Why did they stop making games? (excluding early access mobalikes)
Their cattle keep enriching them no matter how bad/nonexistent their output is.
Why is it that everytime you ask this question you get a horde of valve drones talking about how they have plenty of stuff in development (they dont or it gets cancelled) or they start citing CS knowing full well you meant singleplayer games?
>>733648548All their artistic talent left. They use Russian contractors to do all their concept art for Deadlock and at least one of those contractors admitted he designed Vindicta using midjourney. Amazingly the new characters the Russian contractors made are significantly better than the in house ones valve made for Neon Prime which were rancid.
>>733648767Nobody said plenty of things in development. They have Steam, which is what matters. It's the only game store worth using.
>>733648767They don't make games anymore and Half-Life Alyx doesn't count. Is that the answer you want?
>>733648548They swapped over to MOBAs to make more money. DOTA2 is a huge success and they're working on Deadlock. HL3 won't make them enough money so they don't bother.
They made Alyx and are working on a HALF-LIFE X
>>733648548>>733648767>Multiplayer games don't count because...uh...I'm a friendless loser.
>>733648548hl1 and tf2 were the only games they ever made that were goodthey're way better being the overseer and working on the metaproperties on the platform
>>733648548>Why did they stop making games? (excluding early access mobalikes)what's 2 + 2 and DON'T say 4
>>733648548Name a studio of the same size that has more output than they do.
>>733654395And the TF2 designers loved DOTA so much they hired all the DOTA people and now they all just work on DOTA. So there's your answer.
>>733648548They do make games though, just because you don't like or play those games doesn't mean Valve doesn't make games anymore. What does Valve making games mean to you, anon?
Valve has made it. They don't need to break their backs with crunch time or figuring out what is causing a bug or thinking up new mechanics for players. They can just sit back and let the money roll in with minimal effort now. Why on Earth would they go back to how things were?
>>733659147Well it seems like they took a turn after Portal 2 and I'd like to see them get back on course
>steal a fanmade idea>make stupid amount of money off of it>monopoly on PC gaming with glorified rental serviceWhy should they even waste time making anything else?
>>733648767I have never seen a Valveguy claim they make games because of CS2 and Dota, if anything they tend to ignore those games because they make Valve look bad, especially CS with all the gambling. An average Valve fan nowadays is just a 40 year old redditor that grew up on HL games and is happy that Steam is good and convenient and that Valve makes decent wifeguy hardware like Steam Deck
>>733659839You must be very successful since you've cracked the code like that, super-genius.
hop on deadlock
They transitioned from being agame developer to be a service developer.Their games are made for fun internally but if they are good enough they see a public release.
Valve doesn't make games anym-
>>733660049>especially CS because of some gay shitGo back. Being able to throw my drops at some idiot who thinks they're worth something is a good feature. I don't care if some fag bets with them. If they couldn't do it with skins they'd be betting on someone throwing a dildo onto the field in the next WNBA game on one of the billion crypto sites instead.
>>733660197They have more game output than studios 5 times their size. >but if you count none of that you end up with them doing nothing Yeah, great. Idiots think that Valve is like EA, Nintendo, or Ubisoft when they are only 300 people compared to the 10s of thousands those other places have.
>>733648548hardware stuff is more fun to them
>>733660220Nice goalpost moving
>>733660220>Alyx>2020No, I don't believe it. It only came out a couple of years ago.
>>733659839How is reaching out to the original creators of said fan idea "stealing"?They did it with TF2They did it with DOTA 2 (Eul and Icefraud)They did it with the Portal developers after seeing Narbacular drop.
>>733660220Alyx and Deadlock are the only relevant games on that list. I don't really care, but it's obvious Valve's priorities have shifted from game development to Steam.
>>733661839I liked Artifact
>>733648548There's infinite money in providing (((web services))) for the goyim.
>>733662260valve didnt
>>733661839Other companies have bigger teams, maintaining games one-tenth of the size of Dota 2 or Counter Strike.
>>733663240Valve was retarded and let that Richard Garfield go wild with every stupid idea he ever wanted to try, especially with monetization. They should have wrangled him a bit more.
