So. My post either got deleted, or the Auto-merge post feature dun' goof'd. Back to square one. The post was very irrelevant in the first place. Anyway. This may as well be a series by now. As in, "The Problem With". Here i discuss problems with various companies. From Activision, To Nintendo, To valve, All companies have their problems. And speaking of Valve, that's a great segue to the actual post. This time, on this incredibly broken forum, The problem with Vaaaavle! Sarcasm is real. Anyway. Let's get started. I'll be looking at each of their main games, and why it's a huge problem to them, then what THEIR problem is. Let's get started.
-What is valve?-
If you don't know Valve, go do your research. Right here. Valve is a multi-million dollar company, known for the likes of Half-life, Team Fortress, and Counterstrike, all of which were massive successes. Lead by our lord and saviour, Gabe Newell, god of steam sales, this company is the danger to Console Gaming, owning Steam, the biggest PC Game sharing service.
-The problem in general-
Team Fortress is one of the most obvious cases. Ever since it became Free to play, this game has pushed update after update that have left Free-To-Plays out of the equation. This began in the Mann Versus Machine update. T o get anything other than fun out of Mann Versus Machine, you are required to pay for Tour of Duty tickets to play it AND get weapons. And if you want good weapons, you better get a lot of them. This continued until now, continuing last year in Gun Mettle. You were required to buy a coin, to get a pass, to get the contracts that the update focused on, which got you skin crates, which you required keys for, which you had to pay for. This continued for 3 updates. Why is this a problem? This is gonna be a running theme in this post- Greed. They make a TON of money for this, and with these "features", they can make a ton of money off the people that will pay. Because many of them will pay a lot. They make money off Muselk, Jerma, B4nny, Slin, and lots more. And because of that, they won't stop with it. Greed, mah bois.
-Where did this originate?-
It's no secret to anyone where this began. It all started with their first game- Half Life. This game made MILLIONS. What do you do with things like that? Create a Sequel. Then another one. And another one. And another one. And so they did, with several expansions for both Half-life 1 and 2. Then Team Fortress Classic. Then Counterstrike after Counterstrike. This makes them money, so they won't stop doing it. Yet, people seem to keep on accepting this. Like Muselk said "After every update, i keep thinking "Oh, they'll hear the fan's outcry! They'll be sure to not continue updates like this!" But they never stopped. Yet i kept thinking it. And it's time to stop accepting it." That's basically my tagline for this thread. "Start realising their wrong. Stop accepting it." In fact, that should be my tagline for this series. Huh.
So, fans of Valve, start realising what they're doing wrong. It's ridiculous most of you don't know about it, much less accept it. It's so obvious, and it's so wrong. All of you need to actually start crying out about this, because these crappy update to all their games should not go on. It's unfair to those who can't pay, and also unfair to anyone else. Start making a stink, people. They need to realising what they're doing wrong.
Also, another thing wrong with Valve? Valve's Anticheat system. Also, my next few threads will likely be about Activision, What they did to Spyro, Crash, and whatnot. One post will be about the History of Spyro, too, and one will be about MY experiences with Spyro. Now, yes, this thread sucks... But i got lazy, doing this at 8 at night, after the original got deleted for 1 of 2 reasons. Well, if you're gonna read this and agree, thanks, but i doubt you will. Again, i'm just lazy. Bye!
Ok, the thread has been edited now. This seems more of a rant against TF2 than anything else. Newsflash, if you don't like TF2, don't play it! Amazing, amirite?
But seriously, you can hardly call a complaint against TF2 a problem with Valve as a whole.
Team Fortress is one of the most obvious cases. Ever since it became Free to play, this game has pushed update after update that have left Free-To-Plays out of the equation.
They're actually right where they need to be, imo. There's not that big of a difference between using stock vs any of the other stuff in the game. Really: a lot of professional-tier TF2 players will advocate using the stock weapons over the others since these are much more middle-of-the-road type weapons and are generally more well-rounded. Everything else tends to fill side-grade roles. The only downside of being F2P is having only the pyrovision and gibbus as the only hats available to you and thus a sign that you're #ScrubLord and must #GitGud
This began in the Mann Versus Machine update. To get anything other than fun out of Mann Versus Machine, you are required to pay for Tour of Duty tickets to play it AND get weapons. And if you want good weapons, you better get a lot of them.
Speaking of someone who has a chronic addiction to Mann Up: the weapons you get from Mann Up aren't any different from what you'd get normally. Shocking, I know.
