“What the Hell Does Valve Even Do Anymore (besides Take Our Money)?”

OK. I read the entire "article". I don't understand what they want.

As a user of Steam since it's very first client, which was horrible, here is what I have today:
I can download EVERY game I ever purchased on it, at really high speeds. I have a gigabit connection, and on large downloads I get 60-80 MB/s. That's right, they have some fat god damn pipes and I can use them as much as I want without paying anything. I can download a 50GB game, delete it and download it again 10 or 50 or 100 times. It will download just as fast.

That is what I originally signed up for. A service that hosts my game binaries. There days, it holds all my save data as well. I haven't ever had a problem where my save data was lost, even when I reinstalled Windows 10. Nope, it was all right there.

Those things alone are worth real money. Yet I'm not paying real money to Valve with the exception of when I buy games. Which are frequently discounted. And when they're AAA new titles, are the same price as other places.

So I don't get any of that bitching, really I don't. I like Steam and I'm going to continue using it. As, I'm sure, will the "author" of that "article."
 
The only thing I truly care about is that the games in my Steam library work. I don't care about a bunch of extra things in the client I will likely never use. I don't care about Valve bringing out new games. I was never that interesting in Valve games in the first place. Beyond that, I would prefer the company to stick to making sure the games I buy work rather than spending time, money and effort on half assed games which probably wouldn't be worth buying anyway. Valve turned into the Steam games platform a long time ago and as long as the company makes sure that keeps working I'm happy enough.
 
socK said:
DotA 2 is on the Source 2 engine

And I still don't really know what the fuck they're doing besides letting IceFrog patch DotA and release a few scraps of CS content every few months. I mean, they print money. But they ain't making games.
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Yeah, that was my point. Before releasing a Source based game (HL2) they updated the original HL to the new engine. They have updated DOTA to Source 2, so I would expect a real Souce 2 game is not far behind.
 
The problem with Valve is that their income stream is largely passive now. What they do or don't do has no real impact on their market position as the largest digital storefront for PC games, so they're getting paid no matter what silly crap they come up with. It's the same reason the BBC in England has started putting out such terrible programs - their funding (a licence fee that every Brit pays if they have a TV antenna installed at their house) is completely divorced from the performance of their programs, so they just do whatever the hell they want.
 
I had to install Steam when I purchased HL2, and I've used it ever since without issue. I have hundreds of games on there, and never had any issues with playing any game at any time on any version of Windows throughout the years.

The cloud save function works great, the marketplace has made me some coin to buy more games and the fact I can chat with mates while playing is great.

Would I like to see HL3? Of course, but while Steam keeps just doing what it does is good enough for me.
 
A Little Teapot said:
The problem with Valve is that their income stream is largely passive now. What they do or don't do has no real impact on their market position as the largest digital storefront for PC games, so they're getting paid no matter what silly crap they come up with. It's the same reason the BBC in England has started putting out such terrible programs - their funding (a licence fee that every Brit pays if they have a TV antenna installed at their house) is completely divorced from the performance of their programs, so they just do whatever the hell they want.
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Exactly, considering how they take 30% of the sale, I'd say they're largely running on rent seeking behavior now. They take in hundreds of millions of dollars a year, they could be funding dozens of games or studios with that kind of money.
 
Flogger23m said:
Meh. As long as their service remains decent, their client doesn't become too bloated (which it is slowly creeping towards) I can care less. They provide a service, who cares if they don't do anything else. The days of them being a good video game developer have passed. Sad, but that has been the case for a good 7 years at least. The last real game they put out was in 2011. Frankly, between DOTA and CS:GO I believe Valve will harm the game industry more if they released another game like that. Best they don't do anything but remain a service/platform.
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And this is exactly why there will never be competition with Steam. I have talked to several developers and none have any interest in providing a competing service even though Valve is gouging developers, the users have shown they will use Steam, no matter what. The general consensus is, Valve could shit into a users bowl of oatmeal and the user would still eat it (not my words, by the way).

Users have spoken. There shall be only one.
 
Heh for me they have a lot of good things but also bad ones. IMHO the "Game Backup" is the most useless tool available. What good is a back up if when you restore it, it auto updates to the latest version? Which brings me to the most useless feature, auto updating. It is a useful feature if done right (ie like the GoG Galaxy Client), but if there is no way to stick to the current version you are playing or go back to a previous version then that updating feature is completely broken. That's why I love the GoG platform and stick to it as much as possible. I never have an issue with a patch because if it broke something I can downgrade to a working version, or in a worst case, my backup is just the old version's installer and I can install and play that. Sure you won't be able to connect to multiplayer, but unlike most, multiplayer is my most not needed feature in a game. ;) Once upon a time steam let you not auto update games, but then they changed, now they let you not auto update games, but then now refuse to let you play the older version of the game till you update it. Seriously I hate the steam auto update crap.
 
