Quoting: kuhpunkt

Quoting: DuncI said “effectively”, and admit that wasn't a good way of putting it. But IceFrog was hired for Dota 2. What I meant was that it didn't originate at Valve, from a Valve creative team. Of course their own people did most of the work on it.

What is it always with discrediting Valve's work? Is TF2 not a Valve game, because Valve once hired Robin Walker? Is Portal not a Valve game, because some students came up with the portal concept and Valve then hired them? Is Left 4 Dead not a Valve game, because Turtle Rock Studios originally came up with the game?

How do you even define a Valve game? The guys (or most of them?) who founded Blizzard aren't with the company anymore. Is Overwatch thus not a Blizzard game?

Quoting: DuncBut even that was five years ago. Clearly their eyes have been off the ball. They've let a lot of developers, especially on the creative side, go over recent years. It's one of the reasons many fans have lost hope of ever seeing HL3 or Portal 3.

How are their eyes "clearly" off the ball when you literally have no idea what's going on behind the scenes? Yes, some people left, but also a lot of other people joined them. And some of the people that left actually returned to Valve.

Oh, come on. A giant "game studio" that puts out a game every five years is clearly not emphasizing the "game studio" thing. I personally don't understand why people want Valve to be a game studio again when clearly their main business is being a game store++, but it's just ignoring reality to pretend their main business is still making games. It obviously isn't.
And all the better for both us and them. For us, because one game studio vaguely interested in Linux wouldn't be much use to us compared to this huge platform thing being interested in Linux. For them, because which would you rather have--100% of the revenue (and expenses) for 3 or 4 games, or 30% of the revenue for gajillions of games?
Frankly, I think they're still making games at all mainly because someone at Valve is of the opinion that it's useful for the main business to still have some hands-on experience with what it's like, so they can keep their finger on the pulse of the developer world and not get out of touch.

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Quoting: ShmerlValve should have put Linux version release as a requirement for such discounts. It would incentivize big developers (who have money) to make Linux versions. Win win for everyone.

If they had the leverage to do that they wouldn't be dropping the price in the first place.

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That is one of the most tantalizing trailers I've ever seen. Also pretty damn creepy.

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The word "bugfixes" takes on a whole new meaning.

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Quoting: 1xokCan you play it with children or is it too complicated for that?

I thought you were supposed to play it with cards. :D

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Quoting: scaineWhat const and denyasis said: some of my favourite space games are 2D. SPAZ, Reassembly, Captain Forever Remix, Nimbatus, Gravity Ace, Galak-Z, Drox Operative... there are probably others I love too.

Star Control II!

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Looking at the trailer, it seems a lot more abstracted than Stellaris; the gameplay seems kind of simple as a result, despite the description focusing on titanic scale.

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Holy Fury, huh? Kind of putting the "Crusader" back in "Crusader Kings".

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Quoting: Whitewolfe80

Quoting: Nevertheless

Quoting: Whitewolfe80

Quoting: Nevertheless

Quoting: Whitewolfe80

Quoting: Nevertheless

Quoting: Eike

Quoting: tuubiI don't get all these doomsday attitudes. We probably won't see any more games from these developers on our platform (which certainly makes me sad as a fan), but that's all this means.

With Larian not Porting Divinity 2, that's basically a whole genre (classic CRPGs) gone, no?

With Proton there is just a few games / developers behind walled gardens. The boundaries become more and more not technical.

Well yes and no not having native ports is a big problem because its valve they get white knighted and true they have helped linux because it helps them have an alternative to windows if MS decide to make it difficult to work on windows. Proton is funded by valve and valve does have a patience meter just look at steam machines gone no marketing no mention of them on steam store anymore steam link failed barely mentioned and sold for under a pound last two steam sales. Valve have money and resources but they seem to have a very limited amount of patience.

By closing down Windows MS threatens Valves busyness foundations. So there is two possible ways for Valve to act:
1. Become part of the MS store.
2. Find another open OS base.

I think what Valve does, and did for the past few years, is a very long term enterprise. They never shifted from it, as we can see when we look at Proton. They need Linux, and I think they understood Linux needs more users to be attractive to developers. With the visibility of their strategie they naturally reinforced MS on their strategy. So I guess it's no wonder we see a lot of movement these days:

- Proton makes games playable we never dreamed of.
- Proton makes developers ditch native versions.
- Linux userbase might (hopefully) rise because people that wanted to change to Linux get to play more of their Steam libs on Linux.
- MS might try to deny more games on Linux.
- MS suddenly loves Linux (where it's useful to them).

What we won't see, I think, is Valve stopping what they do.

So from my perspective: F*ck inXile and Obsidian and move on.

Mmm we def see valve differently I see it as a company that abandons products and projects with out any notice after previously being keen and holding press conference after press conference. Valve have helped the visablity of linux gaming for sure but I will never white knight a corporation yes they are helping linux because they expect that investment to pay off. Of course that is to be expected valve is a corporation and needs to make profits yearly I get it but I treat annoucements of support as promises people make in the pub ie it might happen it might not.

Valve is not a corporation! I'm not white knighting them. I say they can't go without an open platform to exist on.

Yes it is

Valve Corporation
Video game company
Image result for valve corporation
valvesoftware.com
Valve Corporation is an American video game developer, publisher and digital distribution company headquartered in Bellevue, Washington. It is the developer of the software distribution platform Steam and the Half-Life, Counter-Strike, Portal, Day of Defeat, Team Fortress, Left 4 Dead, that took 3 seconds from wiki

I believe Nevertheless' point is that it's not a publicly traded corporation, the stock is held by Gabe and some Valve employees. Therefore it does not need to worry about the share price or about what traders think of their quarterly results. They do not need to make profits yearly. If they decide some massive investment is worth taking a loss for a couple years to gain future growth, they can do that. Heck, if Gabe and a few others were to decide they don't feel the need to make a profit ever again and want to just wind the thing down slowly and retire, they could do that too. It's not very likely, but they have no outside responsibilities that would actually stop them.

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I'll be interested to see how Valve reacts to this, if at all. Of course, they're unlikely to say that any move they make is a reaction to this, so it will all be just reading tea leaves. But the point is, as someone said earlier this is a shot at Valve's business model. MS strategists may not even be thinking in those terms--I wouldn't be surprised if this is aimed more at the console market and catching Sony. But if they're doing exclusives for Xbox they will make them for the Windows store too, and if Valve see MS trying to promote their store with exclusives . . . well, that's exactly the sort of thing their long patient game with Linux has been intended to counter.
In which case, plausibly they will kick it up a notch or two. Gradual improvement of infrastructure has been happening all this time so they'd have a base for action should they wish to take it. It may be time for them to start taking some actions. I don't think they're quite ready yet--Proton needs to be firmed up a bit more, Big Picture I've heard needs interface improvements, and so on. But you go to war with the army you have, not the army you wished for.

Mind you, I don't think these companies will provide exclusives significant enough to actually shift any centres of gravity away from Steam, so Valve don't need to panic yet. But I'd put in a few more resources and attention if I were them.

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