Valve Talks About Lack of Communication

There's an interview on Rock, Paper, Shotgun talking with Valve employees Jan-Peter Ewert, Jeff Cain, and Louis Barinaga. Whatever the pretext of the conversation, RPS chose to focus on communication, which they suggest is often a one-way street, noting the company is often silent on questions about topics like the delayed Diretide event for Dota 2, company layoffs, and the long-overdue Half-Life 2: Episode 3. When asked specifically about the lack of information about whether there would be a Diretide this year, Ewert and Cain defend their silence, saying:
Jan-Peter Ewert: I don’t think there is a lot of improvement to be made there. The thing is, if you feel something is wrong and your customers tell you something should be fixed, the right response is to fix it – not to tell them, “Yeah, at some point in time we’ll fix it.” Because that’s expectation. And if you’re ultimately not able to fix it, then that only makes people even more angry.

So I think the right response around SteamOS or anything we do will be what we did with Diretide, which is to bring out the thing people want [if it works out behind-the-scenes], not just tell them we’ll fix it.

Jeff Cain, business development: Reactions start even if people don’t hear anything. We’re listening. Things happen.
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18.
 
Re: Shell shocked
Jan 11, 2014, 10:14
18.
Re: Shell shocked Jan 11, 2014, 10:14
Jan 11, 2014, 10:14
 
mystery8 wrote on Jan 11, 2014, 00:14:
It seems like they're so shell shocked (still) about Half-Life 2's shenanigans that they won't even announce anything until its ready to go.

The interview is full of non-information and does kinda come off as a bit indifferent. We've been waiting years and years and just silence.

Years and years go by as we wait for something of Episode 3 or a full Half-Life sequel. And what we get is Steam OS, Steam Box, more and more Steam stuff. Which is all good, sure.

But I'm starting to wonder if what my friend said last year is true.

Valve isn't a game developer anymore.

I sure hope that's not the case.

Steam is the money maker at the company so that's where they focus a lot of their time and energy. Gabe wasn't pissed at Windows 8 because it's a shitty OS, he was pissed because Microsoft made the first step to setting up it's own digital distribution network which would have cut Steam out of the picture. If not for that Valve would never have brought Steam to Linux and the SteamOS wouldn't exist. Everything that Valve does now is about cash flow and making it easier on themselves for cash to flow to them.

Besides, judging by what they've done with DOTA 2 and TF 2 I would say that Half-life 3 is probably a non-starter at the company now. If you can't endlessly monetize a game by selling hats and other digital crap to people dumb enough to buy them then it's not a game worth making.
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