Valve, why are they loved?

[Spitfire]

Valve has won more of those than any other developer. Why did so many valve fans join the escapist, not a question of choise, but of why?

So that we could have more of these threads, obviously..

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

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?"

First of all, mods are made by players.

Second of all, you're not making any sense.
What you're saying is basically, "Oh look, Valve hired mod creators to further develop their games, THAT'S BAD!" What?

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

Spoiler: You mean, like this?

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?

Personally? None.

While I can see how the advent of Steam, and digital distribution, is problematic for people who prefer to buy retail copies of games, the fact of the matter is that there's currently no other viable DRM solution that's more customer-friendly than Steam.

How many developers have lost their titles to the valve beast?

I genuinely don't know. Maybe you can enlighten me.


Captcha: "make it so"
How about that, a random Star Trek reference.

 

[distortedreality]

And TF2... my god. I have never seen a more unbalanced, lopsided, just plain screwed up mess of a multiplayer game save maybe UMVC3.

And CS:GO? Oh good, another realistic gunwank shooter where you die in two shots.

I find these two statements hilariously funny when put together.

I don't know why.

 

[DoPo]

*sigh* I remember the time when I could go "Hey, I played this game from these guys and I liked it. Then I played another game by them and I liked it. I think I like those guys." and I wouldn't be questioned over this every week or two. Those were good times, remember, anybody? I hope so. Why can't it be like then - simple. With a lot less need to justify your every thought and action. Multiple times.

Here is the deal - I loved HL when it came out. I loved the story and the setting, I loved the multiplayer, I loved the enigmatic G-Man, I loved the innumerable mods I've played all thanks to that one game. I looked forward to HL2. It delivered - it was cool, it was awesome, I loved it too. I played Portal, too. It's one of my favourite games ever. Therefore I like Valve. Also, I am a big fan of Steam - thanks to it, I've gotten games I quite literally would have never gotten otherwise and I'm glad for that. Overall, I have had very pleasant experiences with Valve. Therefore I like them. Valve also made the Source engine, which I like very much and it's unrelated to being made by them - I just think the graphics are good enough for me and the physics are really sweet. Yes, I'm old fashioned like that - I don't aim for "the best EVAR", I think the pursuit of that is wasteful, instead of going for "The most useful we have right now". I should note - there are other engines I support, too, I wish less companies tried to build stuff from scratch.

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.

Which one? Because I remember several. None were between Valve and Half-Life 3, though. The HL3 ones are all not related with Valve.

-snip-

Would you please stop reading my mind? Thanks

 

[GenericAmerican]

Because in the last few day's I've bought 6 games I've wanted for a long time for under $20.

And they work, I don't have to deal with shitty DRM, it's easy to start the games from my games library, they automatically update and have their own dedicated forums on steam. If I want to play offline all I have to do is switch to offline mode*. And I can install them all on as many computers as I want.

*It works guys, just because you had a problem with it 5 years ago, doesn't mean it stayed broke.*

Their games take a while to cook, but they are delicious when they are finished. And they continually support their products even years after release.

Only problem I have with them right now is lobby chat in L4D2 has been broken since christmas. But hey, I can type right.

 

[shrekfan246]

You've got to admit that Valve has an incredible batting record at this point. They haven't released any bad games, and I'd argue that they haven't even released mediocre ones (even Left 4 Dead, which isn't my cup of tea, is an excellent game).

And yet, if Bioware has proven anything of the community, it's that two mediocre games are enough to make their fans swear them off for all of eternity...

OT: Portal was excellent. I've never played Team Fortress 2 but I know a lot of people who love it. I've never played Left 4 Dead, but it's in pretty much the same ballpark. Half-Life 2 is all right, but I have a hard time playing it for more than an hour or two at a time and I've never managed to fully complete it yet.

I don't love Valve. I don't hardly ever use Steam. But considering how EA, Ubisoft, Activision, Microsoft, Sony, and occasionally Nintendo treat their customers right now, Valve is a breath of fresh air because they seem to remember that every now and then, customers like being treated as more than just walking wallets.

 

[Mysterious Username]

Valve is alright, I don't think they're really the best thing since sliced bread, but as a company they stand out given they're dedication to making quality product. Most companies with an IP like HL would have quickly churned out a 3rd game for a cash grab, but Valve just takes their time to try and ensure it's still good.

 

[lord.jeff]

I like them namely for what then did for indie developers, steam makes it just as easy for them to get in the spotlight as it is for a AAA developer, as well as hiring small teams if they find there game of interest as is the case with Portal.

 

[targren]

they don,t treat us like potential pirates

Have to call bullshit on that one. That's what Steamworks is. If that were true, I'd be able to decouple my games from Steam instead of playing jump-through-the-hoops every time I bring my laptop to a new location. I wish it were the truth, because then I could feel better about giving them my money, rather than just having a steam acct with TF2 and my Humble Bundle games on it.

 

[Soviet Heavy]

Valve is the MomCorp of the videogame industry.

They need to be big and strong like Germany, not weak and neutral like Switzerland!

Yes Germany is sooo strong losing 2 world wars and all.
We like Valve because they get our money by making sales not by holding games for ransom and bury under day 1 dlcs.

You need to watch Futurama. Tis a quote, made for humor.

