one that looks and acts nice, but fools into doing there every order, so your helpless to fight back when they attack."

When has Valve "attacked"? You know what we call an enemy that acts like that, except it doesn't attack? A friend >.>

 

[gnihton]

You're really asking this while the absolutely ridiculous summer sale is on.