this post was submitted on 18 Nov 2023
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Then again, Valve gets 30% to 20% of the benefits from all sales from their platform. It's easier to be generous when everyone has to pay you to make cash.
This.
Valve doesn't release games, it releases ads for Steam.
Which is fine. It's great. Makes for great, cheap products and long-term strategies that aren't trying to shake all the money off of you.
But that's the end goal, still.
As a friendly reminder, Valve also universalized DRM, invented multiple new types of microtransactions and actually kinda invented NFTs for a little bit.
DOTA 2, Counter-Strike 2, TF 2 are all maintained and get updates or total overhauls.
What’s their opinion on NFTs now?
That was slightly facetious. I just spent the entirety of the NFT bubble reminding people that tradeable tokens attached to JPGs is something that Valve invented to do with their dumb trading cards when they introduced those and we all saw in real time that all of them trend to zero value immediately.
I kept asking cryptobros to explain why their new tokenized JPGs were gonna behave any differently and it turns out there really wasn't a particularly good answer to that one.
For the record, those get updated and get total overhauls because they are driven by cosmetics MTX and/or battlepasses, both of which Valve straight-up invented in their modern form.
So I guess yeah, they either make cutting edge innovations in monetization design for games-as-service things or they put out ads for Steam. I think the larger point holds.
I don’t understand your point. It’s bad that they give out free games and constantly update them because they make money on cosmetics? That’s somehow worse or as bad as companies that make the same game every year, charge an arm and a leg for it and then have micro transactions on top of it? Or they’re bad because they innovate and then other companies take their ideas and make them shittier? What’s your point, exactly?
No, they don't make them shittier. My point is that they're in it for the money, the money just flows in different ways. Their battlepasses weren't any better or worse than anybody else's, and neither are their cosmetics.
They just get a pass because their brand is rock solid and they run very quiet and very cheap with a very long term view enabled by being a private company. That's not good or bad, it's a corporation out to make corporation things and doing them very well.
Their cosmetics are miles better because you can resell them on a market that they maintain. You really don’t know what you’re talking about.
No dog, you just really like the thing they’re talking about and it’s coloring your reaction. The points they’re making are actually very reasonable, but your responses read like they’re just criticizing Valve as a matter of opinion rather than practice.
To be clear, it's not even criticism. I don't mind Valve making money or being great at PR and branding or using MTX. I am way more chill with those things than the average gamer.
If there's anything here that rubs me the wrong way is objectively identical practices being assessed in entirely opposite ways by the community based on who is doing them. And it doesn't even bother me because I think the practices are bad or because I don't recognize that Valve absolutely worked on positioning that exact way.
Mostly it just gives me a bit of anxiety to realize that you can get away with that and somehow nobody else seems able to do it.
Honestly, if I had to guess why I'd say it's down to Valve being a private company. They genuinely can just never tell anybody what they're doing or what their plans and make long term investments. But man, the outcome is kinda scary.
I mean, they are. Most of what they've said is demonstrably untrue.