Great EA & valve hook up.

Its for future releases of HL2 GOTY and respective Xbox versions. Im pretty sure they signed future production contracts with Activision once Vivideni is done.

If im wrong, then shit. Either way valve has lost more respect from me.
 
FanATIc said:
............. Either way valve has lost more respect from me.
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I totally agree man.

However I can understand that EA appears to make alot of money. People need money to exchange for goods and services and perhaps this was the best deal.

Still sucks though
 
i believe EA is also publishing DOD:S

Half-Life 2: Game of the Year is a special edition release of the best-selling and critically acclaimed title that includes Half-Life 2, Counter-Strike: Source, plus Half-Life 2: Deathmatch, and Half-Life: Source.

Counter-Strike: Source takes the world’s number one online action game to new heights atop the Source engine with brilliant graphics, enhanced versions of the classic CS maps, all-new CS maps, offline skirmish play with AI bots, and more. It also includes Half-Life 2: Deathmatch and Day of Defeat™: Source.
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I can't see the article right now due to evil software called Websense. (die, creators and sellers of websense). Why are we screwed?
 
i lost all respect for ea for what they did to madden 2005
that game sucked hardcore, tgier woods pga 2k5 was awesome though.
as long as they're just distributing it then im good.
 
This changes nothing.

Valve has more pull than any other developer when it comes to distribution because they have their own form of digital distribution. So even if EA wanted to force it's time constraints (which is the only real pressure distributors apply to the developer) on valve it won't happen.

Anyway, there will always be little panick stricken kids who freak out because of some issue with a video game after it is released, then blame whomever (distributor or developer) about releasing an incomplete game. Can someone point out a game that wasn't patched after it was released?

It is sorta like tripping and doing a faceplant, then blaming Newton for quantifying the law of gravity.
 
The first two games to be released under this agreement are Half-Life 2: Game of the Year and Counter-Strike: Source™ for PC, both launching this fall.
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CS:Source was spoken as a separate product. It's gonna go retail now?
 
J-Mag said:
This changes nothing.

Valve has more pull than any other developer when it comes to distribution because they have their own form of digital distribution. So even if EA wanted to force it's time constraints (which is the only real pressure distributors apply to the developer) on valve it won't happen.

Anyway, there will always be little panick stricken kids who freak out because of some issue with a video game after it is released, then blame whomever (distributor or developer) about releasing an incomplete game. Can someone point out a game that wasn't patched after it was released?

It is sorta like tripping and doing a faceplant, then blaming Newton for quantifying the law of gravity.
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you must work for EA, preaching all that Pro-EA stuff and misinformation.. tisk tisk.. lol ;)
 
J-Mag said:
This changes nothing.

Valve has more pull than any other developer when it comes to distribution because they have their own form of digital distribution. So even if EA wanted to force it's time constraints (which is the only real pressure distributors apply to the developer) on valve it won't happen.

Anyway, there will always be little panick stricken kids who freak out because of some issue with a video game after it is released, then blame whomever (distributor or developer) about releasing an incomplete game. Can someone point out a game that wasn't patched after it was released?
It is sorta like tripping and doing a faceplant, then blaming Newton for quantifying the law of gravity.
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To be a smartass, Mrs. Pacman, every game for consoles and games released pre-internet age. There use to be a thing called internal testing. But on BF42 and BF2, this concept seems to of totally eluded them. This company and line of games, more then any other, seems to enjoy fixing what should of been working at launch on the fly. To make it expcetionally worse, they have tons of money and popularity. And its quite annoying, kind of a slap in the face. Imagine if HL2 finally came out, you went to load it up, and it crashed immediatly multiple times over and none of the online features worked.
 
J-Mag said:
Valve has more pull than any other developer when it comes to distribution because they have their own form of digital distribution. So even if EA wanted to force it's time constraints (which is the only real pressure distributors apply to the developer) on valve it won't happen.
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Yet, Valve won't release any sales numbers for their online sales. Valve does have a bit more leverage than most developers, but it's pretty obvious that Valve can't survive on online sales alone.

Can someone point out a game that wasn't patched after it was released?
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Just about every computer game pre-1994. Don't believe me? Go search the patch archives at The Patches Scrolls which keeps a patch archive of just about every game that's ever existed.

