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STEAM 2013 Announcements & Updates: 6, GFWL: 0 | Number of hours played bugged

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JaseC

gave away the keys to the kingdom.
It was during his latest Content Patch when he talked about Half-Life 3. Basically how Valve are seen as a Steam curator and are making games at a reduced rate.

This argument has never held any water whatsoever. It takes ten seconds to look at Valve's Wikipedia page and realise its output post-HL2 has been nothing but brisk. I think people tend to look at HL3's absence and through some impressive mental gymnastics convince themselves that Valve's other games released in the interim don't count.
 

Grief.exe

Member
Here is what I just do not understand

2011 Portal 2
2012 CS:GO
2013 DOTA 2
2014 L4D3
Then you have to factor in their continued support of their released games. And by continuing support, I mean hundreds of free updates, no other company does this.

How much do you expect from one company? Especially one that puts quality and innovation well ahead of anything else.
In terms of work force, Valve isn't even that large. They aren't known for throwing hundreds upon hundreds of people at a game like EA, Ubisoft, or Capcom.

This argument has never held any water whatsoever. It takes ten seconds to look at Valve's Wikipedia page and realise its output post-HL2 has been nothing but brisk. I think people tend to look at HL3's absence and through some impressive mental gymnastics convince themselves that Valve's other games released in the interim don't count.

I literally just did this to verify my dates.
 

JaseC

gave away the keys to the kingdom.
I like to remind people that after development on Portal 2 was restarted so as to be an actual sequel (with portals and Chell and GLaDOS), the game was content complete just two years later despite the team size peaking at around 80. For all the jokes about Valve Time, Valve is actually very efficient.

Edit: I hope Valve releases F-STOP at some point. Its JIRA group having no people in it made me a sad panda. I was so sure that the reason Wolpaw and co. were cagey about the central mechanic is that the game was still being developed, just not as Portal 2. :(
 

Grief.exe

Member
Does this imply more Treasure games coming as well?

U5evbOv.png
 

TronLight

Everybody is Mikkelsexual
Awww yiss, a friend gave me his Bioshock 2 GFWL key (retail copy) and it activated fine on Steam (even if it was already activated on GFWL).

Based gaben.
 

JaseC

gave away the keys to the kingdom.
Every time I read "Bangai-O" I'm reminded of this.

Awww yiss, a friend gave me his Bioshock 2 GFWL key (retail copy) and it activated fine on Steam (even if it was already activated on GFWL).

Based gaben.

I hope WB is taking notes.

Edit: Though if Asylum vanilla keys activate Asylum GOTY, I'm going to cry tears of disappointment.
 

RionaaM

Unconfirmed Member
Never would have thought TB would pull out the 'Valve barely makes games' card.
I decided I didn't care about him after he spouted his "You don't respect my time, I'm blocking you" line during the Xbone debacle. Someone like that is not worth listening to in my opinion.

Because it's another game to buy?
Nah
(yeah)
, I actually want to try it. For 5 whole minutes, that is, before it's relegated to the depths of my backlog forever.

Here is what I just do not understand

2011 Portal 2
2012 CS:GO
2013 DOTA 2
2014 L4D3
Stolen game.
New version of stolen mod.
New version of stolen mod.
Sequel of sequel of stolen mod turned into game.

Steam? Just a paid version of Napster for games. Half-Life? Doom clone. Ricochet? Tron wannabe. TF2? New version of stolen mod.

So far, the only original thing Valve released was Condition Zero Deleted Scenes, which was a great game.


I jest, of course. Except for the last part; I honestly think CZ DS is good.
 

Storm360

Member
Ikaruga on Steam?!?, Heck yes


The eXceed series is similar in gameplay, if anyone hasn't played Ikaruga and has them to get a idea what to expect
 

Stallion Free

Cock Encumbered
I like to remind people that after development on Portal 2 was restarted so as to be an actual sequel (with portals and Chell and GLaDOS), the game was content complete just two years later despite the team size peaking at around 80. For all the jokes about Valve Time, Valve is actually very efficient.

Edit: I hope Valve releases F-STOP at some point. Its JIRA group having no people in it made me a sad panda. I was so sure that the reason Wolpaw and co. were cagey about the central mechanic is that the game was still being developed, just not as Portal 2. :(

Just pretend Quantum Conundrum is F-Stop and you will be able to move on from those desires easily.
 

zkylon

zkylewd
Here is what I just do not understand

2011 Portal 2
2012 CS:GO
2013 DOTA 2
2014 L4D3
Then you have to factor in their continued support of their released games. And by continuing support, I mean hundreds of free updates, no other company does this.

How much do you expect from one company?
personally I did not care too much for portal 2, cs go, ld42 and dota barely works in my region so I'd trade all of those for hl3

I mean it's not like they ended episode 2 on a cliffhanger, promised they would've fasten up the episode releases and teased us for 6 years or anything :p
 

MRORANGE

Member
personally I did not care too much for portal 2, cs go, ld42 and dota barely works in my region so I'd trade all of those for hl3

I mean it's not like they ended episode 2 on a cliffhanger, promised they would've fasten up the episode releases and teased us for 6 years or anything :p

I can't wait for when they release another raising the bar for HL3, telling us why it took so damn long to come out.
 