What these weapons really are are the same stock weapons as said before but with aesthetic changes. Ultimately they're totems of achievement or signs you were willing to spend a dollar or two otherwise on the market to pick up a rocket launcher or flamethrower that can count kills and has a robot head baubble hanging off of it.
Beyond that, the only other rewards you get commonly are kill-streak counters which are really nothing more than skill counters between spawning and dying. They're fun, I won't fault them for that. But they give no particular advantage over people who don't use them. They become in the end what the Botkiller weapons series are: totems of achievement or perseverance at the end of a tour with a mixed bag of team-mates who can't tell up from down or who insist their meta is the best meta.
But that pales in comparison from the big reward: Australiums. Which again are functionally the same as their counterparts, just worth anywhere from seventy dollars to several hundred dollars depending on the drop. A good Australium can easily pay for all the tours you completed or a large chunk there-of when sold on the community market. That's who thrill seeking gamblers such as myself validate our nonsense: someday we'll get a couple-hundred dollar drop, or a couple thousand dollar drop.
Plus it's fun and has a certain Exclusivity. But if you still want to stick with normal stuff without the rewards of questionable merit there are community MvM servers and informal MvM servers ran by Valve you can still play. Same mechanics, all achievements open, just no tour counting and no drops at the end of the day. But if you don't care, it doesn't matter.
This continued until now, continuing last year in Gun Mettle. You were required to buy a coin, to get a pass, to get the contracts that the update focused on, which got you skin crates, which you required keys for, which you had to pay for.
I'll admit, this was ********. But it was fun ********. I like the contracts and being an adult with an expendable income I could afford to open the crates.
All that's left is to wait for and see if the price on my guns climbs in the future to compensate. I think this is becoming a running theme here: stock is usually the best and F2P's can stand on equal footing with them, and about everything else comes with the likelihood of healthy reimbursement on the community economy.
They make money off Muselk, Jerma, B4nny, Slin, and lots more.
And these people made money off of them, as they are now making money off of Overhype. What's the problem here? I think what it really boils too is you're forgetting the LP'er economy.
These four people have based their entire livelihood and current career on playing video games. TF2 happened to be the one that they settled on. And while you can argue Valve made money off of them as if they were "stealing" from these people, they were doing the same with Valve. Arguably, LP can be a theft for a video-game, especially those story-heavy single-player only games. Why should I ever play Uncharted if I can sit down and watch ChipCheezum and his buddy Captain Ironicus do it, and do it well, and for FREE?
The exception of course with Chip and Ironicus is that both of these guys still treat LP and game commentary as a hobby as opposed to STAR and Jerma whose constant S**tposting is the only visible means they can make bank on what they do. Both Chip and Ironicus hold formal jobs they both went to school for; but that's digressing.
At the end of the day, TF2 is a comp-format team-based video game and Valve and commentators both can make equal bank on the same product since commentary on a game whose entire purpose is playing multi-player matches without a story. In the end a person who watched the game being played and commentated over by any of those names which you mentioned can go and play TF2 without any loss of value on their end because no story is lost to them. And people who play the game can still go in and watch these people talk about and play the game for the editorial value their commentary and opinion provides, as well as a context through which to learn to play the game at a competitive level; which was my case with Star for a while until he slowly degraded himself upon the altar of easy money.
TF2 in the end only costs something like five-dollars maybe to actually get out of F2P. But I may wrong, it's been a long time. But it's still a more worthwhile game than full-priced Overwatch which is still the same game, but also like League which is also free, as well as DOTA.
The rest of your post seems to be complaining that they're a company and they need to make profit, which is sort of backwards. It's like saying I shouldn't pay for my milk because it doesn't seem right; while forgetting employees need to be paid for this commodity. While free things are good: everything being free isn't healthy for the economy. And we're only lucky that Google choose to let big names like those you mentioned take advantage of Ad-Sense so they get subsidized by advertisers for us so they have a material incentive to keep making videos because it makes them money which they can spend to keep themselves going or to obtain the video games they spill their guts out over.
It should also be worth noting that with the Gun Mettle updates and the associated contract-based ones since that those were community based. Meaning that Valve went to the content makers, picked the best artists there, and included their weapons skill in the game as an update and these people got a share of the profits. It's not greed on Valve's part, it's also support for the content creators in the game itself. This has applied to maps like Suijin, where a cut of the profits Valve made went to the map makers and prop designers. Valve has been very warm and welcoming to the people in their community who make and produce content and are actively paying them.
Every pass bought, and key purchased went later to rewarding these chosen people.
