I started playing PC back in 2007, when I discovered Steam. Back then and through many years, Valve was all about quality and user experience. Nowadays? Not so much.
I run a Project CARS community and we do online leagues (or we did, up until now). We race on Sundays and for the last three weeks, Steam has dropped its connection. We have been forced to discontinue our league activity because we can't garantee that Steam will not drop connection. I've asked people, and it's the same for every game that uses Steamworks and is dependant on client checkout. It requires constant Steam connection, even if you're on a DS. So basically Steam is screwing A LOT of people with its drops. These drops have been happening for the last couple years with no apparent fix from Valve.
But it's not only that Steam is dropping. Some weeks ago Valve made DOTA 2 a Source 2 game. They sell tickets for online tournaments to be watched through DotaTV. In Source 1 you could watch the replay of each match, play it from the perspective you better liked, or use free camera. You could watch the replay of a match multiple times and learn, if that was your thing. You could, of course, watch your own replays. Not anymore, since Source 2 doesn't support replays at the moment. But they're still charging you the same money for what is basically a glorified Twitch version, since you can only watch the games live now.
Going on with Dota 2. I've been going back to it for a while now. I played a lot of Dota 2 when it was still in beta and for a period when it was finally released. I had to quit for different reasons and now that I'm back, with Reborn (the Source 2 version) it takes me longer than 10mins to find a game, when back then it rarely took me over 3. The oddest thing is that my MMR (ranking) is within average, so the biggest part of the community is supposed to have a similar MMR, which should grant me higher chances to find people to game with. Reading through forums, everybody seems to be hating Reborn. And the thing is obvious to me: They introduced it far earlier than they should. They wanted it for the first big tournament (called Major), but they're not ready. Still, they decide to go for it. even when they're screwing basically everybody as they do.
I could also talk about prices and sales being worse and worse each year, as competitors have arisen and they haven't done a thing to compete against them, since they're "winning" anyway. But I think I made enough arguments.
To sum things up, why is Valve going the shitty route? I thought they're more clever than that and they knew that they went up the ranks because we gamers perceived we all were winning. Why change what's worked for them and turn into a crappy company that doesn't invest enough in servers and that is ready to screw a big chunk of their audience so easily? Do you see them doing a Blizzard?
I run a Project CARS community and we do online leagues (or we did, up until now). We race on Sundays and for the last three weeks, Steam has dropped its connection. We have been forced to discontinue our league activity because we can't garantee that Steam will not drop connection. I've asked people, and it's the same for every game that uses Steamworks and is dependant on client checkout. It requires constant Steam connection, even if you're on a DS. So basically Steam is screwing A LOT of people with its drops. These drops have been happening for the last couple years with no apparent fix from Valve.
But it's not only that Steam is dropping. Some weeks ago Valve made DOTA 2 a Source 2 game. They sell tickets for online tournaments to be watched through DotaTV. In Source 1 you could watch the replay of each match, play it from the perspective you better liked, or use free camera. You could watch the replay of a match multiple times and learn, if that was your thing. You could, of course, watch your own replays. Not anymore, since Source 2 doesn't support replays at the moment. But they're still charging you the same money for what is basically a glorified Twitch version, since you can only watch the games live now.
Going on with Dota 2. I've been going back to it for a while now. I played a lot of Dota 2 when it was still in beta and for a period when it was finally released. I had to quit for different reasons and now that I'm back, with Reborn (the Source 2 version) it takes me longer than 10mins to find a game, when back then it rarely took me over 3. The oddest thing is that my MMR (ranking) is within average, so the biggest part of the community is supposed to have a similar MMR, which should grant me higher chances to find people to game with. Reading through forums, everybody seems to be hating Reborn. And the thing is obvious to me: They introduced it far earlier than they should. They wanted it for the first big tournament (called Major), but they're not ready. Still, they decide to go for it. even when they're screwing basically everybody as they do.
I could also talk about prices and sales being worse and worse each year, as competitors have arisen and they haven't done a thing to compete against them, since they're "winning" anyway. But I think I made enough arguments.
To sum things up, why is Valve going the shitty route? I thought they're more clever than that and they knew that they went up the ranks because we gamers perceived we all were winning. Why change what's worked for them and turn into a crappy company that doesn't invest enough in servers and that is ready to screw a big chunk of their audience so easily? Do you see them doing a Blizzard?