Once there was a mechanism where users could obtain patches, the industry slowly went through a mindset transformation that allowed such horrible practices to occur. I leave the details for another thread.
 
I don't think it will mean much for Valve, it's just a way for them to sell boxed copies. They don't need EA's money to develop future games so EA won't be able to push them to meet a deadline. I'm sure somewhere in the contract it states that EA can't try to rush game development.
 
As far as im concerened this means nothing. EA will distribute the game, they arent making it and they are going to have little if any influence over valve as far as design goes for future titles. I remember reading something where Gabe Newell said that after the success of Half Life instead of the company going out and buying ferraries for everyone they essentially bought their own game so they could make it how they wanted.

Anyways im sure that valve can afford to develope their own game. What they cant do it get it to the retail market. Sure they have steam but that doesnt catter to most gamers. From what I gather the only thing Valve needs EA for it to distibute their games in retail. Valve doesnt need to depend on EA for money.

Im kida tired of the EA bashing. Bashing EA doesnt make your e-penis bigger.

EA is probably the biggest publisher on the market and that is a great advantage to Valve. Im sure even some customers would look at the box see the EA logo and buy it just because of that. But the point is that EA could probably do a better job publishing a game then any other company out their.
 
Well, actually If I'm correct in the slightest, this deal for the distribution of the HL2 from EA is nothing really crucial or critical in regards to people who already have it. If I'm not mistaken, it's basically going to be a repackaging of and retail store release of those preorder packages valve had set-up for when before HL2 shortly came out, those gold silver bronze what have you pre-DL ones. Some of these from EA may be a little diff. in regards to content wise like a GOTY, but I think , it is by no means a definitive "EA has taken over valve" type of deal.

I think its basically just a refresh of availability and different marketing presentation of what you can buy in physical form like a cd or dvd's whatever, than opposed to DL'ed content, becuase some people will still just like to have a physical cd of their games. I think that that's just it, I could be totally wrong, but, if I was a game development comp. and needed a large publisher to do a single-contract job of distribution that had a very large presence and capability, including marketing and advertising power, of being able to get my product onto retail store shelves, EA and maybe UBI are the ones to definately take a look at.
 
valve is a sell out bitch. But hey its all bout the bling bling YO hollllar
 
I can't help but point out that, though I hate incomplete games, comparing the necessity of patching games today and ten or more years ago is retarded. Ten years ago the games took a quarter the time to make, were an eighth as complex and frankly often didnt seem to be held up to the standards they are today...

Anyway, about the valve ea thing, that was just a small news snippet. I wont make a judgement call until i hear more
 
Torgo said:
Just about every computer game pre-1994. Don't believe me? Go search the patch archives at The Patches Scrolls which keeps a patch archive of just about every game that's ever existed.
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Exactly, almost all PC games distributed over the last 10 years are patched after they come out. This is the way things are. Fighting this fact is like trying to make Elton John turn straight.
 
J-Mag said:
Maybe i should have included a requirement of "recent".
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How recent and how complex? There's the Battle Engine Aquilae, Chaos Legion, Spider-Man The Movie, Warrior Within, those are what's sitting on the shelf next to me right now. The big names titles are usually the ones that require patching, the simpler ones made by smaller companies rarely release one and there are hundreds of them (puzzle mini games/promotional games) made regularly (like one of those pool games i see everywhere).

Torgo said:
Once there was a mechanism where users could obtain patches, the industry slowly went through a mindset transformation that allowed such horrible practices to occur.
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This is what i was afraid steam will do. A halfdone product can get pushed out the door since the developers knew that they can autopatch the other half in anyway.

If EA were were to avail/adapt this for their other games, and considering the time pressure they give their developers... oh the horrors.
 
Michael.R said:
As far as im concerened this means nothing. EA will distribute the game, they arent making it and they are going to have little if any influence over valve as far as design goes for future titles.
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I'm with you on this one. The whole reason Valve ended the contract with Vivendi was because they are pushy, controlling, and shady; selling licenses outside of the contract.

I'm sure Valve made sure to write up an air-tight contract especially considering they have their own distribution model in place and other developers are already signing on.
 
