Has Valve Forgotten What PC Gaming is About?

[The Brown Hornet]

I think we all can agree that Valve in it's early days seemed to have a good grasp on what PC gaming was all about...creating great PC games! Isn't that what Half Life, L4D, TF, DOTA, CS series were...great games? Yet for some reason it all stopped at 2. For years gamers have asked a question, a question that has now become a meme, can Valve count to 3? Can Valve, a company that has completely won over the PC gaming community give it's subscribers what they actually want, new and innovative in-house developed games and software?

Instead Valve has focused on the opposite of PC gaming and strayed away from the main method by which PC gamers interact with software, mouse and keyboard. Valve in it's ambitions has essentially become console oriented. In the last decade nearly every innovation from Valve has been geared towards drawing us away from our PC and into the living room. Though what we desire are innovative software titles what Valve introduces instead are Steam Machines, tiny PC's disguised as consoles designed to compete with the likes of Xbox and PlayStation for set top attention.

To go along with the console oriented steam machine Valve introduces the Steam Controller, a Frankenstein-like hybrid of ideas and control concepts that some gamers ultimately managed to utilize and comprehend. What Valve didn't stop to ask is does Steam subscribers really want to play PC games with their thumbs? Valve seems to think so because their most recent innovation is again, not any great gaming software but yet another attempt to "console-ify" PC gaming with the introduction of Steam Deck. This time it's eyes are set on Nintendo Switch whose games are actually designed to be played with thumbs!

Lastly Valve did create Half Life Alex but again that's aimed at competing with the console friendly VR market. So it's apparent the mouse and keyboard player, those who originally made Valve and Steam what it is are no longer the target audience. If they were there would be more Valve developed titles for mouse and keyboard rather than another thumb controlled hardware device.

[H4D M4-TT0R]

Ubisoft and EA get bashed for their cash grab low effort games that fit a wide audience of casual gamers while having completely forgotten where they come from. Looking at your library - you're their prime target audience.

Ironic that you mention those two publishers that suffered the most from fishing in "console-waters"

[DESTROYER]

Literally nobody has ever said Steam was perfect, especially in the first few years. You keep making up this easily disprovable nonsense, do you think if you keep repeating a lie it will eventually become truth? "It's not a lie if you believe"? I have no interest in the kind of games EA and Ubisoft put out, oh woe is me, clearly not a true PC gamer since I don't mindlessly purchase a bunch of games everywhere even if I'm not remotely interested in said games.

[The Brown Hornet]

Had Matter님이 먼저 게시:

Ubisoft and EA get bashed for their cash grab low effort games that fit a wide audience of casual gamers while having completely forgotten where they come from. Looking at your library you're their prime target audience.

"Cash grab low effort," that sounds like the gist of Steam with it's EAG, porn games I keep hearing about in the store, and endless stock of shovelware. My library is old I don't really buy new games any longer, streaming and subscription services are more efficient for me, we don't own the games in our libraries so no need to add any more titles. Stream it, play it, done with it.

[DESTROYER]

Ah yes the easily avoidable that will never surface to the average Steam user shovelware and porn games, oh my! Also yes we've all been subjected to your nonsense about what you feel is the value of game ownership, blah blah blah, all typical to your self centered me me me point of view. We get it, if you don't value something nobody should, what a great way to live.

[Crazy Tiger]

The Brown Hornet님이 먼저 게시:

A handheld that looks like a oversized Gameboy Advance, that's what PC gaming has evolved to?

No, that's how "pc gaming" expands.

You should stop seeing things as black & white. The world is lots of shades of grey

The Brown Hornet님이 먼저 게시:

I continue to say hey this is about PC gaming but platform loyalty seems to dominate the mindstate of many in these forums.

Except that it isn't true. You have been told before that the people you argue with actually use different launchers. You're attributing "platform loyalty" as a shield to dismiss opinions that disagree with you.

Your view on what "pc gaming" is, is very narrow and shallow. Others have different opinions on what "pc gaming" for them means. Again, lots of shades of grey.

[Mailer]

The Brown Hornet님이 먼저 게시:

I believe had Ubisoft created that very same Steam Deck and called Ubi-Deck everyone here would hate on it and say don't buy it cause Ubisoft.

Well of course people would not buy it! How few games would you actually accumulate on their launcher that are Ubisoft exclusive and that could actually comfortably run on the handheld, like... 3? Hell, why not charge you twice just to be able to play the games on the deck.

