Dev wrote on Mar 4, 2012, 01:00:
RollinThundr wrote on Mar 4, 2012, 00:08:
Dev wrote on Mar 3, 2012, 16:32:
Steam has been a HUGE benefit for PC gamers, and in the last few years has been a big contributor to a welcome resurgence in indie gaming.
Valve: oh we're going to do 3 episodes for HL! It will ensure a quick turn around in dev time!
Yeah where's episode 3 again?
TF: Hey buy our hats and other virtual items so we can make even more money off our loyal suckers, er we mean fans.
Valve: How dare publishers have a front end for DLC in their games! WE REQUIRE OUR CUT
The truth of the matter while Steam doesn't suck quite as bad as it did for it's first couple years, anyone who thinks they're not in it for the money and actually give a shit about their fans (again where's the conclusion to half life?) is kidding themselves.
Sure they may have not have made as many slimebag moves as EA or Activision but really they're not much different than any other publisher in the industry.
Ever notice I've criticized valve before for things like the hl3 thing? In fact, I think I did it TWICE or more in THIS thread lol.
Ironically in this thread, steam haters basically accuse me of being a steam fanboi, and I've been accused by steam fans of being a steam hater. ZOMG, might I actually be neither?
The hats, valve started out doing them for fun, now valve would be stupid not to offer them as long as people keep buying them. And most of them are cosmetic, no one is forcing people to buy them. The game isn't pay to win like a lot of others are. In fact unlike a lot of other F2P games, the items in TF2 don't last for only a week and make you rebuy them. Valve has a huge conversion rate of 30% (compared to the industry standard of 2-5% for a F2P game) of people who buy something in TF2. And when they combine exclusive hats with pre-ordering other games, that's brilliant from a business standpoint.
The DLC thing, valve's position was basically: "we have no problem with you selling DLC however you like through your store, as long as you ALSO let our customers have a way to buy it through steam"
I agree with them. Its a real pain to have to create a bunch of accounts and buy DLC from a bunch of places. If I want to buy DLC, I want it all through steam. Ever notice how you STILL cannot buy the 2 different mass effect 1 DLC through steam? Thats annoying. If EA would let steam sell it, I would rebuy that DLC again through steam just so I wouldn't have to deal with manually integrating the EA downloaded DLC into the steam version of ME1. Plus having no limitations on something like that means that F2P games could easily cut valve out altogether and basically get free hosting.
Valve DOES care about its fans, its just that they care more about its employees. They have no management, so no one is telling them to stick to a project until its done. They mostly work on things interesting to them. Incidentally this explains their erratic patch process where they sometimes leave bugs in for years, or have super obvious bugs that one would find in 5 minutes of playtime. The patching and especially testing isn't very interesting to them. It explains a lot of odd valve behavior in fact. Right now, the interesting things to valve are DOTA 2, mobile steam, and perhaps hardware. Valve has a secure income stream from steam for the foreseeable future and can do WTF ever they want, and would hardly miss the income if they never ever again developed a single game.
I don't think I called you a valve fan boy at all. But calling them customer centric is a stretch imo. Justifying shit not getting finished by them because their employees aren't interested in it? Why should anyone justify that? Or think that it's ok? For the sole reason they're not a publicly traded company?
Oh gods that makes them so much more holier than EA or Take Two or any other publisher.
DRM laden DD service? Check
Dishonesty about time lines for product dev cycles? Check
Greedy in regards to wanting a chunk of DLC sales? Check
Lack of timely post release support for their self developed titles? Check!
I don't blame EA for wanting to do things their own way with DLC, they fund it, it's their IP, but oh shit EA's evil because oh nos they won't put it on the precious Steam! Please.
They care about their fans, yet have erratic patching and half the time don't fix issues for years or at all. Yep that's real customer care right there! Yes indeedy!