Well Valve never releases a game on time. Half-Life 2 came out a year after its planned release date. And im pretty sure Half-Life 1 was the same. So as long as this method keeps up, we will know EA didnt push them to release an unfinished game :D
 
tranCendenZ said:
perfect alliance imo. two companies that could care less about their cusomters.
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Thats not true, Valve cares. They listen to the community. It just takes them a while, before its actually implemented into there games.
 
Lazy_Moron said:
Thats not true, Valve cares. They listen to the community. It just takes them a while, before its actually implemented into there games.
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well its been over 6 months and steam is still intrusive, and the stutter bug is still there. where is the steam free hl2 so many in the community want? nowhere to be found and nowhere in sight. valve is more concerned about making a buck than their community.
 
tranCendenZ said:
well its been over 6 months and steam is still intrusive, and the stutter bug is still there. where is the steam free hl2 so many in the community want? nowhere to be found and nowhere in sight. valve is more concerned about making a buck than their community.
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Steam free HL2? Are you talking about Half-Life 2 not using Steam to play? If so, that will never happen. Steam is always going to be needed to run Half-Life 2, and there future games. Yes I will agree Steam is buggy, but have faith in it. One day we will see the Friends list working. One day will not get that "Steam Lag". With the creation of Steam, it has opened up a new world on how to distrubute games. Now the creators of the game, can get that hard earn money, they should get, and not pay there publisher for distrubuting the game on CD's or DVD's. And with Steam, they can take all the time they want on creating the game, and not be pushed by there publishers deadlines.

Valve has had a busy year IMO. Not only are the always updating CS and HL2. but they brought us Half-Life 2 Deathmatch, soon to be Lost Coast level, with HDR lighting technology introduce in Valve games, soon to be DOD:S, and dear I say it, TF 2. Yes, there updates are small, and dont affect alot of us, but there are the people out there, that were affected by those bugs, and were probably happy when they found out those bugs were fixed. And I dont know how you can say Valve does not care about the community, every Friday, they release news on what they have been up to, next week updates, and how everything is going. It may be small, but do you see other companies, having weekly news updates?

IMO, Valve is one of the greatest companies out there, and without them, games might not be how they are today. This probably can be debated, but this is just my opnion, so dont bash me for saying that statement.
 
Lazy_Moron said:
Steam free HL2? Are you talking about Half-Life 2 not using Steam to play? If so, that will never happen. Steam is always going to be needed to run Half-Life 2, and there future games. Yes I will agree Steam is buggy, but have faith in it. One day we will see the Friends list working. One day will not get that "Steam Lag". With the creation of Steam, it has opened up a new world on how to distrubute games. Now the creators of the game, can get that hard earn money, they should get, and not pay there publisher for distrubuting the game on CD's or DVD's. And with Steam, they can take all the time they want on creating the game, and not be pushed by there publishers deadlines.
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That's nice in theory, but they still need to put copies on game store shelves if they want to sell a decent amount of games. Many, many, many, people don't like the idea of Steam, and many don't like its specific implementation. Many don't like that it has to connect to the internet every time you want to play a game, even offline, and even when you try to set "offline mode" it is a major pain especially when Steam does its best to reset to "online mode" whenever you play the game online. Steam is clunky and doesn't even remove itself from memory after you have quit from a game. It forces people to download updates to even play a single player game, and it makes games take hours to install instead of minutes.

There are far more disadvantages to the consumer when using Steam than advantages. Some may be more tolerant to these disadvantages, some may be less tolerant. However the point is that, as you even pointed out, Steam benefits Valve far more than the consumer. Now, we were talking about companies that care about their community, not companies that care about themselves. Every week there are tons of request on the Steam website to release a retail CD Steam-free version of HL2. Tons and tons. The community wants it, and a large percentage of the community wants to dump Steam. In fact, the only people I have seen really trumpeting Steam lately are those that are fans of Valve. Between the clunkiness, required updates for single player, long install times, "can't connect to steam" errors to play even a single player game offline, disappearing games, etc, Steam is an unnecessary pain in the butt. Doom3, FarCry, Painkiller, every other FPS released recently had a retail CD version available with nothing as intrusive as Steam. Steam is layered on top of HL2 and it would be cake for Valve to release a Steam-free HL2. But as I pointed out above, Valve cares about themselves and making a profit more than their community. Just like EA!