>>733660220kekaroo
>>733648548Valve was made in the 90s by Gabe Newell and his buddy from Microsoft because Microsoft thought PC games were a meme and they thought it had a lot of potential. They hired a bunch of people, including writer Marc Laidlaw, and put their heads together, inspired by Alien, Quake and Super Mario 64, and the desire to make an FPS with a story and give players a more cinematic experience, and made Half-Life.After that, they saw some Aussie cunts made a popular Quake mod called Team Fortress, and hired them to remake the game in their own engine and immediately began work on a sequel, which took almost a decade.They saw two different groups make popular Half-Life PvP mods called Counter-Strike and Day of Defeat, so they hired them to rerelease the mod with more polish and sell it for money.They then made a new game engine called Source and to show it off they got Marc Laidlaw to write a sequel story to Half-Life and made Half-Life 2, and planned to continue the story in episodes. They made two and then decided it was a bad idea.They saw Kim Swift made a cool school project and hired her to turn it into a game called Portal. They saw some other dudes made some cool new liquid tech so hired them and they used it to make Portal 2.Valve hired an indie dev studio to help them make CS Condition Zero and remake Counter-Strike in the Source engine, and they also made a mod where one team was a bunch of respawning zombies, so working together with Valve they turned it into a full-fledged game called Left 4 Dead and were hired to work on a sequel.After years of trying to sell himself, IceFrog eventually caught the attention of Valve and they helped him make a remake/sequel to the Dota mod which he had been helming for years, to shave off the Blizzard copyright and monetize it himself, much to the dismay of others who believed Dota belonged to them. Valve also hired the original creator of Dota, Eul, for the optics.Are you noticing a trend?
>>733648548It's partially >>733648705 and >>733650000 but the big killer is a company culture of refusing to commit to projects once issues pop up. There have been dozens of projects at Valve that we know about that were well into development, then dropped after the winter break because no one felt like it after that. There have been more recent ones (Stars of Blood, L4D3, Alien Swarm 2, etc.) that ran into development issues that were fixable, yet everyone involved just threw their hands up and left. No one at the company seems to want to commit to projects if it means solving issues and instead want to throw it away because they have infinite money to play with. >>733663561>especially with monetizationStill pisses me off why this was. Brandon Reinhart didn't want the cards to be monetized, but Gabe approved Garfield's idea because "it's Valve, people will buy it." It was during their time playing catch up with their competitors and fucking up every step of the way.>>733664753Valve tried this again with the Autochess guys, but then the Autochess guys decided Valve was fucking them over and made their own with Epic. Theirs has five million players and Valve's has maybe a few thousand. Valve has been aggressively anti-modder for a few years now since Valve's legal department took it over (TF2 is the only one to get a pass really.)
>>733648548Would you go to work if you didn't have to?
>>733648548Gaben realized he could get away with minimal job and the audience gladly will abandon all his rights with a smile
>>733664753Additionally, Valve made Alyx to show off their VR headset, they made Artifact after teaming up with the creator of Magic the Gathering, and when a Dota 2 mod became popular (Autochess) they tried hiring the modders to make a full-fledged game but they refused and made it themselves and it flopped (Underlords).This is Valve's MO. They hire popular indie devs/modders and turn their ideas into something more polished, copyright free and profitable. There's no guarantee that these people, after seeing their game ideas realized, will continue to make new games. But even if they might, how many of them are still at Valve?Marc Laidlaw? No.Robin Walker? Yes.CS creators? No.DoD creators? No.Kim Swift? No.Turtle Rock? No.IceFrog? Yes.Valve has hired more people in the past decade, but most of them either seemingly did nothing at the company and quit (Michael Abrash) or they were probably a net negative on the company from the beginning (Campo Santo).So why does Valve have a problem finding new talent? They did it to themselves. Modding nowadays is only marginally easier than making your own game thanks to all the tools available, some provided by Valve themselves, including Steam which has made being an indie dev more profitable than it was in the past. If art is more your passion, then you can make a living off making cosmetics for Valve's games instead. None of this requires actually joining Valve.And Valve has little incentive to work at all when each of their workers receives millions of dollars a year passively thanks to Steam sales. Regardless, some combination of Robin Walker and IceFrog seems to be behind Deadlock, which is something at least.
>>733661789Stealing sounds something that Riot would do......oh wait.
