They had it all

What the fuck happened to these two?
Where did everything go so wrong?

>valve
Running the steam market and selling other people's games make more money than making them yourself

this
why make games when you can just sell them and monetize your already exsisting ones as well

This is why we will never see HL3

Well I mean it's not like they were making games very often to begin with. The only actual game they ever made themselves was Half-Life. They've always been a publisher first and a developer 2nd. Well, I guess a Storefront 1st, Publisher 2nd, and Developer 3rd now.

At least they're actually pretty good Publishers. Excited to see that Dante Buckley(Onward) is getting picked up by them now. That game is already amazing for having been developed all this time by a single guy with extremely limited resources; It's already THE killer app for VR and probably sold more vives than anything else. I can't imagine what it will look like with an actual staff and budget behind it. If nothing else, Valve are smart as shit when it comes to indie devs they scoop up.

Millennials willing to pay for useless crap

Nothing. They're there to make money and they're making a shitton of money.

Valve: Steam and CS:GO

Blizzard: dey still good

Blizzard are shit at balancing their games though.

Money corrupts.

Replaying BG2 and really wondering what happened. Apart from mismanagement, did their talent leave too?

Valve has gotten lazy and realized they don't have to make games or even put effort in their existing games when everyone else can do it.

Despite some incredibly idiotic decisions I think Blizzard is okay.

Blizzard sold out and went to shit. Became a console first company that only supports Windows on PC.

Valve refused to sell out and turned into a major gaming infrastructure company. Good thing too because PC gaming has been in serious danger ever since the Xbox came out and Microsoft stopped caring about the PC as a gaming platform.

This is what miffs me the most. They are so fucking lazy they wont even make cosmetics for their own games most of the time, and the few times they get off their ass to produce content, they charge 40 fucking dollars for a skin.

yes, all the BG2 writers left.

>Became a console first company that only supports Windows on PC.
>literally every game of theirs is a PC exclusive and/or has a console version but the PC version gets all the attention and updates
really makes u think

Their talent left

They're not being lazy though. There are just more fundamental problems with the PC as a gaming platform today that demand attention before they'll be ready to release their next-gen games. There's no point spending a ton of money on Half Life 3 for instance if Microsoft pushes out a Windows 10 forced update that breaks Steam.

They just hired an Nvidia driver dev to work on the open source RadV graphics driver for AMD GPUs.

Valve got content and lazy because they have zero pressure to release anything.

Blizzard sold out and is basically a corpse being puppeted around by Activision.

I'm not talking about HL3, I'm talking about their EXISTING games like DotA 2, where they charge the full price of an actual game just for a digital hat.

The Mannconomy update planted the seeds of Valve's downfall. Idiots buying legions of keys, crates, and shitty skins in TF2/Dota/CSGO fed them money hand-over-fist for shit that cost peanuts to make.

Don't buy the hat then?

The recent free update actually seemed to boost performance with the OpenGL and Vulkan backends quite a bit on Linux. Suggests that they're still doing important tuning work on Source 2 with Dota2 as the guinea pig.

>and shitty skins in TF2/Dota/CSGO fed them money hand-over-fist for shit that cost peanuts to make.
Reminder that Valve spends almost zero pesos developing TF2 because almost all the new stuff is community made.

too bad all that "hard work" will go to waste because literally no one uses linux

Corporations are inhuman monsters.

>valve: why make money when you can hold other people's games for ransom?

>blizzard: why make games when you can steal someone else's', polish it, then churn out le so deep and emotional FMVs and lesbian comics instead of new gameplay content?

Optional Blizzard: it's alright if they let you blow $700 on random drop boxes if they give you some for free. I mean, it's fine when casinos do it, right?

My bad; the optional one applies to both.

Time till Windows 7 no longer receives DirectX updates: Expired
Time till Windows 7 no longer receives support for new hardware: 1 day
Time till Windows 7 no longer receives essential security updates: 3 years 1 day

The million users on Steam using Linux are just the start of Linux for gaming, not the end.

I seriously hope you don't believe this.

Which fact in that post do you dispute?

>The million users on Steam using Linux are just the start of Linux for gaming, not the end.
Linux is not retard friendly. It will never surpass the 1% percentage.

No desktop OS is retard friendly.

Free UNIX-like operating systems like Linux are more easily crafted into a trouble free systems. Part of why nearly every device you might buy from any company other than Microsoft will be a Linux or BSD computer under the hood.

Valve already makes the majority of their money on Steam off of a tiny subset of the users. Their projections that they'll lose 90%+ but continue to grow in terms of revenue in the not too distant future probably aren't unrealistic. The need for SteamOS/Linux when you look beyond 2020 in particular becomes plainly apparent and the effort they're putting into improving Linux for gaming should pay off.

No, but to be fair it's not exactly a bad thing to not push a game out every year or two. In fact that's exactly what's wrong with most studios today. I'm not saying all of their games hit the mark but they had some really good ones, because they would really take the time to make them work well.

You are really fucking stupid if you actually think Linux will take off in gaming PC anytime soon.
There isn't any retard friendly distro unless Google decides to make one, since Valve is too lazy to do it.
90% of the games just aren't released on linux, not to talk about all the old games that people still play and which aren't on Linux.