It's no secret to anyone where this began. It all started with their first game- Half Life. This game made MILLIONS. What do you do with things like that? Create a Sequel. Then another one. And another one. And another one. And so they did, with several expansions for both Half-life 1 and 2. Then Team Fortress Classic. Then Counterstrike after Counterstrike. This makes them money, so they won't stop doing it.
It seems that you have forgotten that Valve's end goal is to make a profit. That's the reason why Valve keeps on creating new games.
Yet people seem to keep on accepting this.
And what is wrong with Valve making games? They are a part of the video game developer. That is what they are supposed to do. If Valve constantly produced mediocre games this would be a problem, but judging by the fact that they haven't produced a new game in three years (whereas other companies like EA produce many games throughout a year) it seems that they do not (I'll leave deciding whether these games are mediocre up to you).
Also, another thing wrong with Valve? Valve's Anticheat system.
And yet, you provide no reasons for this. I'm not implying that VAC is perfect, I'm just saying that you should back up your claims.
Disclaimer: I am in no way implying that Valve is perfect. It just seems to me that you are releasing your rage regarding mediocre TF2 updates towards Valve as a whole and that's unfair.
I think if you want to complain about anything at Valve, it would be its developmental structure. But, then you could actively praise it for such.
Employees at Valve aren't beholden to stick to any one job last I checked. I'll have to find the source of this later I suppose. But the Wikipedia page on them (lol) does briefly go over their management structure. They're a flat organization, they lack a heavy bureaucratic management system. They basically run themselves much more democratically than most. Which rounds around to the statement to what I began the paragraph with: they're not beholden to stay to any one project.
At any time someone can jump in on a thing and work on the project for as long as they feel they're needed before moving on. This means the team can be in flux a lot, and where we get what Valve is notorious for: Valve time. Which is sort of what Kirbyintron alluded to, Valve releases so little new content because that's just how they run and they're very unafraid of adjusting release dates unlike companies like EA who will declare a release date, deliver on it, and then spend the next six months to a year patching and updating the game so it runs better, and releasing content that should have been in the game as monetized DLC.
For updates like End of the Line and Gun Mettle I think we can assume that Valve opted to decide the community should have a bigger presence in game design by centering that update and the ones that came after to be a new focus on community-made content. The news page for their game likes to talk about community-oriented content making contests for any 3d modelers or those who have figured out their Hammer Forge map maker tool (which comes free with the game!) to make maps. There was a page somewhere announcing and providing the means to download prop content for their next update so map-makers can get to work to make early maps that fit that theme; but I can't find it.
Edited to different post! Sorry for any inconvenience! Made the post more relevant!
___________________________________________________________________________________________________
So. My post either got deleted, or the Auto-merge post feature dun' goof'd. Back to square one. The post was very irrelevant in the first place. Anyway. This may as well be a series by now. As in, "The Problem With". Here i discuss problems with various companies. From Activision, To Nintendo, To valve, All companies have their problems. And speaking of Valve, that's a great segue to the actual post. This time, on this incredibly broken forum, The problem with Vaaaavle! Sarcasm is real. Anyway. Let's get started. I'll be looking at each of their main games, and why it's a huge problem to them, then what THEIR problem is. Let's get started.
-What is valve?-
If you don't know Valve, go do your research. Right here. Valve is a multi-million dollar company, known for the likes of Half-life, Team Fortress, and Counterstrike, all of which were massive successes. Lead by our lord and saviour, Gabe Newell, god of steam sales, this company is the danger to Console Gaming, owning Steam, the biggest PC Game sharing service.
-The problem in general-
Team Fortress is one of the most obvious cases. Ever since it became Free to play, this game has pushed update after update that have left Free-To-Plays out of the equation. This began in the Mann Versus Machine update. T o get anything other than fun out of Mann Versus Machine, you are required to pay for Tour of Duty tickets to play it AND get weapons. And if you want good weapons, you better get a lot of them. This continued until now, continuing last year in Gun Mettle. You were required to buy a coin, to get a pass, to get the contracts that the update focused on, which got you skin crates, which you required keys for, which you had to pay for. This continued for 3 updates. Why is this a problem? This is gonna be a running theme in this post- Greed. They make a TON of money for this, and with these "features", they can make a ton of money off the people that will pay. Because many of them will pay a lot. They make money off Muselk, Jerma, B4nny, Slin, and lots more. And because of that, they won't stop with it. Greed, mah bois.