>>733648548Innovation stalled because the economy is shit. That’s all.
>>733665908>Modding nowadays is only marginally easier than making your own game thanks to all the tools availableHell if the TF2 SDK is valve's standard for modern day modding I'd say making your own game is flat out easier.
Same reason Rockefeller stopped drilling wells when he already controlled all the pipelines and refineries
>>733664753>They saw Kim Swift made a cool school project and hired her to turn it into a game called Portal.These days I'm convinced that the entire narbacular drop team being reduced to "just kim swift" was a result of feminist games journalists latching onto the project lead being a women and promoting the hell out her. She didn't even come up with the idea for the portal mechanic.
>>733665908Speaking of VR, pushing into hardware was also Gaben's whole thing for a decade or more at this point. There might be a bigger percentage of hardware people at Valve than software people at this point. But yeah it was clearly the main problem that Valve just doesn't hire people that want to do Half-Life 3.But in contrast to your post, the only reason Half-Life Alyx got made was because of the Campo Santo people, after their other gay walking sim got canceled.
>>733652525>alyx was made in roughly 4 years>hl3 has been in development for 7 years already
>>733671304>hl3 has been in development>been in development
>>733671304tf are they even doing with it anymore
>>733671304>been in development for 7 yearsMore like 1 to 2 years if leaks are to be believed
>>733673775No, wtf are you talking about
>>733673775nigga the codename hlx has been around since at least 2020
>>733659839>hiring the modder of your game or creator of an idea to your team>this is bad>meanwhile gamefreak and nintendo steal ideas without crediting or hiring the original creator(pokemon ideas were taken from kaiju capsule) >worse they patent ideas that have existed forever in the gaming industry>literally sue people who mod their games or create fan games
>>733648548Valve has like 300 people. 80 of that are working on steam. 220 are actually making games. 220 people working on maintaining 5 live service games while also being able to pump out a singleplayer outside of that makes them insanely efficient.
>>733665908>If art is more your passion, then you can make a living off making cosmetics for Valve's games insteadliterally 1%you just told anons to make weapon skins for jew valve and fight the skin cartel for that 1%kys>indie games99% of them are unprofitable garbage1% of them are worse than minimum wage job because valve takes 30%kys>employees earn millions of dollarsyou don't know who earns how muchit's the shareholders earning that mucheverything else is contractorkyskys liar
>>733648548While I enjoy Half Life 2 and portal, the truth is Valve doesn't make single-player games for the sake of it, but as a way to innovate and push technology forward.The first Half Life made efforts in creating real time narratives, while the second innovated on the usage of physics interactions. Portal also made use of new tech to innovate as well. If they haven't made Half Life 3 is because they still do not feel they have something to add.When it comes to multiplayer, the answer is mostly micro-transactions.
>>733670454Kim Swift is credited with coming up with the portal mechanic idea, but yes, more credit needs to go to the other Narbaculad Drop devs. One name in particular that should be called out more is Garret Rickey, who did a lot of the actual coding to get portals to actually work. Also, while Kim Swift left, Garret Rickey stayed at Valve and worked on Portal 2, where he worked obsessively to perfect the portal mechanic with a whole bunch of quality of life features like funneling effects, making sure held objects went with you through portals, and all the subtle animations and turning to handle cases where the player comes out of a portal at a weird angle.
>>733681064>Kim Swift is credited with coming up with the portal mechanic ideaWasn't that Dave Kircher?
>>733679154>literally 1%>99% of them are unprofitable garbage>you don't know who earns how muchThe alternative is trying to get hired by Valve and then spending your life doing nothing. If you do manage to make something, your money gets divvied up to all the other employees who do nothing. There's a reason half the big names at Valve left.>it's the shareholders earning that much>shareholders
>>733681064Okay, fine. Let me fix what I said:>They saw Garret Rickey made a cool school project and hired him to turn it into a game called Portal.>how many of them are still at Valve?>Garret Rickey? No.There you go.>>733681390He actually still is at Valve, but I can't imagine what he's been doing. Nothing special it seems.
>>733650000>They use Russian contractorsSo that is why it looks like shit
>>733648548Because they don't need to. It's that simple.