LurkerLito said:
Heh for me they have a lot of good things but also bad ones. IMHO the "Game Backup" is the most useless tool available. What good is a back up if when you restore it, it auto updates to the latest version? Which brings me to the most useless feature, auto updating. It is a useful feature if done right (ie like the GoG Galaxy Client), but if there is no way to stick to the current version you are playing or go back to a previous version then that updating feature is completely broken. That's why I love the GoG platform and stick to it as much as possible. I never have an issue with a patch because if it broke something I can downgrade to a working version, or in a worst case, my backup is just the old version's installer and I can install and play that. Sure you won't be able to connect to multiplayer, but unlike most, multiplayer is my most not needed feature in a game. ;) Once upon a time steam let you not auto update games, but then they changed, now they let you not auto update games, but then now refuse to let you play the older version of the game till you update it. Seriously I hate the steam auto update crap.
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Unless you have some sort of pirating scheme going on why in blazes would you not want to play the newest version. If it's for piracy, then your complaint was a waste of everyone's time who read it and it deserves no place in this thread.

I have over 200 games in my Steam library and I've never encountered a single problem with the autoupdate. I really appreciate that bygone are the days of downloading all the various manual patches and installing them in order, or having to manually update a game before I can play it. You are complaining about a feature I find very valuable!
 
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while steam has some negatives steam it self has served pc gaming community well.

as for HL3 they really should have had it released by 2006/7 now that most of the peeps that worked on the series arnt there we can be pretty certain if ever it comes out we are gonna hate it.
i am surprised that valve have not bought out more games like they did with cs, portal and dota
 
Valve is a company that has transitioned, and if you've listened to Gabe Newell speak over the past 10 years you'd understand he no longer runs a software company, he runs a digital distribution service. Valve stopped making games years ago......they started buying and monetizing mods (left 4 dead), then they hit it big with DoTA which to me just looks like a freeware version of Starcraft and C&C (because I'm not of that gaming genere so I'm not in the know, but that's what it looks like from a 3rd person perspective, I know its far more than that but this is at-a-glance)...and Portal. And you finish portal in 20 minutes.
 
bigdogchris said:
Yeah, that was my point. Before releasing a Source based game (HL2) they updated the original HL to the new engine. They have updated DOTA to Source 2, so I would expect a real Souce 2 game is not far behind.
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They updated it in 2015...
 
Archaea said:
Unless you have some sort of pirating scheme going on why in blazes would you not want to play the newest version. If it's for piracy, then your complaint was a waste of everyone's time who read it and it deserves no place in this thread.

I have over 200 games in my Steam library and I've never encountered a single problem with the autoupdate. I really appreciate that bygone are the days of downloading all the various manual patches and installing them in order, or having to manually update a game before I can play it. You are complaining about a feature I find very valuable!
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No it's not for piracy, it's about rebalancing the game play after building your characters up from scratch in a particular manner, then because of the multiplayer aspects of the game, they screw up the character builds you invested time in building. They do this all the time. Some multiplayer feature makes a certain build too good against other players so the nerf whatever it is, but as a single player there is no justification for the nerf other than making my build less powerful but I get no choice but to have my character nerfed for some balance issue in a game mode I don't play. And FYI I bought all my 1600+ games on steam so stop trying to think that not wanting to update has anything to do with piracy just because you find it personally convenient to always run the latest version. This is a complaint for the features steam use to have where you could select "don't auto update my game" and you could still play the game with the older version you had installed if you wanted to, even though you wouldn't be allowed to play on multiplayer servers you could still continue to play your game as you intended or left off with the last time you played. Steam changed the meaning to "don't auto update my game" to mean "don't auto update my game and don't let me play it either till it's auto updated."
 
What games are you talking about? Just curious.

It does annoy me how "connected" SP is now. It has nothing to do with piracy more just like "oh hey, the Internet in my town is down, I guess I'll fire up some of those SP games I've never started."

"Unable to connect to Internet, please try again?? WTF!"
 
Steam has way too many junk games and a really shitty interface.
They really need to do something about that really, really shitty interface.
 
I went cold turkey & quit playing games all together. I've been sober since April. Best thing I ever did.

World of Tanks was sucking my life away & my $$. What a fucking sad waste of 4 years.
 
I have to admit, business-wise, they are making lots of money managing and maintaining steam (wtith their userbase size, I'm pretty sure this is like amazon level maintenance & management). And with that, business-wise, they may really don't see the need for the moment to work on games.
 
BSmith said:
And this is exactly why there will never be competition with Steam. I have talked to several developers and none have any interest in providing a competing service even though Valve is gouging developers, the users have shown they will use Steam, no matter what. The general consensus is, Valve could shit into a users bowl of oatmeal and the user would still eat it (not my words, by the way).

