VALVe's Business Cents

[Ghengis]

CyberKnite wrote..

Firstly, wouldn't that be Sierra, not Valve since they actually publish the product?

Hes right you know, I picked up my generation pack thingy, in Sweden a couple of months ago now, and I payed even less. (Yay Strong Sterling!!)

Anyway I cant understand why people are getting stressed about a reasonable company making money anyway. If we get 'raped by the magical valve penis' that implies you dont want to be. If you dont want to be, dont bend over. Its quite simple... Adn with regards to the everquest thimng,. some servers run their very own little everquest univerese which allows people to circumvent payin, and Im sure this will continue with all games.. Fact is Valve have done a great job for 'x' years.. They have moe than exceeded expectations SO WE SHOULD JUST BE GRATEFUL.

[FatboyTim]

My only gripe with VALVe would be their seeming lack of urgency, with regards to future releases: They first promised us TF2 in 1999 but now, we're almost certain not to see it before late 2003. They stated in November 2001 that we would get more information about TF2 "in the coming months" but almost a year later, we've had no further news. They suggested that Condition Zero would be published around May 2002, but now we're not going to see it before Q1 2003 at the earliest.



However putting all that aside, they really have provided fantastic support for the half-life community: No other game's mod-community has had nearly as much support as Half-Life's community has!



They have provided practical (and financial) help to several mod teams. They've bought the rights to CS, "professionalised" and published it. They've made supporting agreements with the DoD team. They've even provided several entire mods themselves: Team Fortress Classic, Deathmatch Classic and Ricochet.



They've also made many (many) updates to their online games, including new maps, models, netcode, voice-comms and soon, automatic content distribution and even instant messaging! They also seem to be dedicated to the eradication of cheating in their games!



The original article shows some clear examples of the successes that a strongly supported mod-community can bring to any software business. The 1.3 million sales of Half-Life: Counter-Strike have certainly not harmed VALVe!

[stooopid]

I have successfully made all of you think about Valve's penis...



my work here is done.



-stooop

[fusioned]

You lot might also want to check out http://www.natural-selection.org/ - new HL mod that's been in development for 2 years... and the concept and gfx look fantastic...



Who'd thought a 4 year old game engine can still provide such games? (despite the cheat-holes, and problems with newer modern OSes, and the fact that the core of the engine is pretty dated anyway ::: roll on CZ!)

[PK0rZ]

[MikeJ]

[PK0rZ]

[garry]

valve sux 34.99 for a 4 year old game HAHAHA FUCK YOU VALVE AND YOUR MOM

[Gaill.arD]

It's understandable a HL CD key could be $40.



One cd key can get you access to Half life, DOD, CS, and all it's mods, etc...



That's like thousands of games now, a fair amount of them would be definetly worth paying for too, so be damned grateful your little HL cd key gives you so much.



And if you bought CS retail, you can get the ISO or something of a half life cd and use your CS retail cd key and get half life single player. It's NOT piracy either. I mean you payed for the damn CD key.



I just hope those with CS retail CD key can play HL Singleplayer over steam. All beta users seem to be able too. Because I feel I've been cheated scince CS retail doesn't have HL single player support



But my $40 was worth Counter-Strike alone! Let alone Firearms, DoD, etc...



And now spending that money they have on VAC and constantly fixing bugs in CS, and even releasing an IM system now, I think they're doing a good job.

[rizzuh]

stooopid wrote..

fine for now... but the future of distribution is changing... Valve is getting their act together now so that a CS-like phenomenon can never happen again without in-the-loop revenue.

And you know this because something over the last four years has been indicitive of VALVe's greed? That's a hoot.

Kuros wrote..

And when they can no longer milk HL, they will finally release TF2, with CS2 as a mod. People who play TFC want to play TF2 and I think many people who play CS will migrate to CS2, except for the conservative bastards who don't want any changes. This way, Valve will maximize profit of TF2 by bringing a huge chunk of the HL community directly to TF2. Perhaps they will throw in a sequel to some other successful mod for HL, like DoD, to sweeten the pot.

A COMPANY MAKING FPS SEQUELS. EVIL.



They're not timing the release of TF2. HL will not die until TF2 is released (most likely). It's been the number 1 game for more than 3 years now. They don't have to lie in wait, their next move will be successful either way.



My god some of you freaks are totally ass-cynical.

[Kuros]

Calm down rizzuh, I never said anything about Valve being evil or that they are doing anything wrong. I'm just saying what I think will happen. :)

[narby]

Their cynicism is just the fact they're still sore over the loss of bunny hopping, any excuse to bash valve.

[bozer]

My only complaint with Valve is how they treated the people who bought CS retail. After losing my HL cd, I had to buy CS retail. You'd think after releasing a product like this to the public, theyd have made sure it included the proper files to play maps like De_Nuke, Inferno.. etc..



Instead, I had to go to nextwish.org and get his CS retail maps fix. Keep in mind, I've been playing CS for a while now, and knew where to look for the CS Retail Fix. But what about the 12 year old kid who just got CS Retail for christmas, and barely has any idea on how to even install the game.



Don't get me wrong, Valve is great for giving us the greatest game of all time (imo).. I just think its wrong to let many of the games bugs still exist, and not repair them before worrying about things like adding checkers, chess and go.

[garry]

i think any idiot can get cs up to date (helo auto updater).. and it usually downloads the maps automatically in game



OK.. why bother buying cs retail - you could have written to valve and they would have given you a new cd key. Oh but you're an idiot in your own little world, god forbid you use your brain.

[Mintman]

The maps weren't released with the game as it would have infringed upon copyright or something like that. And you only need to download them once. Not as if you had to sit online for 3 hours to get the couple of maps you were lacking. Bet you've spent longer downloading custom maps than the ones for the retail fix.



Not often I agree with what rizzuh says but he is right :P