VALVe's Business Cents

[garry]

i dont think we'll be seeing tf2 next year.. considering they're working on a brand new engine and everything.. id say 2004 at the very earliest.

[mouth]

narby wrote..

I assume you think Valve are right now sitting around throwing money in the air deciding what mod to publish to rake in a few extra bucks. Or perhaps when the real world turns up at your door screaming WAKE THE FUCK UP ASSTROLL you may actually comprehend they're working on new things. I'm slightly concerned someone as apparently intelligent as you would honestly believe valve are just biding their time with their ``other'' projects.

And what would that be? Have you heard anything substantial about what they're working on? Have you seen so much as a screenshot? I'll be perfectly able to comprehend the idea that they're working on new things as soon as i see some evidence that would suggest that. I smell a BitBoys.

JdeFalconr wrote..

You've got a good point that much of VALVe's and HL's more recent success has been due to the mod community. I agree with you there. However, before CS, HL did just fine on its own merits and was a breakthrough in itself. I wouldn't say that its success comes completely from non-VALVe people.

No, not completely. The majority, however, does come from everyone other than Valve. HL stood on its own for as long as it took for people to get to Xen. If they had done exactly what they have in a world where CS was never created, they'd have folded. They've thrived off of other people's work, and that chaps my ass.

But I don't know much about VALVe's patch schedules, interviews, or words that you've deemed "empty." Why is it that you view all these things as big problems for VALVe? I'm not arguing with your view, especially considering I'm not informed enough to have one of my own on those subjects. I'm just asking you to provide evidential support for these opinions of yours instead of making unsubstantiated claims.

Look at literally any Valve interview from the last 3 years. Valve interviews and HL releases are generally big news items, so doing a search on either the 'shack or Blue's should give you what you're asking for. Part of the blame lies with interviewers not chasing the question, but the rest lies with Valve for not being capable of giving a straight answer.

Actually that's an excellent example. I think you and I are looking at it two different ways, though. You see my statement as saying we should thank VALVe for selling us something, and that's not what I was trying to say. I was trying to say we should thank them for their work, especially for the work they didn't have to do.

They made HL SP. They GOT their kudos for that in spades.



Beyond that, just about everything they've done, they did because they had to. Patches for HL come because the golden egg mod is all they have and they'd be screwed without "supporting" it. It goes like this: Our way of showing gratitude is by being fans. This would've been all hunky-dory, except that Valve left all of it's fans in the cold, dark realm of "We ain't telling you shit". It's hard to be a fan, to show gratitude, when it apparently becomes too much trouble to press F12 and give us a recent screenshot or a straight answer. Since CS is all there is for Valve, you can, at most, say you are a CS fan (or DoD, whathaveyou). If you're looking to be grateful, the people carrying Valve's weight are a better place to start.

narby wrote..

Mouth has valid points, I'm just tired of hearing about valve the evil corperate machine hell bent on screwing people out of money for ``rehashed'' products, as if they're somehow responsible for peoples free will to buy them.

I'm not blaming them for "screwing" anyone out of money. A fool and his money are soon parted and such jazz. The problem is with a big company that has no lack of funding riding on the coattails of mods they didn't make. I have HUGE problems when a such a company uses fan-made mods as a meal ticket instead of one of their own games.



It's like the bumfights videos: The people buying them are to blame for being stupid enough to buy them, but the people making them are SO not in the clear.

It's obvious valve are not doing dick right now, but valve has always had a reputation for doing things over and over until they get it right <mouth arguement cue point here> and I believe thats what's happening with their current main projects. They can afford to spend the time in getting it right and it's not the right of anyone else to question that. They're certainly not obliged to shell out a new game once every couple of years, it's their call.

They can afford to spend the time in "getting it right", but a screenshot, .AVI, or -god forbid- an informative interview answer is too much? Come on. That doesn't add up at all.

Knowing Valve, I'm sure whatever they release next will be spectacular.

That's up in the air as far as anyone here knows. As far as games go, they've released ONE mostly good SP game that had pathetic DM, an inexplicably bastardized version of what was already a near-perfect mod (TFC), a pointless carbon-copy of Q1 DM, and...whatever the hell Ricochet was supposed to be.

f. wrote..

rizzuh why dont u quit being a complete ass. Any deal with the fact that people hate what valve did, and dont suk their dick to get attention. You dont see us complainin that you like what valve did do you?

...what?

-:Nighthawk:- wrote..

I find it funny that people like mouth would think that Team Arena is a fine and good way of making money, when it's the same engine (plus a few minor enhancements to make the game possible) as the original Quake III Arena, and yet seperately releasing CS is not okay?

A) Team Arena was an in-house effort. If by some miracle it had made a lot of money, they'd be making it off of something THEY created. Plus, TA was very much not the only thing id has going for them, unlike Valve with CS.

B) There was, thankfully, only 1 release of TA compared to the desperate FOUR of HL.

C) I don't have a problem with CS itself going retail. CS going retail made sense. Nowhere did i mention the retail version of CS as being one of the rehashes.

[CabalSoljea]

garry wrote..

i dont think we'll be seeing tf2 next year.. considering they're working on a brand new engine and everything.. id say 2004 at the very earliest.

heh!



anyways, there's still an influx of newbies into the community. think about it.



wat am i talking???

[lockhart]

[fB.bLaCKaT]

A) Team Arena was an in-house effort. If by some miracle it had made a lot of money, they'd be making it off of something THEY created. Plus, TA was very much not the only thing id has going for them, unlike Valve with CS.

B) There was, thankfully, only 1 release of TA compared to the desperate FOUR of HL.

A) Any game that is made by a company that makes games on a professional manner is made for money; and is expected to make money.

