Valve, why are they loved?

[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.

 

[ward0630]

valve is successful because it understands how to make consumers fiercely loyal. They started with a slew of excellent titles and remarkable deals (orange box, steam), and kept going from there. Steam is basically a dominant force in the PC gaming market, and even with such a monopoly on the market, Valve continues to put out 50% and 75% off deals on AAA games that have only been out for a few months. They also have a very, very good reputation for making games, see Portal and Half life. Although that has made me wonder recently if Valve are afraid to ever commit to half life 3 because of the expectations and the fact that they are unfulfillable. That would be sad. Hope that answers your question OP.

 

[Vigormortis]

Did they either:

A: fire him after
B: make him stay on his first project (so in this case pong, with valve, l4d2) while another (newly hired) team makes the next game?

Because you know, that's probably what people don't like about valve.

Edit: Because some people don't seem to get this.

I don't hate valve, if you're going to accuse me of that over not agreeing with one thing they do, you need to think more

I'm sorry, but where are you getting your info? I keep hearing so much misinformation on this topic as of late and it baffles me.

Valve didn't "fire" anyone from their projects. People leave Valve because they wanted to, usually to go do their own thing. (see Kim Swift and Minh Le) The only time anyone would be fired is if they were doing fuck-all. As in, being a detriment to the company.

Also, why is it people still assume Valve works like other developers? Has it not become clear that's not the case with the "leak" of the Valve new employee handbook?

They don't have some managers sitting on-high delegating projects out to the lowly designers. The designers themselves choose what project to work on. THEY pick what to do. If someone else on another project (once finished) likes what another team is doing with their project, he/she has the option to go work with that new team.

This is what happened with Left 4 Dead 2 and Portal 2. The moment the first games were complete part of the original teams decided, "You know. There's a lot more we can do with this. I'd like to try..." and, after a sharing of ideas, they started work on the sequels. As their work progressed, more people from within Valve started joining up with those teams.

What they certainly didn't do is say, "Well this game was successful. I want you people over there to make a sequel ASAP and you, the original team, to fuck off. We don't need you anymore."

 

[Vigormortis]

Some people just want to see the hero fail, I guess.

Valve is loved by so many because Valve treats customers with respect. They LISTEN to us. They try to provide us with the services WE want.

Why do I love Valve, personally? Well, I had always loved their games, but the main reason..

I emailed the L4D team about where they got Ellis' coveralls for L4D2 because I was going to dress as him for Halloween.

I was emailed back the same day with an answer.

A few days later, a package from Valve HQ showed up in the mail. Inside was Ellis' hat, the one available in the Valve store.

They just looked up my billing info from my purchases and mailed me the hat. For free. Just because I wanted to dress like one of their characters for Halloween.

What other company does things like that?

I'd just like to say...that's fantastic. I recall a story of them sending someone a gift package after he sent in a "coupon" that was featured in a TF2 update comic. But this...this is much better.

And people on this forum still ask why we love Valve. :/