Once Vulkan takes the forefront over Direct X, People will stop upgrading Windows for the most part. Then it may be possible for Linux to step up.

This.

>The only actual game they ever made themselves was Half-Life

What do you mean by this? They hired the people who then made Portal, TF2, L4D etc.

Just because they picked people up after they showed promise doesn't mean Valve didn't develop the final game.

Does Gay Ben still hate Sony?

What,s worse, buying skins for hots at 50% off or buying loot boxes?

Valve was hats.
Blizzard was WoW.

Don't try to deny this.

Vulkan won't take the forefront though, that is the problem.

I agree with this. world of worldcraft was the best mmo when it came out, but I wish they would have focused on making good games instead of wasting resources on a online baby-neglecting game

The devs who made War3/WoW were working on Titan. That's why so many WoW xpacs have sucked. Overwatch is a pretty good game, albeit with some obvious flaws that TF2 had solved 11 years ago.

Blizz North are obviously no more but the mediocrity of Torchlight kinda shows that D2 was mostly luck.

Valve are at the whim of their elite staff and have a notoriously shitty workplace culture. Right now they are working on VR in between drinking their own cum. I'm sure plenty of people at Valve still want to make good games, but they don't have enough weight to beat Gabe.

bingo
people keep citing activision for blizzard but WoW was the beginning of the end. when a company has such a large, transformative game like that happen, it can be a detriment to quality even if it's making you a lot of money.
in both cases, the respective company realized the sheer amount of money they could get slowly and subtly coercing people into paying more and more money for their products, even when those products started to lose more value. now you live in an era when people pay $20k for a knife texture and paid a monthly subscription fee for over a year of no new content

Well, that depends on it's features and functionality. If it can convince devs to buy in, it's all spaghetti from there.

>it can be a detriment to quality even if it's making you a lot of money.
Well that's really the problem. Games making shit tons of money are more likely to ruin their future than if they make good money. Lots of money attracts the wrong kind of attention. It causes that corporate crap people hate so much.

No, it doesn't. It depends on having a company sponsoring it.
Why do you think that some big publishers have adopted DX12 already, despite consoles not even using it? It's because Microsoft pays for it.

Meanwhile, the only people supporting Vulkan are a company that doesn't make games (Valve) and id Software (who, along with Valve, is part of the group of developers helping with Vuklan development). Even if Vulkan is the second coming of Christ, it being good alone won't make any dev adopt it. Maybe an indie dev, but not a triple A mainstream game.

>blizzard
>had

Valve has it so much they can simply buy mods and turn them into standalone games along and a monopoly on digital distribution for games.
Blizzard has two of the most popular RTS games, the most popular MMO, an entire channel in South Korea dedicated to Star Craft and Overwatch has more porn than any other game.

They still have it all, it's just that their soul is dead from making too much money.

Actually back as far as 2008, that's not really a good thing for those unlockables anyways. Sure reward skilled players by allowing them to get it faster for the acheivo. But letting others get it via certain playtimes or diversity of play would have been more fair. Just have both outcomes.

Make it like Smash bros melee. You can unlock characters by certain acheivements for skilled play, or by just playing the game for awhile if you just want to have fun. That's the best way. No microtransaction bs or timed release crap. Just in-game unlockable. Of course we know how the story ends... but still would have been fine that way.

I quite liked the achievement system being tied to the weapon unlockables. It gave you something to work towards, and made getting an achievement feel like you *actually* did something.

Don't those guys LIKE making games though? Why just stop?

Rockstar makes a fuck ton on Shark cards but they're not going to just stop making video games

>be indie developer
>spend free time creating unique puzzle game
>friends really enjoy it
>one friend tells me to put it on steam
>tell him I will when it's finished
>finish it
>put it on steam
>it sells tons of copies
>get email
>from [email protected]
>"Hi user, I spent some time this week playing your game and I love it. I would like to meet you in person, when could you visit the office? I'll pay for transit and a hotel room."
>drop everything to go asap
>pack nice yet casual clothes
>arrive at valve hq
>leg won't stop shaking
>Gabe meets me at the door
>gives me a tour of the place
>brings me into his office
>"user, I've noticed your game is selling tons of copies, yet you haven't opted in to our badge program"
>gabe picks up a curved dagger
>looks like something used in rituals
>he notices me staring at it
>he starts breathing heavily through his nose
>nostrils flaring
>"oh, this is a 15th century Tibetan flaying knife, used to peel the flesh from any creature"
>slams it into his desk, gouging out a piece of the polished wood
>"you realize how much potential money were losing from your game not having a badge?"
>he picks up the flaying knife
>"those trading cards make us money. you're costing me knife money."
>he tosses the knife against the wall and it sticks into a picture of my face
>he slides a form titled "badge participation acknowledgement" across the table
>"I can do that again if you want a closer look"
>I sign

Greed and the realization that MMOs and cash shops make more money than strategy games.
All their talent left a decade ago.