>>733648548It's easier to milk and scam their users than make a quality product.Valve are a company of liars and frauds. They do not deserve your money for their consumer-unfriendly practices.
>>733648548>why did they stop making games>except for these games they're makinglol
Icefrog's lane fetish ruined this company for 3 console generations now.
>>733651595ngl I think GOG is better
>>733677312lmao what proof do you have of "nintendo" stealing anything when it comes to games? Also who gives a shit? That's how genres are established.
>>733685136They made over 13 in 9 years, including Half- Life 2, Portal 1 and 2, L4D1 and 2, TF2, Dota 2, CSS and CSGO.Then they made 5 games in 11 years. Those 5 include a Source 2 remake of CSGO, a collection of Portal minigames for VR, a Half-Life spin-off for VR, the abandoned Artifact and the flop Underlords.
>>733677312>they patent ideaslmao just work around it? Imagine being this creatively bankrupt that devs cant figure out how to work around it
>>733648705kek
>>733677312>nintendo steal ideasbassless and schizo speculation
Making games is hard and Steam is very profitable.
>>733686425lmao pussies
>>733677638I wonder why this is so hard to understand for a lot of people.
>>733677638PLEASE UNDERSTAND VALVE IS INDIE COMPANY
>>733686653No, they are owned by EA.
>>733686554>lmao pussiesThey’re comfortable, I can’t really blame them.
But they do make games :^)Look at all this organic discourse around their new game :^)
>>733671304HL2 was made in 6 years. There's a chance they had multiple design pivots to the game as far as I'm concerned.
>>733687319also was leaked/hacked
>>733687460I feel like Valve blew the Axel Gembe thing out of proportion when it comes to the narrative about it affecting HL2. Like sure, he leaked a bunch of stuff and Gabe went berserk over it, but it didn't exactly affect development much. The game already changed direction from 'dark and gritty' to a more streamlined aesthetic for a while before the leak.
>>733687720It ruined the team morale for the rest of 2003, at least.In some's ways I empathize with them. It was like "yeah this game will either put us on the map or we're all going to have to go find new jobs" Then everyone sees how unfinished that game was at the time. I think the most damaging thing was that the leak was leagues above what the scope for retail was. Like HL2 and the Episodes just barely covers almost all of what they wanted to do with just HL2. Episode One did all the cut city 17 stuff, Episode 2 did the forests and antlion caves, and Episode 3 would've done the arctic sections the borealis (which they first concepted in 1999 and we've never even gotten on it btw)I'm still pissed they never did anything with the Air Exchange.Overall yeah the leak really meant nothing, but it was the fact that it happened. We got Dark Interval and other beyta mods out of it so it wasn't a complete loss.
>>733665908>turtle rockas if those hacks were ever competent. they had a good idea and valve carried them to the finish line
>>733687720Yeah, it didn't lead to any major changes in design or narrative plans, because Valve was already in the middle of content creation crunch when the leak happened, but it did have a major impact on slowing down development for a few months by destroying team morale. Productivity cratered for a while as developers went from crunching on finishing the game to staring at their computers wondering "what's the point of even finishing this when it's leaked? what's the point of working when the company might straight up shut down tomorrow and leave me without a job?"
>>733648548>Anti-Valvefags be like: Nah -this- game doesn't count thoAlso reminder that anti-valvefags these days on /v/ are actually former valvefags and tf2fags, they cant let go of their ancient ass game because of a misplaced sense of machismo grogtardation that died out in 2010s /v/. It's sad.
>>733689760I wonder what happens when HL3 is finally announced. Would that be enough to sate all those ex-fans' grudges?
>>733689760At this point, the majority of anons trying to shit on valve are tendies who feel threatened.
>>733689760even with over 1000 hours in deadlock i'm sour about valve having one singleplayer game this decadestill huffing the HL3 believer hopium, but if they didn't have ridiculous expectations we could have got two L4D sized games after alyx
>>733648548IIRC Valve is structured in a way where game development is very casual Basically the creatives can pitch whatever and do whatever but it drops easily when they lose interest
>>733691521They supposedly dropped that management model after Half-Life Alyx.
>>733685528GOG is incredible. Those download speeds combined with the lack of games make it the premiere video game store. Also, it might actually go under in the forseeable future. I like those promises of reliability.
