Valve, why are they loved?

RedDeadFred

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May 13, 2009
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I don't know. I think they are alright but they haven't made any game that I have ever really thought of as GOTY wrothy. I liked Portal/Portal 2 a lot but puzzle games don't have very much replayability (if any) and that is a big detractor in a game for me. I like to have a reason to go back and play the game again. I enjoyed every second of Portal 2 but I only rented it because I knew I wouldn't need to play it again.

As for Half Life, I wasn't really much of a gamer when those games were new. I'm sure they were great when they came out but I can't really see Valve living up to the hype of Half Life 3.

As for TF2 and Left 4 Dead, I've never really been a fan of playing online first person shooters. I realize that TF2 probably has significantly more substance than most other shooters but I just feel like these types of games get old way too fast IMO.
 

SciMal

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Orks da best said:
Why did the escapist gather so many "valveies"
\

It's a general gaming site. There are "Valvies" everywhere on general sites. Go to a specific publisher or studio's site, and you will find people that appreciate the publisher/studio. There aren't many overt "Valvies" on BioWare's forums, for example.

Also, I sorta lied about the title, why is valved loved when they are more or less, a monopolistic company?
I don't think you know what that word means. Valve's closest monopoly is on the selling of digital content, of which it makes up the bulk of the market. However, while they do take a cut out of every sale, they are not forcing other digital services out of business or using underhanded tactics to fix prices on digital content (EA and Apple Inc. respectively).

They offer a good service with Steam, and over the years it shines as an example of digital content delivery done WELL.

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? That's Blizzard's MO, period. Blizzard hasn't had an original idea since ever, and even tried to sue Valve when the makers of DotA got hired and tried to use the DotA title.

Also, think about what you're saying: Valve takes the work of its fans and turns it into a full-fledged, fun game (often by hiring the fans who made the mods). That's not something to be cynical about. That's like BioWare hiring you to write Mass Effect 4 because you wrote popular fanfiction. That's AWESOME, not detrimental or something to be suspicious towards.

At least EA allows the company to keep their logo on their games.
So they slowly suck the soul out of the company and gut the development teams while expecting unreachable profit targets that result in the complete dissolution of the studio if they're not met, but hey - at least the logo is on the box.

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.
You're bitching about an April Fool's Joke? Really?

I thought a much more sadistic act was Blizzard turning their old April Fool's Jokes (Pandarens) into an actual expansion they want people to pay real money for. I thought the plot was ridiculous when space-crystals turned out to be the source of "the Light" while they were chaperoned by long-lost demons.

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?
I'll take Steam over Origins or Impulse any day.

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 what you mean by the first question. I do know that many Indie developers continue to produce work because of Valve, and that getting onto Steam is essentially the make-or-break moment for many Indie games.

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."
I still don't see how they're evil or malignant. Yeah, they made and operate Steam, the largest digital distributor of games in history. Yeah, they take a chunk on every game they sell through steam, and that's basically a service fee for providing the studio's project a huge audience.

That's about it. Other than Steam, your complaints are "They take fan-made mods and make them into official games after hiring the guys who made the mods" which isn't a bad thing, and "Their fans are everywhere."

Now to head to my deep underground flame, acid, bullet, bomb, atom bomb, magic, and any other weapon you can think of bunker.
I just don't see why you think Valve is the worst kind of evil.

They make excellent games, with few exceptions.

Their studio is an awesome work environment, and encourages the creation of completely awesome ideas (like Portal).

They support their fans more than any other studio (the TF2 store pays out a chunk of sales to whoever designed the item bought).

They hire fans who make mods and give them experience in what's one of the best developers on the planet, which is basically the "WIN" button if the fans choose to leave for other pastures.

They make it easy to access new games, and provide a venue for Indie developers who would have folded by now if it weren't for Steam.

They keep EA - the REAL montrosity of the gaming world - in check by showing EA how shit is really done (Steam DRM is present, but it's about as minimalistic as DRM can reasonably be - as opposed to EA's 'Requires always-on connection and can't be installed more than 3 times' complete bullshit).

What MORE do you want from a studio, aside from perhaps a faster release schedule?