You know, the fucked up thing about that Mann-conomy update is the subtle implications that it's playing into "economy" and "manhood" which both are fucking completely false. It's a video game and money distribution is not economy. These are fake resources and they certainly aren't being managed in any real way, only gambled. But that's almost worse because they just know, even in the name, they are taking the piss and are pretty much bragging about it while using subtle bandwagoning bullshit on top. Fuck you, valve.

That's fine, I was just saying for the lesser players it would've been nice to have a play time unlock ALSO, similar to smash.

Valve post half life 2 were always shit and have never made an actual complete fucking game all they make is half baked multiplayer shit that the community fixed and little children played for free inb4 portal they literally bought that shit off a couple of nobodies and slapped their gay logo on it

There were only a few achievements that would require enormous amounts of dedication or skill. The rest were things that you would almost certainly do while playing normally. I remember being super proud that I managed to get the Rasputin achievement while playing on an all-crits server.

valve's corporate structure likely has a large impact on this. while technically you're allowed to work on what you want, much has been written about the cliques and unofficial hierarchies that have formed. projects live and die based on what the senior staff want to work on, and the senior staff seem to mostly care about finding new ways to implement micro (and some of the time macro) transactions in their games now that they've figured out a working model. they hire psychologists to do this stuff, even. projects that don't fall into line like this (i.e. a single-player only HL3) are shunned by the company. some individuals may want to start HL3, but if you can't even get the staff still at valve that worked on HL2 to join you, let alone anyone else, good luck. better to keep working on dota or VR and not become a pariah.

this kind of stuff is also standard in pretty much every company of course, mike morhaime has said he won't greenlight a game without esports potential, but at valve there's no rules or guidelines for it.

I appreciate how many sources you're giving me for this information.

>there are only huge AAA companies and indie developers today with virtually no in-the-middle companies
ah yes gaming is truly greater than ever

you can google any of the statements or claims there if interested, i wasn't planning on writing a works cited page for Sup Forums. the morhaime claim is from a conference call this year, a lot of the stuff written about valve's culture is from 2012 or 2013 but you can also read testimonials from one of their Linux developers and one of their former employees that worked on AR.

That's true. Companies that were decent size, being able to fend off the influence of giants while not being really limited by lack of resources. This is where a lot of great games came from. Games that were both large enough, well-made enough and deep with little bullshit and practically no DLC/Microtransaction shit.

The problem is that the big shits literally ate up all the middle guys and took control of them whether they wanted to be controlled or not, because they were publicly traded companies. Ideally these companies would remain private so that they could remain in their position without fear of negative influence from corporate culture.

He doesn't know about TaleWorlds Entertainment/Fatshark. They are true AA devs

Nothing has gone wrong, you're just a jaded faggot that can't see truth. Truth is they are still going strong in fact much stronger. A note that Blizzard made the largest profit turn around during WoD in WoW at it's lowest point.

There are middle ground companies, just no one gives a shit about them. Just because you ignore their existence doesn't mean they stop existing.

>There are middle ground companies
name them

valve is making dosh with Steam
Blizz is making dosh with Hearthstone/Overwatch/Legion

>Valve steals DotA from Blizzard to some degree
>Blizzard tries to steal the TF2 pie

lel

This was exactly what I saw since its reveal. It's hilarious.

Valve stopped making games.

Blizzard couldn't stop messing with stuff that already worked.

No.

There is plenty of games out there for you to just glance at in even the steam market that prove it. However continue to ignore video games you're here on Sup Forums you contrarian fuck you don't play video games.

>No
:)

there mate
>He doesn't know about TaleWorlds Entertainment/Fatshark. They are true AA devs

>two (2) developers that have made barely any good games constitute the entire middle ground
brilliant

Well you asked you received. It's not my fault that AAA devs eat up all AA dev teams.

>The only actual game they ever made themselves was Half-Life.
Is that so
Because I'm playing through it right now and it's incredibly infuriating, but fun in a way i can't explain
I'm on surface tension right now

Valve stopped making games, otherwise they'd still be a favorite dev

Blizzard Has Overwatch, so nothing went wrong there.

i asked and i received and you made my point

It's true, maybe Ricochet but other than that
>Team Fortress was a mod they hired the creators of
>Counter-Strike was a mod they hired the creators of
>Portal was a mod they hired the creators of
>Left 4 Dead was being made by a separate studio, they bought the game and its rights from them
>Dota was a mod they hired the current designer of (Dota itself was made by somebody else, one of its former designers works at Riot as well)

Linux had its chance in 2008 with vista flop, now kindly fuck off

But they both still have it all dip shit.

And now you can add Onward to that list. Which I guess is a pretty smart partnership, considering it's probably one of the main driving forces behind Vive sales.

You just proved what he was saying earlier, dipshit.

Blizzard games were almost always PC first,

they like most sane people, realized Mac is dogshit. They did port some of their games to Mac's, but it was a fair bit later than release.

Jeff kaplan is ruining blizzard, overwatch full of hackers, meanwhile valve at least has superior VAC.

Unfortunately Blizzard still does because they copied Valve 10 years ago and stupid fucks (some of which ignorantly post on Sup Forums and are actually PROUD about it) fell for it.

>but muh Pixar

Just watch CG porn.