 

[AngelOfBlueRoses]

I just got Fallout 1, 2, Tactics, and 3 GOTY all for $20, Terraria for $2.50, picked up the entire GTA series (minus the Stories ones, but those sucked majorly) for $25 (which GTA IV and Liberty City Episodes is worth alone), and will probably be picking up many more games for really cheap prices.

...I'm sorry, did you say something?

 

[Garrett]

I don't care for Valve. I don't like their games but to each their own. Yes, that means I don't like Half-Life and Portal (but then again, I also don't like Diablo and Heroes of Might and Magic so obviously I don't know what I'm talking about <-- I get that a lot). Well, can't realy say anything about L4D because I never played it but even though I love zombies, I don't really like multiplayer games.

What I actually hate is steam or "srim" [sri:m] as I like to call it (it's a little pun understandable only in Polish that incorporates the word

which means "taking a crap"). Why do I hate it? I hate digital distribution, I like my collection on shelves (the only reason I don't absolutely hate digital distribution are old games and I mean 80' and 90' old). I hate DRMs, because they are absolutely useless when it comes to fighting piracy. And I absolutely hate that a retail copy requires some additional programm to work. If someday steam will disappear we will have to bother emulating it or finding old cracks to play games that we legally bought.

Seriously, since steam and DRMs I pretty much stopped buying new games for PC. I stick with old ones or ones that don't require anything in order to work. The only exceptions are very good games that for some reason I absolutely want to have on PC instead of a console (eg. DE:HR and soon Skyrim).

Oh and with steam, I can't decide where to install new games (I know there is a workaround but it's bothersome).

 

[Luca72]

Does the whole "mod" thing really make people that upset? Why do you care where the idea came from as long as the final game is polished? I don't see anyone arguing that League of Legends sucks just because it owes its existence to a Warcraft mod.

Counter strike starts off as a mod, and because it has promise, Valve picks it up and sculpts it into a fully fledged game. Same with Day of Defeat and Team Fortress. Portal really should be in this category as well. But I don't think you can argue that Team Fortress should have stayed an esoteric mod for Quake. By appropriating it and putting a creative and experienced development team on it, we get Team Fortress 2, my personal favorite multiplayer shooter, which still sees regular content updates. The buyable hats thing is silly and pointless and absolutely a money grab, but it doesn't alter gameplay at all, and if people are willing to spend money on pointless shit, I can't argue that Valve shouldn't do it.

If the mod thing puts you off, then you probably won't understand why people like Valve. I can only express my opinion on the matter - from where I'm standing, Valve seems to make the most consistently high quality releases of any game company (even if it makes much FEWER releases than most companies).

 

[Gorilla Gunk]

I had some long reply written out but lost it so basically the gist of what I was trying to say is that Valve doesn't give a shit about it's console players then that lumps them into the mediocre developer category.

And before you give me the "MICROSOFT/SONY WON'T LET THEM SUPPORT THEIR CONSOLE RELEASES!" excuse, just think for a second, think of all the support other, "lesser" developers are able to give their console releases. You really think Valve, a multi-BILLION dollar company, would ever really have THAT much trouble getting any updates/DLC to their console releases?

 

[kebab4you]

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.

I have never had a problem with it but those that I have spoken to said you need to start offline mode with an internet connection first so it can create a file to verify that you are running a legit game, now why it doesn't create/update such a file once a day or so I don't know.

 

[Kae]

Valve is like a religion to people, they seem to have undoubted fate on steam which I don't really get, I personally feel that GoG.com, Gamersgate and Desura are better online stores and pretty much don't use steam, it's somewhat invasive, and my computer sometimes won't connect to it, besides 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, but they are good at making games, they are not bad at all, but I'll never get why people are so loyal to steam.

I have a great internet connection and only lose it once in a blue moon. In which case I just play a Handheld or something. Or read a book. Or learn a new skill.

DRM isn't much of an issue for me.

I also love them for the constant sales. For new games: I go to Steam.
For old games I go to GoG.com

They both specialize in certain fields and I feel like they should stay there.

That's why I gave 3 examples, with all of them I don't really need steam unless there was a steam exclusive title that I really wanted, but since my Internet isn't very good and kinda unstable, I just don't use steam, as a store it's pretty good, but anything that requires me to log in to play it is pretty much a no from me, when they have a working offline mode I'll start buying there, until then I have better alternatives.

 

[Futzpah]

For me, the reason I love me some Valve is simply this.... They have NO STOCK HOLDERS!!!

That means they only have to worry about us (The consumers) and no one else. They make the games they want to and not some Copi Di Pasti CoD games and they are willing to take risks that the other game company's aka EA and ActiBlizzard aren't willing to take.

oh and their games are always MOD friendly.

This.



Edit: I removed the other "this," which looked ever so lame.

 

[DarkRyter]

Because they release games that we like.

I thought this was obvious.

Like, really. You thought waaaaay too hard about this.

CAPTCHA: think hard

 

[banksy122]

Seeing as he hasn't responded and we are up to page four, I am going to assume this is just a troll, or OP is just ignoring anyone debating his points.

 

[AngryFrenchCanadian]

Because:

Sales. Sales everywhere.

 

[OpticalJunction]

Steam sales
Also they don't use every opportunity to squeeze people out of a few more dollars.