The Steam Deck takes your entire library of games, including a chunk of Ubisoft games, given Proton as a barrier of entry which Valve has already invested tons in to make reliable, and effectively gives you double convenience value on all of the games you own. The people with thousands upon thousands of games in their libraries should be ecstatic to say the least. No other storefront could compete on that premise because Steam openly welcomes any game and third party, and unprecedentedly adds to the pile all the time.

On the contrary, Steam is as interconnected with PC gaming as they could possibly be, as long as it keeps garnering alternatives to how you can play, as it consistently has since they stopped releasing games regularly.

[Zukabazuka]

Lustrous Spirit님이 먼저 게시:

Your saying that anyone actually wants those things; granted yes those things would be nice but the irony here is that the actual real fans of Valve already know the awnsers to each thing you asked for years prior.


No one in Team Fortress cares for anything right now, hell the entire game is based off a web comic series that tells you how the entire game ends and thats been out for years and that its literally never been even related to the mercs in the story but is just a massive story cover up on the adminstrator stealing Saxtons gold supply.

Counter strike; which I cant tell if your joking about; has no story, its literally just a Call of Duty prototype style of the originally planned Team Fortress 2 known as Team Fortress 2 Brotherhood of Arms [ https://wiki.teamfortress.com/wiki/Team_Fortress_2:_Brotherhood_of_Arms ]

Left For Dead is also its own prototype of the undead zombie sandbox which they later gave up on simply because they stood no match against the more known Dead Island series, the CoD zombies modes and others that surpassed it; why flog a dead house when there's clearly better?

And unless you know the massive drama behind DOTA, AKA League of Legends, AKA Warcraft 3 Modded; then lets not even bring it up

We could say they could make a new game, the thing is, does anyone at the company want to? Clearly not; if they dont want to, why would they? You cant make a company create a new game if they dont want to; you cant make a story appear from fairy dust.



At the end, Valve, actually via mouth of Gaben made it clear that the company has no intentions to make up random new games, they dont want to and thats how its stood for a long time, simply because to add to that thing above is that literally the current ones they got is still played by hundreds of players even if they may never know that they have ceased making the next games, why would they not move onto machines? They should if they dont want games, hell its called CROSS PLATFORMING, amazingly this is not a new thing, imagine if this worked and you for once could play the revolutionary ideal game of Half Life or Team Fortress with those that are not on PC; mindblowing.

I may seem like a jerk, because yes I am being one, because every month some guy comes by and literally to quote everyone and their mother "But' uh dude, dude you are just white knighting and oppressing my orders to mah game stuff wah wah!" and thats literally how it goes, people attempt to seem cool and impressive yet lack all forms of self awareness of why the things they complain about in relation to valve games has literally been talked to its grave years ago and we literally already know the awnsers/

As for Team fortress 2 it has been out for 15 years, at some point as a company you move on. 15 years is a long as time to support a game.

Left 4 dead came out before Dead island series and I remember Dead island only got famous because their trailer, the game sucked, didn't get support and died fast. Their sequels they did also died faster, because they where sandbox games unlike Left 4 Dead that had a clear objective for players. L4D was massively more successful than Dead island ever was.

CSGO is built on Counter strike that came out a long ass time ago which came out as a mod. When it was made I believe there was only 1 another mod that used modern weapons in a multiplayer type gameplay and it was made for Unreal engine as a mod. All Call of duty game at that time was made in the era of WW1 and WW2. Their first game with modern Weapons was Call of Duty 4. Long after CS was launched. So if anything Call of Duty copied CS.

[AustrAlien2010]

They probably want to try other stuff as well, before committing themselves to a new project.

But you don't have to think a gamepad will take over mouse and keyboard completely, because certain games don't play well with a gamepad.

[MonkehMaster]

this guy again.... with another thread showing how completely wrong your comments are..

[Start_Running]

I think the take away here is that No. Valve have not forgogotten what PC gaming is all about. They just never shared OP'slimited and honestly self-stagnating idea of what PC gaming is.

[The Brown Hornet]

Mailer님이 먼저 게시:

The Brown Hornet님이 먼저 게시:

I believe had Ubisoft created that very same Steam Deck and called Ubi-Deck everyone here would hate on it and say don't buy it cause Ubisoft.

Well of course people would not buy it! How few games would you actually accumulate on their launcher that are Ubisoft exclusive and that could actually comfortably run on the handheld, like... 3? Hell, why not charge you twice just to be able to play the games on the deck.

The Steam Deck takes your entire library of games, including a chunk of Ubisoft games, given Proton as a barrier of entry which Valve has already invested tons in to make reliable, and effectively gives you double convenience value on all of the games you own. The people with thousands upon thousands of games in their libraries should be ecstatic to say the least. No other storefront could compete on that premise because Steam openly welcomes any game and third party, and unprecedentedly adds to the pile all the time.