Personally, I love Valve. I honestly appreciate the force they represent in gaming. I can't think of anything they've done that I vehemently disagree with, and I'm willing to put up with the paltry annoyance that is Steam's minimalistic DRM function in exchange for a decade between sequels. Even when I'm not playing a Valve game (or a mod for their games), I know that Gabe & Co. sticks to their guns when it comes to what they believe gaming should be about. I respect their morals and values when it comes to operating their business, and when Gabe finally does die of the fifth heart attack after the quadruple bypass surgery from swallowing too much gold-crusted foie gras, I will mourn his passing.

Because if nobody picks up the torch at Valve and Valve starts to tumble, EA won't hesitate to take over Valve's old arenas and shove its cock of hatred up everyone's ass if it means they could charge you $0.25 every single time you access Battlfield 9: Freedom's Load multiplayer servers and keep the single-player campaign as Day-1 DLC available for the low-low price of $20.
 

Orks da best

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banksy122 said:
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.
If ye wondering why I haven't done a single response, its due being busy with things over the days since this thread was posted. Getting my wisdom teeth pullled out in a few days.

In truth the latter half of my first post was a sort of the spur of the moment venting due to this years march mayhem and the seven year show down, call it part fanboy and part sore loser if you will.

Do I want valve do fall under and break apart?, honesty its more or less my dislike of the valvies rather than my hatred of valve, which I have little of. Recall the pony threads months ago? people were mad at the bronies posting threads, while in truth a fair amount of the posts were asking why is the show so popular?

The recent surge of valve related info is annoying to those who either dislike valve or have low of their favorites list.

also you gotta admit, this years march mayhem, and the 7 year show down were sorta dull. They were predicable as who would win rather than being interesting, for anyone who knew how much the developers or games were loved.

And then the likely response to me dislike the valvies would be don't response to valve related threads, or something like that. And that is true enough but like most other people asked that, it hard to resist any valve related post or tread to see people fighting over the internet, the delious fighting, tis be liken to a hard fought battle or crushing victory. The result is the same: hard to resist bait.

which is likely this thread I made is just one of many, most people want to create bait to see if they can get some enjoyment from other people fighting. Whiter or not you agree with my theory is up to you, but each theory has some truth to it.
 

DoPo

"You're not cleared for that."
Jan 30, 2012
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PieBrotherTB said:
Y'know, these 'why' threads always come off with the same impression, so I'll use this one as an example.

Does it actually OFFEND people that SOME people 'love' Valve?
Does it REALLY keep someone up at night that Valve exists and isn't universally hated?
Does it?
I hope this is true. It makes me feel so much better if my feelings on a matter mess with the life of somebody else.
 

Meight08

*Insert Funny Title*
Feb 16, 2011
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Suki_ said:
TheKasp said:
Suki_ said:
http://kotaku.com/5884842/wait-it-costs-40000-to-patch-a-console-game

I like to take the words of his man for what they are: The truth.

And you are basically defending shitty support for games. Do you really hate it that much if developer are capable of patching a game post release? And do you really believe the patch QA on Steam is so much different to the one of Sony and MS? May I quote you:

Sure, sure, we believe you, you can keep on believing that all you want.
So you quoted an article that proved my point?

As for the patch QA being different of course it is. When a company sends valve a patch its live within a few hours. If you want proof go look at how fast the skyrim patches went up.
It does not matter it might be cheaper due to lack of q/a it still costs alot of money to host.
 

Ed130 The Vanguard

(Insert witty quote here)
Sep 10, 2008
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Orks da best said:
banksy122 said:
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.
If ye wondering why I haven't done a single response, its due being busy with things over the days since this thread was posted. Getting my wisdom teeth pullled out in a few days.

In truth the latter half of my first post was a sort of the spur of the moment venting due to this years march mayhem and the seven year show down, call it part fanboy and part sore loser if you will.

Do I want valve do fall under and break apart?, honesty its more or less my dislike of the valvies rather than my hatred of valve, which I have little of. Recall the pony threads months ago? people were mad at the bronies posting threads, while in truth a fair amount of the posts were asking why is the show so popular?