-Where did this originate?-
It's no secret to anyone where this began. It all started with their first game- Half Life. This game made MILLIONS. What do you do with things like that? Create a Sequel. Then another one. And another one. And another one. And so they did, with several expansions for both Half-life 1 and 2. Then Team Fortress Classic. Then Counterstrike after Counterstrike. This makes them money, so they won't stop doing it. Yet, people seem to keep on accepting this. Like Muselk said "After every update, i keep thinking "Oh, they'll hear the fan's outcry! They'll be sure to not continue updates like this!" But they never stopped. Yet i kept thinking it. And it's time to stop accepting it." That's basically my tagline for this thread. "Start realising their wrong. Stop accepting it." In fact, that should be my tagline for this series. Huh.
So, fans of Valve, start realising what they're doing wrong. It's ridiculous most of you don't know about it, much less accept it. It's so obvious, and it's so wrong. All of you need to actually start crying out about this, because these crappy update to all their games should not go on. It's unfair to those who can't pay, and also unfair to anyone else. Start making a stink, people. They need to realising what they're doing wrong.
Also, another thing wrong with Valve? Valve's Anticheat system. Also, my next few threads will likely be about Activision, What they did to Spyro, Crash, and whatnot. One post will be about the History of Spyro, too, and one will be about MY experiences with Spyro. Now, yes, this thread sucks... But i got lazy, doing this at 8 at night, after the original got deleted for 1 of 2 reasons. Well, if you're gonna read this and agree, thanks, but i doubt you will. Again, i'm just lazy. Bye!
What video?
-FunVod
Clickbait?
Ok, the thread has been edited now. This seems more of a rant against TF2 than anything else. Newsflash, if you don't like TF2, don't play it! Amazing, amirite?
But seriously, you can hardly call a complaint against TF2 a problem with Valve as a whole.
-FunVod
They're actually right where they need to be, imo. There's not that big of a difference between using stock vs any of the other stuff in the game. Really: a lot of professional-tier TF2 players will advocate using the stock weapons over the others since these are much more middle-of-the-road type weapons and are generally more well-rounded. Everything else tends to fill side-grade roles. The only downside of being F2P is having only the pyrovision and gibbus as the only hats available to you and thus a sign that you're #ScrubLord and must #GitGud
Speaking of someone who has a chronic addiction to Mann Up: the weapons you get from Mann Up aren't any different from what you'd get normally. Shocking, I know.
What these weapons really are are the same stock weapons as said before but with aesthetic changes. Ultimately they're totems of achievement or signs you were willing to spend a dollar or two otherwise on the market to pick up a rocket launcher or flamethrower that can count kills and has a robot head baubble hanging off of it.
Beyond that, the only other rewards you get commonly are kill-streak counters which are really nothing more than skill counters between spawning and dying. They're fun, I won't fault them for that. But they give no particular advantage over people who don't use them. They become in the end what the Botkiller weapons series are: totems of achievement or perseverance at the end of a tour with a mixed bag of team-mates who can't tell up from down or who insist their meta is the best meta.
But that pales in comparison from the big reward: Australiums. Which again are functionally the same as their counterparts, just worth anywhere from seventy dollars to several hundred dollars depending on the drop. A good Australium can easily pay for all the tours you completed or a large chunk there-of when sold on the community market. That's who thrill seeking gamblers such as myself validate our nonsense: someday we'll get a couple-hundred dollar drop, or a couple thousand dollar drop.
Plus it's fun and has a certain Exclusivity. But if you still want to stick with normal stuff without the rewards of questionable merit there are community MvM servers and informal MvM servers ran by Valve you can still play. Same mechanics, all achievements open, just no tour counting and no drops at the end of the day. But if you don't care, it doesn't matter.
I'll admit, this was ********. But it was fun ********. I like the contracts and being an adult with an expendable income I could afford to open the crates.
All that's left is to wait for and see if the price on my guns climbs in the future to compensate. I think this is becoming a running theme here: stock is usually the best and F2P's can stand on equal footing with them, and about everything else comes with the likelihood of healthy reimbursement on the community economy.
And these people made money off of them, as they are now making money off of Overhype. What's the problem here? I think what it really boils too is you're forgetting the LP'er economy.
These four people have based their entire livelihood and current career on playing video games. TF2 happened to be the one that they settled on. And while you can argue Valve made money off of them as if they were "stealing" from these people, they were doing the same with Valve. Arguably, LP can be a theft for a video-game, especially those story-heavy single-player only games. Why should I ever play Uncharted if I can sit down and watch ChipCheezum and his buddy Captain Ironicus do it, and do it well, and for FREE?