Valve has had a busy year IMO. Not only are the always updating CS and HL2. but they brought us Half-Life 2 Deathmatch, soon to be Lost Coast level, with HDR lighting technology introduce in Valve games, soon to be DOD:S, and dear I say it, TF 2. Yes, there updates are small, and dont affect alot of us, but there are the people out there, that were affected by those bugs, and were probably happy when they found out those bugs were fixed. And I dont know how you can say Valve does not care about the community, every Friday, they release news on what they have been up to, next week updates, and how everything is going. It may be small, but do you see other companies, having weekly news updates?
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I would prefer to see actual real progress more than news updates. CryTek brought HDR and SM3.0 to FarCry much faster than Valve is bringing it to HL2. People Can Fly brought SM3.0 and the Battle Out of Hell expansion to Painkiller much faster than Valve is bringing it to HL2. id Software brought the expansion to Doom3 much faster than Valve is bringing their HL2 expansion. And most importantly, neither FarCry, Painkiller, Doom3 has the glut of technical bugs that plague the Source engine, most noticably being the horrendous combo of "stutter" and "memory cannot be read crash" bugs. Valve seems to have given up on fixing these bugs which have persisted since the game came out, over 6 months ago. FarCry, Painkiller, and Doom3 also don't have anything intrusive like Steam, you just play the game like any other game no internet connection required for single player.

In summary, Valve has talked A LOT and has produced little. Hell, more content has been released for Halo 2 for the XBOX than for Half Life 2 and in less time! That which Valve has produced has been flawed and intrusive. And they have done little to remedy the situation, focusing on lining their pockets instead.

So again, EA + Valve, a match made in heaven!

IMO, Valve is one of the greatest companies out there, and without them, games might not be how they are today. This probably can be debated, but this is just my opnion, so dont bash me for saying that statement.
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It's one of the most popular dev studios. Whether it is still a great one is debatable.
 
Welp, there goes counter-strike! Not gonna read this thread at all but I know what is gonna consist of. Any !!!!!!sm I had left for valve is down the pooper. I can not stand EA and wish it would effing day. My biggest beef with them is their lack of wanting to support PC gaming and move to the more "easier" market of consoles. Lazy programmers and lazy companies are bad for making gaming survive. Their buying and getting as much of the market they can and when EA finally falls, there goes the gaming community -.-
 
No this doesnt mean Valve is going to put out crap and release games early because of EA. I quote from gameindustry.biz

Microsoft and Take Two were also tipped to establish ties with the high profile developer. However, it should be noted that the deal EA has signed is a distribution deal, rather than a publishing deal - Valve will, in effect, now be self-publishing their PC products.
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Link

Is it just me or are more and more people on the forums jumping to ignorant conclusions to fast.
 
tranCendenZ said:
That's nice in theory, but they still need to put copies on game store shelves if they want to sell a decent amount of games. Many, many, many, people don't like the idea of Steam, and many don't like its specific implementation. Many don't like that it has to connect to the internet every time you want to play a game, even offline, and even when you try to set "offline mode" it is a major pain especially when Steam does its best to reset to "online mode" whenever you play the game online. Steam is clunky and doesn't even remove itself from memory after you have quit from a game. It forces people to download updates to even play a single player game, and it makes games take hours to install instead of minutes.
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Auto updates are a good thing for a few reasons. For one, you don't have to wait in line to download. Now I realize some people try to be "hardcore" and pretend they'd rather wait in line to download or download at a slower rate, but in reality this is beneficial to everyone. Secondly, having everything auto update ensures that people who are still confused by Windows Update (there's tons of them) get to play online, otherwise most would probably never figure it out. Seriously, it's not a big deal; you have to connect to the Internet each and every time you want to flame Valve.