The recent surge of valve related info is annoying to those who either dislike valve or have low of their favorites list.

also you gotta admit, this years march mayhem, and the 7 year show down were sorta dull. They were predicable as who would win rather than being interesting, for anyone who knew how much the developers or games were loved.

And then the likely response to me dislike the valvies would be don't response to valve related threads, or something like that. And that is true enough but like most other people asked that, it hard to resist any valve related post or tread to see people fighting over the internet, the delious fighting, tis be liken to a hard fought battle or crushing victory. The result is the same: hard to resist bait.

which is likely this thread I made is just one of many, most people want to create bait to see if they can get some enjoyment from other people fighting. Whiter or not you agree with my theory is up to you, but each theory has some truth to it.
So it's a combination of Trolling, being buthurt that YOUR dev/game isn?t well loved and the large amount of news articles about Valve on this site are the reasons why this thread came about?

Right, lets go into these reasons

1)Trolling: You can?t stop human nature and the GIFT theory makes this an unavoidable problem, mainly yours.

2)Your dev/game isn?t getting enough love: This one is kind of simple, Valve have done an amazing amount of work in not only producing games but also creating one of the first digital distribution networks and generating vast amounts of PC gamer goodwill via less obtrusive DRM (and lets face it Steam is DRM) and various sales. This coupled with the large number of PC gamers on the site, Activision?s evil corporate persona and EA?s cartoonishly evil corporate persona means that Valve will more often than not win due to their main competitors either going: ?Ehh there?s no profit in this, how do I maximise profit?? Valve isn?t unbeatable, March Mayhem 2011 showed us that, but it?s pretty damm close to being it.

3) Lots of Valve related news: I could easily sum it up with two three word sentences.
SUMMER GAMES DROUGHT.
STEAM SUMMER SALE.

With issue 1 you are on your own. I suggest whenever you wish to stir up conflict that you punch yourself in the face, that?ll stop you from trolling.
Issue 2 is harder due to the commanding lead that Valve has, hope that another Majong comes along.
Issue 3 will right itself eventually with time.
 

SilverUchiha

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Dec 25, 2008
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List of things that make Valve an awesome company and better than most others in general:

1 - Steam and sales associated with it, giving consumers reasonable rates on a multitude of games from a variety of developers both AAA and indie. EA's Origin Service, however, is nowhere near that level.

2 - Every game released has been at a good quality level and most of them continue to get updates, DLC, and so on as long as the community still plays the games, which they do.

3 - Steam Workshop, the newer tool to make modding games on Steam easier (even if it is only a handful at the moment).

4 - Steam Greenlight, the upcoming feature that will highlight indie developers and projects that the community can vote on to have a game released on Steam. Giving the community a larger voice and indie devs another way to break out into the market.

5 - Steam on Macs, I think Valve may have been the first company (or at least one of the earliest ones) to tap into the Apple market and make it possible for them to game alongside PC users. Not just play the same games, but play WITH PC games. If only more companies allowed cross-console gameplay like that.

6 - Source Filmmaker, while still in beta, this tool has a lot of potential for the ever growing number of machinima makers on the internet. Not only that, from my limited experience with the beta, it is capable of a lot more than traditional video editing software, which is pretty damn awesome.

7 - Mods, all PC games have mods. Like Bethesda, Valve encourages more mods for their games, giving players the tools to do so, which also ties into the workshop making it easier to distribute. Hell, they're even making a custom map as part of the next DLC later this year.

Whatever negatives you say are almost entirely outweighed by the positives that Valve has brought to the industry and continues to bring. They respect their community unlike EA or Nintendo. They respect other developers, unlike EA or Activision. And they offer great deals on their games unlike most retail and EA. I don't want to come off like an annoying Valve fanboy, but I'm just listing all the positives they've done and it's an impressive list.
 

Vigormortis

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Suki_ said:
Sure, sure, we believe you, you can keep on believing that all you want.


As for why it costs so much on XBL and PSN thats because sony and microsoft check all patches to make sure they dont prevent the game from working. Something that steam does not do.

The reason TF2 was patched so many times is because its a first party title and they can patch it more often.
I like how Kasp seems to be the only one actually offering up quantifiable facts while you just condescend and state things that could be as far from the truth as an out-right lie.