Users have spoken. There shall be only one.
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And what is the big lacking with Steam?

Besides, Origin offers decent competition. They first came out with the ability to change your install drive and refunds. Valve followed quickly. When it comes to small time developers Steam seems to be the easiest to work with to. I'd rather not have a different client for every publisher or game personally. So again, what is the problem with Valve not making any interesting games these days? They put out MP games for the LCD and made game ruining, ugly cosmetics a profitable trend that has ruined a number of other developers already. Call me skeptical, but I'd rather have Valve not make anymore games. They're not who they were years ago and they're more of a threat game development wise if they are active.
 
Flogger23m said:
And what is the big lacking with Steam?

Besides, Origin offers decent competition. They first came out with the ability to change your install drive and refunds. Valve followed quickly. When it comes to small time developers Steam seems to be the easiest to work with to. I'd rather not have a different client for every publisher or game personally. So again, what is the problem with Valve not making any interesting games these days? They put out MP games for the LCD and made game ruining, ugly cosmetics a profitable trend that has ruined a number of other developers already. Call me skeptical, but I'd rather have Valve not make anymore games. They're not who they were years ago and they're more of a threat game development wise if they are active.
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Thank you for proving my point.

What is lacking? Competition. You realize they take 30% of the revenue any game they sell for themselves? That is outrageous. Are you so conditioned to the high prices of AAA titles you just shrug it off and keep on trucking? When a developer has to amortize the cost of development, along with Valve's cut across X number of sales,....guess who pays for that?

I think Valve would be stupid to make games. They have the sweetest deal anyone could have. No competition and mindless drones to keep right on supporting them.

Steam is not easy to work with, by the way. Quite the opposite. They are a pain in the arse to work with. It does not matter what you want to do with your game, you have to follow their rules and do things their way, not that the sheep care.
 
The Half Life series is a relic now and I'm glad that it ended with HL2 EP2, especially considering what "Episode 3" was supposed to be via the script details. Left 4 Dead 3 would be a welcome surprise but its clear that when they made all of the LD4 1 maps playable on LD42 that they considered the final package to be the complete experience for good. Still a great game to blow an hour on every now and then.

Really, the only game I'd buy day one would be Portal 3. Gabe's made it clear that portal 2 was their final "super classic" product so its never going to happen.
 
lostin3d said:
Still trying to find a permanent solution to turn off the new chat that pops up at startup w/o disabling most of steam. Man what an invasive move. I'm walking funny and not in the good way . . . .

I like the speed of steam servers, and the updates come thru quickly. Otherwise it really seems like its devolved quite a bit in the last 18-24 months. Good news for them, so many AAA games coming out in the next 12 months. Won't matter what people think, most will still get 'em thru steam and by next summer they'll be rolling in cash even more so.
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The "-nochatui" and "-nofriendsui" command line arguments are working for me. I have not noticed any features of Steam that stopped working with these in use.
 
d3athf1sh said:
you CAN add non-steam games to your steam games list...
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Think he means he doesn't want 4 different clients from each game publisher. Sure you can add game to steam but these still open and run what ever client the game needs. He want one app that launches everything without steam, origin, Ubisoft clients installed.
 
Archaea said:
Unless you have some sort of pirating scheme going on why in blazes would you not want to play the newest version. If it's for piracy, then your complaint was a waste of everyone's time who read it and it deserves no place in this thread.

I have over 200 games in my Steam library and I've never encountered a single problem with the autoupdate. I really appreciate that bygone are the days of downloading all the various manual patches and installing them in order, or having to manually update a game before I can play it. You are complaining about a feature I find very valuable!
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Modding.

For Bethesda games, every time they update, the script extender must be updated. Then there are mods that are pretty important like Looksmenu and SKYUI that are tied to the script extender version. So after a Bethesda update, it can be as long as a week before you get back to full functionality.

Then for other games, Special K can be broken by updates and Kaladien may not even bother to update Special K to continue to work with said game.
 
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alxlwson said:
I love Steam. Never gave two shits about any of the Valve IP though.
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I'm in the same boat. I love steam and didn't think HL2 was all that great. IIRC it was delayed so long that it launched around the same time as Doom 3, which I thought looked way better and was more fun. I logged tons of hours in CS Source but have long since outgrown that scene.

The Portal games are probably the most fun I have had with a Valve game. I would enjoy another one, but won't be too upset if it never happens.
 
I don't even want any Valve games anymore. (not that I wouldn't play Portal 3, HL3, or L4D3 :D ) I've lost interest. However, as a storefront, and storage for 323 games, that works across multiple PCs, streams games from one to another, allows me to pretty much flawlessly connect multiplayer games with my kids, etc. they can just keep taking my money.
 