tranCendenZ said:
There are far more disadvantages to the consumer when using Steam than advantages. Some may be more tolerant to these disadvantages, some may be less tolerant. However the point is that, as you even pointed out, Steam benefits Valve far more than the consumer. Now, we were talking about companies that care about their community, not companies that care about themselves. Every week there are tons of request on the Steam website to release a retail CD Steam-free version of HL2. Tons and tons. The community wants it, and a large percentage of the community wants to dump Steam. In fact, the only people I have seen really trumpeting Steam lately are those that are fans of Valve. Between the clunkiness, required updates for single player, long install times, "can't connect to steam" errors to play even a single player game offline, disappearing games, etc, Steam is an unnecessary pain in the butt. Doom3, FarCry, Painkiller, every other FPS released recently had a retail CD version available with nothing as intrusive as Steam. Steam is layered on top of HL2 and it would be cake for Valve to release a Steam-free HL2. But as I pointed out above, Valve cares about themselves and making a profit more than their community. Just like EA!
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What are these disadvantages, and please spare me the pathetic "what if Valve goes bankrupt?" argument. Also, what are your perceived advantages? The number of people who really want a Steam-free version of CS:S are minimal. Very few people are still playing HL2 who actually care about Steam. How is Steam clunky? It doesn't use that much memory and it's about as minimalist as it gets. Required updates for single player... so bad... I have to wait a whole 4 minutes to play a game as it's updated every 2 weeks or so... oh no! Long install times - sorry, don't blame your shitty hardware on Steam, I can install just fine in very little time. Also, requiring an internet connection is a big deal. It's 2005, where broadband is available nearly everywhere, not 1995. Get with the times grandpa. How is Steam intrusive? Is it really that hard to click TWICE to close it? And what's wrong with a company making money? I'm sorry to inform you but every company is going to look out for profits first.


tranCendenZ said:
I would prefer to see actual real progress more than news updates. CryTek brought HDR and SM3.0 to FarCry much faster than Valve is bringing it to HL2. People Can Fly brought SM3.0 and the Battle Out of Hell expansion to Painkiller much faster than Valve is bringing it to HL2. id Software brought the expansion to Doom3 much faster than Valve is bringing their HL2 expansion. And most importantly, neither FarCry, Painkiller, Doom3 has the glut of technical bugs that plague the Source engine, most noticably being the horrendous combo of "stutter" and "memory cannot be read crash" bugs. Valve seems to have given up on fixing these bugs which have persisted since the game came out, over 6 months ago. FarCry, Painkiller, and Doom3 also don't have anything intrusive like Steam, you just play the game like any other game no internet connection required for single player.
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And that's all CryTek was working on. id did not make RoE. Yes, they brought an expansion to Painkiller faster... not hard when that's all you're working on. See get with the times in above section about internet access. Of course you could argue that what happens when internet access goes out... but that would just make you seem like a drama queen grasping at straws as we all know internet access is reliable today.

tranCendenZ said:
In summary, Valve has talked A LOT and has produced little. Hell, more content has been released for Halo 2 for the XBOX than for Half Life 2 and in less time! That which Valve has produced has been flawed and intrusive. And they have done little to remedy the situation, focusing on lining their pockets instead.

So again, EA + Valve, a match made in heaven!



It's one of the most popular dev studios. Whether it is still a great one is debatable.
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Every developer releases flawed products, period. BTW, Valve doesn't have to release ANY content at all. I don't see Dice working on new maps and game modes for BF2... oh wait they are, for a price. The people who have the most problems with Steam are drama queens and the computer illiterate, of which you fall into the first group and you know it.
 
Michael.R said:
Is it just me or are more and more people on the forums jumping to ignorant conclusions to fast.
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Common occurance here. To clarify what is a distribution deal vs. a publishing deal. Distribution means that all EA will do is take the finished product and use their supply chain to get the product into stores and most likely handle in-store advertising and marketing. EA might not even manufacture the CDs or boxes. Valve could get a third-party to do that. In return, EA gets a cut of every boxed copy sold. Valve stays independent and is allowed to set their own schedule and has no restrictions on content.

Publishing means that EA will front the money for development, take a larger cut and do all of the above including handling manufacturing. The publisher usually works into the deal some ownership of the IP rights as part of the financing, dictates the terms of release and has input into content.

My personal feeling is that Steam didn't sell as many copies as Valve wanted. Otherwise, they wouldn't have made a deal with EA or court Activision. The fact that EA also is going to be selling boxed copies of old Valve games shows to me that Steam isn't even selling older titles like they wanted.

Methinks that Valve is pretty happy with Steam as a support and application management tool, but is pretty disappointed with sales with it. We'd know for sure if sales numbers were released.
 
Michael.R said:
No this doesnt mean Valve is going to put out crap and release games early because of EA. I quote from gameindustry.biz
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I'm more afraid of Valve influencing EA Developers than EA influencing Valve.
 
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