Also, the part I bolded made me laugh. A lot. You've no idea.

Suki_ said:
rolfwesselius said:
It does not matter it might be cheaper due to lack of q/a it still costs alot of money to host.
And the article linked says valve does in fact charge developers for patches just not as much as on consoles.
Were you reading the comments section; thinking it was part of the article?

It says, and I quote: "You have to jump through a lot of hoops, even for important stuff like patching and supporting your game. Those are things we really want to do, but we can't do it on these systems. I mean, it costs $40,000 to put up a patch ? we can't afford that! Open systems like Steam, that allow us to set our own prices, that's where it's at, and doing it completely alone like Minecraft. That's where people are going."

You could argue that it says what you say, in a roundabout way. But really? That still fails to face-up to the fact that it costs forty thousand dollars to PATCH a game on the Xbox360. That's fucking ridiculous, no matter how you spin it.

I would MUCH rather have a steady stream of updates and content patches delivered to me daily or weekly rather than a once-a-few-months patch that may or may not actually fix anything.

But hey. If you want to believe that Microsoft and Sony actually care about the updates and patches companies release for their games, beyond making sure they don't break the consoles and don't contain porn, well...as you said:

"you can keep on believing that all you want."
 

Vigormortis

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Zachary Amaranth said:
Skin said:
Valve is the MomCorp of the videogame industry.
So Gabe Newell's just using a body suit?

That makes a lot of sense.
Even the body suit is a lie. It's actually a cyborg that's being piloted, via holographic control, by one of dozens of Gaben clones.

He's forming an army. We've little time to prepare. Assemble the troops.
 

Frozengale

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Sep 9, 2009
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They gave me Team Fortress 2 (my most played game ever), Portal, Portal 2.

They are nice to their customers and kind to modders.

I currently have 143 games on Steam and the few problems I have had with Steam can not be outweighed by the fun I have had.

They are a company who seems to care more about making something fun and interesting then just making something that sells.
 

Khada

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Jan 8, 2009
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Go read the valve employee handbook. It says a lot about why valve and great and thus loved. Valve may not 'let the developers put their logo on it', but they also hire the people who made the mod (into an excellent work environment btw) so it's not as though the developers are suffering or being ripped off. The truth is that valve care about the customer, the quality of their games & services. They may release less game (but they also have steam to run/manage), where as EA are a model example of out-dated bureaucratic business; The kind which doesn't care for their developers or customers, only the 'bottom line'.

Spend some time looking into both companies and you'll start to see why so many people hate EA, and so many love Valve (me included). If it helps any, I'm a dev myself so I have contact with a good few other devs so I tend to hear the stories that roam around the industry and hear the opinions of devs I know etc.
 

Olas

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Dec 24, 2011
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Reason's I like Valve.

1. Half Life
2. Counter Strike
3. Half Life 2
4. The Half Life Episodes
5. Portal
6. Portal 2
7. Team Fortress 2
8. Left 4 Deads

Any questions?
 

Landshark1

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Mar 16, 2011
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Orks da best said:
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.
I'm pretty sure the april fools joke you're talking about wasn't made by Valve, since the URL to get there was steamPPowered.com. So the creators fooled you into thinking that Valve fooled you into thinking HL3 was coming out.

Anyways, I don't see the problem with Valve giving people that have cool ideas jobs. When you say absorbed, it makes it sound like they were forced into it. Remember, Narbacular Drop was created as a senior project by a bunch of students. Valve liked the game and offered them jobs at their company, and they went on to make Portal. Portal most likely wouldn't exist if Valve hadn't helped.
 

Ed130 The Vanguard

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Sep 10, 2008
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Suki_ said:
Vigormortis said:
But hey. If you want to believe that Microsoft and Sony actually care about the updates and patches companies release for their games, beyond making sure they don't break the consoles and don't contain porn, well...as you said:

"you can keep on believing that all you want."
Of course they dont care, nobody said they did. They just care enough to make sure it doesnt break the game which is a fuck of a lot more then steam.
I don't know whether this count as it being "broken"


But you have to admit it is pretty funny.