On the contrary, Steam is as interconnected with PC gaming as they could possibly be, as long as it keeps garnering alternatives to how you can play, as it consistently has since they stopped releasing games regularly.

That's why I stated the very same piece of hardware, meaning you could add Steam or any other launcher in it because it's in fact a PC. I say those in this forum would completely bash it cause it's not a Valve product. My argument Valve/Steam loyalty over PC Open Platform Gaming. Steam has a console control effect on the mindstate of this gaming community.

[Start_Running]

The Brown Hornet님이 먼저 게시:

Mailer님이 먼저 게시:

Well of course people would not buy it! How few games would you actually accumulate on their launcher that are Ubisoft exclusive and that could actually comfortably run on the handheld, like... 3? Hell, why not charge you twice just to be able to play the games on the deck.

The Steam Deck takes your entire library of games, including a chunk of Ubisoft games, given Proton as a barrier of entry which Valve has already invested tons in to make reliable, and effectively gives you double convenience value on all of the games you own. The people with thousands upon thousands of games in their libraries should be ecstatic to say the least. No other storefront could compete on that premise because Steam openly welcomes any game and third party, and unprecedentedly adds to the pile all the time.

On the contrary, Steam is as interconnected with PC gaming as they could possibly be, as long as it keeps garnering alternatives to how you can play, as it consistently has since they stopped releasing games regularly.

That's why I stated the very same piece of hardware, meaning you could add Steam or any other launcher in it because it's in fact a PC. I say those in this forum would completely bash it cause it's not a Valve product. My argument Valve/Steam loyalty over PC Open Platform Gaming. Steam has a console control effect on the mindstate of this gaming community.

No. M7,.
This gaming community just does not suffer myopia and tunnel vision.

[DESTROYER]

No, people appreciate what Valve has done in the PC marketplace by demonstrating how valuable a market it is. Things were not great before Steam really took off and it's funny in the other topic how you talk about SE going to Epic (they won't, they still release plenty of better games on Steam) but they only even really bothered with PC in the first place cause of how Valve helped make it a more attractive market, same with many other Japanese devs.

[The Brown Hornet]

Crazy Tiger님이 먼저 게시:

The Brown Hornet님이 먼저 게시:

A handheld that looks like a oversized Gameboy Advance, that's what PC gaming has evolved to?

No, that's how "pc gaming" expands.

You should stop seeing things as black & white. The world is lots of shades of grey

The Brown Hornet님이 먼저 게시:

I continue to say hey this is about PC gaming but platform loyalty seems to dominate the mindstate of many in these forums.

Except that it isn't true. You have been told before that the people you argue with actually use different launchers. You're attributing "platform loyalty" as a shield to dismiss opinions that disagree with you.

Your view on what "pc gaming" is, is very narrow and shallow. Others have different opinions on what "pc gaming" for them means. Again, lots of shades of grey.

My view of PC gaming is "open" anything goes, unlimited. I think Steam's new handheld is cute, sure there is a nitch market for that but is that really what this community wants? What have we been asking for for years? Steam seems to constantly develop and focus on things in my opinion we don't need: Steam Machines, Steam Controller, Steam VR sets, Steam Deck, even Steam Link (which I like) all serve a similar purpose, transferring gaming from PC setups to television sets, handhelds devices, and cell phone screens. In other words, controller-centric console-like gaming implementations. Valve's interest, investments and money (our money cause we spend it here) is dead set on formulating and bringing to reality this console-like approach and agenda. Is that what we want...a more console-like experience?

I'm not the greatest PC gamer in the world but I know for sure many of the games I own (pardon..have a license to play since we own nothing) do not play well with thumb controls, in fact thumb controls seem to work best with lower frame rates which is the opposite of PC gaming! So what does Valve invest in, more ways to thumb play.

[The Brown Hornet]

DESTROYER님이 먼저 게시:

No, people appreciate what Valve has done in the PC marketplace by demonstrating how valuable a market it is. Things were not great before Steam really took off and it's funny in the other topic how you talk about SE going to Epic (they won't, they still release plenty of better games on Steam) but they only even really bothered with PC in the first place cause of how Valve helped make it a more attractive market, same with many other Japanese devs.

I'm not rooting for SE to be exclusive, I'd rather they be on as many platforms as possible as long as they actually service their games. I do like that publisher decisions to be exclusive could push stores and platforms to be more competitive which translates into better deals, promotions, and ultimately better games for us. Without competition Steam in my opinion has become stagnant and dare I say a bit boring, especially when comparing it to the past. (Those who have been here the longest know what I mean)