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dgz said:
They will deliver HL3. What's with the rush? They have the money and technology to do whatever the fuck they want. I am not much of a story guy but in my experience they get worse they go. Conclusions suck. Ep1/2 sucked hard. like REAL hard. Their main guy left when HL2 was done and while the game was amazing, they were absolutely not fucking ready to produce anything substantially better in any reasonable timeframe so they gave us the episodes, failed hard, and decided they didn't want to fail again.

They were out of ideas and out of technology. Everyone was about to be forever stuck with crap console generation. So, give it a couple of years and you'll have a HL3 announcement. Everything is coming together again.
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I don't think it's so much that they haven't delivered HL3 (OK, a lot of it is that) but that the attitude of the company is basically "why should we deliver HL3?" that rubs a lot of people the wrong way.

Yeah, it's their IP, they can do whatever they want with it. But if all they really care about is raking in profits, why not license it to another company to actually make the game they seem to distracted or disinterested to make? Like I said, "Why should we?"
 
BSmith said:
Thank you for proving my point.

What is lacking? Competition. You realize they take 30% of the revenue any game they sell for themselves? That is outrageous.
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Is it really outrageous tho? I think standard retail markup is like 25%, on top of that Steam is hosting and distributing your content for the rest of forever. You are getting basic advertising with recent \ new games, and targeted advertising with the Discovery Queue. You get to use the platform to push updates, matchmaking, etc.

As a developer you are getting a lot more value from Steam than just simply giving customers a download link IMHO.
 
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Kardonxt said:
Is it really outrages tho? I think standard retail markup is like 25%, on top of that Steam is hosting and distributing your content for the rest of forever. You are getting basic advertising with recent \ new games, and targeted advertising with the Discovery Queue. You get to use the platform to push updates, matchmaking, etc.

As a developer you are getting a lot more value from Steam than just simply giving customers a download link IMHO.
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I re-download games all the time these days. Either a new or additional PC, or giant updates like for Doom for example. The game is what, 90GB now or something like that? I'm definitely not one to conserve bandwidth. I'm grateful that Valve allows this, and that I don't have some stupid monthly fee. I'll happily pay a small extra markup for the luxury they provide.
 
Kardonxt said:
Is it really outrageous tho? I think standard retail markup is like 25%, on top of that Steam is hosting and distributing your content for the rest of forever.
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Yes, it is. And retail has much higher operating costs.

It's 2018., bandwidth is not that expensive and valuable like 10 or 20 years ago.
 
Kardonxt said:
Is it really outrageous tho? I think standard retail markup is like 25%, on top of that Steam is hosting and distributing your content for the rest of forever. You are getting basic advertising with recent \ new games, and targeted advertising with the Discovery Queue. You get to use the platform to push updates, matchmaking, etc.

As a developer you are getting a lot more value from Steam than just simply giving customers a download link IMHO.
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Bingo

There’s a reason most PC games aren’t sold at retail anymore... it’s because it’s cheaper and more effective and less chance of piracy if they sell through Steam.
 
Archaea said:
Unless you have some sort of pirating scheme going on why in blazes would you not want to play the newest version. If it's for piracy, then your complaint was a waste of everyone's time who read it and it deserves no place in this thread.

I have over 200 games in my Steam library and I've never encountered a single problem with the autoupdate. I really appreciate that bygone are the days of downloading all the various manual patches and installing them in order, or having to manually update a game before I can play it. You are complaining about a feature I find very valuable!
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Mods, and I don't want my saves broken
 
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I like Steam because I'm lazy, games are cheap on it, and i don't have to leave my house to buy a new game from almost any developer out there. And if a game is at a price point I don't want to pay, I just have to give it about a month tops before it is.

Obvious win for the consumer. I'm sure someone behind the scenes stands to lose.

Yes it sucks Valve doesn't make games anymore, but in a way I'm kinda glad. They're at the point now where they can throw their weight around like EA, Activision, etc. Those guys are already out there destroying games just fine without Valve helping. By that, I mean they are pumping out more garbage sequels for all their main franchises and expecting us to pay $60 plus a bazillion dollars in DLC/season passes. The games are broken or bugged to hell, some play like they never left beta, and others have some very noticeable immersion breaking flaws. I'd rather not see Valve going that same route on top of what they're doing now. I would rather remember their game development as being better than that, even if their graphics weren't as realistic as other games.
 
Armenius said:
The "-nochatui" and "-nofriendsui" command line arguments are working for me. I have not noticed any features of Steam that stopped working with these in use.
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Thanks! I saw mention of some command line arguments in another thread but they didn't actually list 'em. I used the 'don't remember' thing I also saw mentioned and after about a half day's restarts on 2 different rigs it finally took effect. BTW I'm back to walking normally again.
 
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