B) If I'm not mistaken, TA was released twice, and Quake 3 was released atleast 2 times. IE: Quake 3 Gold edition

[The Village Idiot]

Hmmm..... I don't even think Mouth knows what kind of point he's arguing for. It's supposed to be about whether Valve treats its customers right. Mouth argues that Valve doesn't treat their custmers right because



A) They re-released HL too many times



**Huh? What does that have to do with it? So it was an extremely popular game (whether mouth liked it or not, it got Game of the Year award from virtually every media that gives one), and had its popularity boosted and lengthened by such mods as CS, DOD, and several other mods including their own TFC. (I know, mouth despises it, but that still doesn't mean it wasn't successful or that thousands of people love it) And so because of all that, Valve re-released it several times to help the latecomers who wanted to jump on the ship. The more recent releases had more patches and mods bundled with them and if one so desired, one could still have bought the original and patched and added the hell out of it to make it current.



B)Valve isn't making any new games



Huh?? How does this have any relevance again? Who cares if their making new games? That doesn't have anything to do with customer support, and even if it did, why are you arguing it's such a bad thing? You obviously think anything Valve creates sucks hard, so go back to playing something else and quit your whining. Aside from all that, it's common knowledge that Valve is working on new stuff, so why question it? Who cares if they don't give you a screen shot or anything to "make you believe". It'll come when it comes.



C)Valve makes money off of mods



Heck yeah they do! I'd buy HL only for the mods, and in fact I have! I've bought an extra CD key so we could get more than one person playing CS on our DSL network at home. I don't have any problem with that, Valve provided the game and engine and charged for it and Gooseman made a free mod for it. Obviously Valve is a game company and has to charge for it's games, Gooseman made CS for fun and to add it to his resume and picking a game engine to make a mod for was the best way to do it, Gooseman just happened to like the HL engine. In fact, you should be happy that game developers like Valve make their games so mod friendly or else CS would probably never had happen. Mods help everybody: The game company gets more reasons for people to buy the game, the mod creaters get a free way to use an engine to make a free game for (sure, they probably had to buy the game, but it's reletively free compared to licensing the engine), and the gamers get more games! How could you NOT like that??? In the case of CS, Valve went out of their way to support this mod (could you blame them? Would you wish they didn't? They helped with a lot) and they eventually actually boxed it and made some more money off it and actually got the creators some money also. I'm actually relieved to see that you don't have a problem with that at least.



Mouth's arguments really make no sense... he just likes to blow steam I think. Oh, which reminds me, he thinks steam blows? Why is that? Ha ha, he doesn't even have any evidence besides his own "superior" intellectual foresight into how he thinks it'll be implemented, lol.

[mouth]

Edited by [user="9271"] @ [time="1035031698"]

fB.bLaCKaT wrote..

id software releases point releases to fix bugs; I don't recall ID software ever giving mod-developers the chance at going retail.

I don't recall id software ever needing to cash in on a user mod.

id software makes more money off their engine than they do off the game. Face it, Q3A was dead the first two months it came out. People still play it, of course, because it's Quake 3; but the community isn't nearly as big as the HL community.

Q3 had a decent run. Q3 was also not the first id game. At most, you can say that the Q3 community isn't as big as the CS community. Whether id makes more money off the engine than they do the games is, at best, irrelevant to this topic.

Half-Life is... how many years old? Let's count. 98, 99, 00, 01, 02, Half-Life will be 5 years old this November. How many games that are 5 years old STILL make money, and STILL gain support from their developers?

Yeah, ok, we've been here already.

You also are bitching about how TF2 and HL2 aren't released yet, but once again you are missing the point. Everything that is being put into the HL engine, is in turn, being developed for the HL2/TF2 engine.

Which apparently exists in the land of milk and honey.

The fact is, everything that is being developed for HL at the current time, will make it's way into TF2, HL2, and CS2. Half-Life TV advances; Valve Anti-Cheat advances; will all be working when the game comes out. That is 1 less thing that Valve needs to worry about supporting, because they KNOW it works.

What the hell kind of sense does that make? Either way, it's going to take the same amount of time to get working. They might as well release a new game with those incomplete features than have an old, OLD game with those incomplete features. You're full of shit.



Secondly, VAC is not a "get it working and that's it" kinda deal. It's perpetually being worked on to stop the cheats that are also perpetually being worked on.

Valve is a company, if they don't make revenue, we won't get anymore updates to CS or HL. And we definately won't see HL2 or TF2.

They aren't doing anything useful with those updates, and we aren't seeing any HL2 or TF2 as it is, so fuck it.



If they don't squeeze more cash out of CS, they might actually have to do something with TF2. Ooooh! Oooooh!. Imagine that.

The Village Idiot wrote..

Mouth's arguments really make no sense...

Yeah, it's kinda funny how that happens when you take 1 line from each issue and ignore their explanations. Come back when you've read more than the Cliff's Notes version, punky.

he just likes to blow steam I think. Oh, which reminds me, he thinks steam blows? Why is that? Ha ha, he doesn't even have any evidence besides his own "superior" intellectual foresight into how he thinks it'll be implemented, lol.

Exactly when did Steam enter this conversation? And i'm the one who supposedly doesn't have any evidence?

[fB.bLaCKaT]

I'm full of shit? The fact that I state facts; Valve, like many other companies could choose to just close all development of the Half-Life engine (current) in general and go and test all the things exculsively without letting us enjoy them on the current platform.



That's common sense.



Q3 had a run alright; and yes, ID did have games besides this, and YES, ID didn't need to count on mod-user for revenue because they are selling their engine like hotcakes. If CS didn't go retail where would be be today? In the same place, without all the new players; and probably with more cheaters.