The exception of course with Chip and Ironicus is that both of these guys still treat LP and game commentary as a hobby as opposed to STAR and Jerma whose constant S**tposting is the only visible means they can make bank on what they do. Both Chip and Ironicus hold formal jobs they both went to school for; but that's digressing.
At the end of the day, TF2 is a comp-format team-based video game and Valve and commentators both can make equal bank on the same product since commentary on a game whose entire purpose is playing multi-player matches without a story. In the end a person who watched the game being played and commentated over by any of those names which you mentioned can go and play TF2 without any loss of value on their end because no story is lost to them. And people who play the game can still go in and watch these people talk about and play the game for the editorial value their commentary and opinion provides, as well as a context through which to learn to play the game at a competitive level; which was my case with Star for a while until he slowly degraded himself upon the altar of easy money.
TF2 in the end only costs something like five-dollars maybe to actually get out of F2P. But I may wrong, it's been a long time. But it's still a more worthwhile game than full-priced Overwatch which is still the same game, but also like League which is also free, as well as DOTA.
The rest of your post seems to be complaining that they're a company and they need to make profit, which is sort of backwards. It's like saying I shouldn't pay for my milk because it doesn't seem right; while forgetting employees need to be paid for this commodity. While free things are good: everything being free isn't healthy for the economy. And we're only lucky that Google choose to let big names like those you mentioned take advantage of Ad-Sense so they get subsidized by advertisers for us so they have a material incentive to keep making videos because it makes them money which they can spend to keep themselves going or to obtain the video games they spill their guts out over.
My DeviantArt, so sexy
It should also be worth noting that with the Gun Mettle updates and the associated contract-based ones since that those were community based. Meaning that Valve went to the content makers, picked the best artists there, and included their weapons skill in the game as an update and these people got a share of the profits. It's not greed on Valve's part, it's also support for the content creators in the game itself. This has applied to maps like Suijin, where a cut of the profits Valve made went to the map makers and prop designers. Valve has been very warm and welcoming to the people in their community who make and produce content and are actively paying them.
Every pass bought, and key purchased went later to rewarding these chosen people.
My DeviantArt, so sexy
It's called capitalism, get used to it.
All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost
The old that is strong does not wither, Deep roots are not reached by the frost
From the ashes a fire shall be woken, A light from the shadows shall spring
Renewed shall be the blade that was broken, The crownless again shall be king
It seems that you have forgotten that Valve's end goal is to make a profit. That's the reason why Valve keeps on creating new games.
And what is wrong with Valve making games? They are a part of the video game developer. That is what they are supposed to do. If Valve constantly produced mediocre games this would be a problem, but judging by the fact that they haven't produced a new game in three years (whereas other companies like EA produce many games throughout a year) it seems that they do not (I'll leave deciding whether these games are mediocre up to you).
And yet, you provide no reasons for this. I'm not implying that VAC is perfect, I'm just saying that you should back up your claims.
Disclaimer: I am in no way implying that Valve is perfect. It just seems to me that you are releasing your rage regarding mediocre TF2 updates towards Valve as a whole and that's unfair.
My battle.net is Kirbyintron#1254, if you want to play some Overwatch with me.
I think if you want to complain about anything at Valve, it would be its developmental structure. But, then you could actively praise it for such.
Employees at Valve aren't beholden to stick to any one job last I checked. I'll have to find the source of this later I suppose. But the Wikipedia page on them (lol) does briefly go over their management structure. They're a flat organization, they lack a heavy bureaucratic management system. They basically run themselves much more democratically than most. Which rounds around to the statement to what I began the paragraph with: they're not beholden to stay to any one project.
At any time someone can jump in on a thing and work on the project for as long as they feel they're needed before moving on. This means the team can be in flux a lot, and where we get what Valve is notorious for: Valve time. Which is sort of what Kirbyintron alluded to, Valve releases so little new content because that's just how they run and they're very unafraid of adjusting release dates unlike companies like EA who will declare a release date, deliver on it, and then spend the next six months to a year patching and updating the game so it runs better, and releasing content that should have been in the game as monetized DLC.
For updates like End of the Line and Gun Mettle I think we can assume that Valve opted to decide the community should have a bigger presence in game design by centering that update and the ones that came after to be a new focus on community-made content. The news page for their game likes to talk about community-oriented content making contests for any 3d modelers or those who have figured out their Hammer Forge map maker tool (which comes free with the game!) to make maps. There was a page somewhere announcing and providing the means to download prop content for their next update so map-makers can get to work to make early maps that fit that theme; but I can't find it.
My DeviantArt, so sexy