Knurek

Member
Heard this was a fantastic bullet hell shooter. I'm terrible at them, but I'm interested anyway.

It's not as hard as it seems to be, based on the bullet patterns - the absorption mechanism helps a lot, provided you're good enough to use it.
Very nice visuals, nice music (though not as nice as RSG or Gradius V have), very happy that more and more Japanese devs are starting taking the Steam plunge.

Here's to Cave following up with ESPGaluda 2 or Ketsui.
 

MRORANGE

Member
...apart from the bits about Steam causing more download/connection errors than competitors and the crazy fankenstein stuff, I don't actually see what's bad about it? He's 100% right. It's hard to find resonable examinations of what Valve does with Steam and TF2/Dota2, but this is spot-on.

So you think that TF2/DOTA2 is why we don't have any successful multiplayer games?
 

O Tavares

Neo Member
It was during his latest Content Patch when he talked about Half-Life 3. Basically how Valve are seen as a Steam curator and are making games at a reduced rate.

To be honest I was more shocked when he said Half-Life 2 was nothing special. Although I have to agree with him when he says that L4D3 makes little sense.
 

MRORANGE

Member
I think they clearly stiffle competition, yeah. No publisher would want to invest several millions dollars into a game that they know has no chance of succeeding.

But that would be the games fault if it's not worth investing in the first place? Valve does have the advantage of owning Steam but they have been dethrowned in the FPS arena before and if a game company is willing to put it's resources into a game that people actually enjoy it can easily happen again, take into consideration that Valve is still miles behind LoL in user base.

Small developers have actually managed to rival Valve's games with the same incremental updates that Valve can accomplish, games such as Terraria, Payday and Dungeon Defenders are success stories.
 
It'd be nice if licences expiring didn't preclude the continued distribution of a game developed while said licences were valid.
I wish I could have under the table dealings with Steam support where we shuffle to a meet, lock eyes, nod, and my Steam wallet is $15 drier but Outrun 2006 magically shows up on my account. We'd go about our business as if nothing happened.

Bangai-O plz
I'd kill for a port of the original; can't say their sequels have been nearly as good unfortunately. What I really want more than anything is more Mischief Makers, but as far as I know that IP is shackled in some Square-Enix dungeon to never see the light of day again.

Here is what I just do not understand

2011 Portal 2
2012 CS:GO
2013 DOTA 2
2014 L4D3
Then you have to factor in their continued support of their released games. And by continuing support, I mean hundreds of free updates, no other company does this.

How much do you expect from one company? Especially one that puts quality and innovation well ahead of anything else.
In terms of work force, Valve isn't even that large. They aren't known for throwing hundreds upon hundreds of people at a game like EA, Ubisoft, or Capcom.
TF2 still getting major updates 6 years later! Halo 3 is what I always saw as the console equivalent due to its release timing and mindshare in hype, but now we're two sequels deeper into that series, the multiplayer is in shambles all around and they won't even so much as go back to Halo 3 to consolidate the playlists for the more modest population it hosts these days.

I guess people gloss over things like Dota and GO, expecting them to be developed freely because of the WC3 mod roots of the former, and being another iteration of CS for the latter, I don't know. Maybe games don't count unless they have a single player component, who knows where the goalposts are with some.
 

Acccent

Member
But that would be the games fault if it's not worth investing in the first place? Valve does have the advantage of owning Steam but they have been dethrowned in the FPS arena before and if a game company is willing to put it's resources into a game that people actually enjoy it can easily happen again, take into consideration that Valve is still miles behind LoL in user base.

Small developers have actually managed to rival Valve's games with the same incremental updates that Valve can accomplish, games such as Terraria, Payday and Dungeon Defenders are success stories.

I don't get the first sentence.

When have they been dethrowned in the competitive FPS genre since TF2 went F2P? I'm not saying no competitive multiplayer game can exist because of TF2 and Dota 2 (neither is TB, for that matter). The point is that, if they want, at any point in time, Valve has the power to grasp control of an entire genre, and the only way to survive them is to have a franchise that's already well-established (ie CoD, Battlefield, or LoL). Payday was successful because it's completely unrelated to TF2, that's not even competition - same for Terraria and Dungeon Defenders, although claiming that those are successful in the face of freaking TF2 is stretching it imo. Multiplayer games can exist, but if you're planning on making, say, a multiplayer racer, and Valve releases out of nowhere a F2P thing that's as good as their other game - because that's what they're able to do since they're the only people in the world, along with Blizzard I guess, who are constantly showered with free money, they're the only ones who are able to finance a game of such high quality, with no overly parasitic microtransactions system, and release it for free - if they do that in the genre that you're trying to invest in, you're screwed. They instantly kill competition in that particular space.
 

Li Kao

Member
MIND. BLOWN. x2 ULTRA COMBO !
I was digging in the biblical mess that is my house to find Company of Heroes and Opposing Fronts as I read their cd-key were now Steam friendly and... I just discovered that the deluxe version of Mafia 2 never played that I have is a steam key...
And to think I wanted to buy it some days ago.
 

MRORANGE

Member
I don't get the first sentence.

When have they been dethrowned in the competitive FPS genre since TF2 went F2P? I'm not saying no competitive multiplayer game can exist because of TF2 and Dota 2 (neither is TB, for that matter). The point is that, if they want, at any point in time, Valve has the power to grasp control of an entire genre, and the only way to survive them is to have a franchise that's already well-established (ie CoD, Battlefield, or LoL). Payday was successful because it's completely unrelated to TF2, that's not even competition - same for Terraria and Dungeon Defenders, although claiming that those are successful in the face of freaking TF2 is stretching it imo. Multiplayer games can exist, but if you're planning on making, say, a multiplayer racer, and Valve releases out of nowhere a F2P thing that's as good as their other game - because that's what they're able to do since they're the only people in the world, along with Blizzard I guess, who are constantly showered with free money, they're the only ones who are able to finance a game of such high quality, with no overly parasitic microtransactions system, and release it for free - if they do that in the genre that you're trying to invest in, you're screwed. They instantly kill competition in that particular space.

I was referring to CS when they were dethroned in the fps genre and the same can still happen to TF2 and most likely will with this gen with Titanfall and Destiny around the corner. So no I don't think Valve is a competition killer just because it can release a game for free, if a game is good enough it can succeed, Valve itself was adapting to the F2P model due to competition and was actually pretty late in accepting to it, considering it's mainstay popularity in SE Asia over the last few years.
 

Deques

Member
MIND. BLOWN. x2 ULTRA COMBO !
I was digging in the biblical mess that is my house to find Company of Heroes and Opposing Fronts as I read their cd-key were now Steam friendly and... I just discovered that the deluxe version of Mafia 2 never played that I have is a steam key...
And to think I wanted to buy it some days ago.

I thought Steam was required to play Mafia 2. Still a nice ultra combo :)
 

Acccent

Member
I was referring to CS when they were dethroned in the fps genre and the same can still happen to TF2 and most likely will with this gen with Titanfall and Destiny around the corner. So no I don't think Valve is a competition killer just because it cane release a game for free, if a game is good enough it can succeed, Valve itself was adapting to the F2P model due to competition and was actually pretty late in accepting to it, considering it's mainstay popularity in SE Asia over the last few years.

It doesn't matter when they adopted F2P. The situation now is: they have almost unlimited resources, and their games are arguably more profitable to them in the long run if they release them for free, even if they design them and plan them and scale them as if they were major $70 releases.

We'll see how Titanfall fares. Destiny isn't even coming out on PC (I wonder why).

As an analogy, imagine if Nintendo made the Wii U free, and gave their next Mario and Zelda games to everyone, and took 30% off the revenue of every other publisher selling games on the platform. Do you think anyone would still try to make a platformer or dungeon-based adventure game?
 
It doesn't matter when they adopted F2P. The situation now is: they have almost unlimited resources, and their games are arguably more profitable to them in the long run if they release them for free, even if they design them and plan them and scale them as if they were major $70 releases.

We'll see how Titanfall fares. Destiny isn't even coming out on PC (I wonder why).

Unlimited resources, even if it was true doesn't equate to games people want to play. If anything it generally makes things worse.

Plenty of companies have a shitload of money to blow. The point is Valve have in the past made quality games and could do so again as a competitive response. But if they make another great game then so what?

As an analogy, imagine if Nintendo made the Wii U free, and gave their next Mario and Zelda games to everyone, and took 30% off the revenue of every other publisher selling games on the platform. Do you think anyone would still try to make a platformer or dungeon-based adventure game?

And after you have finished the new mario in like 4 hours then what? You'll probably want to be playing something else.
 

MRORANGE

Member
It doesn't matter when they adopted F2P. The situation now is: they have almost unlimited resources, and their games are arguably more profitable to them in the long run if they release them for free, even if they design them and plan them and scale them as if they were major $70 releases.

We'll see how Titanfall fares. Destiny isn't even coming out on PC (I wonder why).

As an analogy, imagine if Nintendo made the Wii U free, and gave their next Mario and Zelda games to everyone, and took 30% off the revenue of every other publisher selling games on the platform. Do you think anyone would still try to make a platformer or dungeon-based adventure game?

For that analogy, um... yes? If something is doing well in a specific genre it's going to copied - F2P or not, look at this gen, how many COD clones have a we had? Or how many MOBA games have been announced this year so far? Just because Valve is doing well doesn't mean they are dominating sales in that particular genre, sure they have a good slice of the pie but other developers are still willing to take a bite as well.

There is still some hope for Destiny.
 

Copons

Member
As an analogy, imagine if Nintendo made the Wii U free, and gave their next Mario and Zelda games to everyone, and took 30% off the revenue of every other publisher selling games on the platform. Do you think anyone would still try to make a platformer or dungeon-based adventure game?

Well this analogy in particular is a little biased, considering most of Nintendo userbase buy Nintendo hardware to play almost only Nintendo software, even if not free or without the 30% royalties for other devs.
 
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