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That's an interesting take. I don't follow the VR market at all, but from my perspective Valve has been resting on their laurels for years. I've read that gab

by na85 6y ago

That's an interesting take. I don't follow the VR market at all, but from my perspective Valve has been resting on their laurels for years. I've read that gaben just sits in his office playing DOTA 2 all day. Until I read your comment I would never have considered describing Valve as "kicking ass". From where I sit they've basically done nothing innovative since Half Life 2.

kipchak 6y ago
Digital item economics/lootboxes/items is a big one[1], they even hired Yanis Varoufakis for a bit. They also did a good deal of the foundational work for VR working with HTC and Oculus. Then there's steam link, Steam controller/SteamOS/Steam Machines, Player created layers in Portal 2, Steak Workshop/Mod support (and paid mods) to name a few. There's a lot of not hits and a lot of not games, but they've been at least doing some stuff. [1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-I6Qn56QWI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-I6Qn56QWI
tomc1985 6y ago
I'd hardly consider the Index and Half-Life Alyx to be "nothing innovative"
phaus 6y ago
>Valve has been resting on their laurels for years. They aren't just a game development company anymore. Their primary product is Steam. If Half-Life Alyx was playable on any PC or console it would have been one of the best selling games of the year. Its only a niche product because, instead of resting on their laurels, they are trying to drive the industry forward. Not only did they make the Index, which is by far the best VR Headset yet, they also supposedly helped HP develop the Reverb G2 that's coming out soon. GabeN likes playing Dota but the idea that he sits around all day playing videogames when he's been building, improving, and expanding a billion dollar gaming empire is ridiculous. There's also the massive progress towards making Linux a viable gaming platform. Really the only thing keeping me on Windows on my gaming system is the fact that most competitive multiplayer games' anti-cheat software can't run on Linux yet. If I played mostly single player games or casual multiplayer I could play almost everything I want to on Linux. IMO they are plenty innovative. I wish they released more games, but aside from gaming they are doing a lot of great things for the gaming community.
pfranz 6y ago
I think it's been easy to miss a lot of Valve's recent work since they haven't been cranking out games. Here are a few things since 2013 when DOTA2 was released: * SteamOS, Steam Machine, Steam Controller, Steam Link (2015) hardware, porting Steam, Source, and tooling to Linux (and patching Linux to improve gaming performance). Cross platform and streaming features. Facilitating porting of games to Linux. * Source2 (2015) wrote a new game engine and ported DOTA2 to it. Neither is a small undertaking. * HTC Vive VR (2016) hardware, software, tooling, and VR content. None a small undertaking. * Valve Index (2019) * Half-Life: Alyx (2020) In addition, there were a few projects and games that never made it to market and a few I probably missed. I'm really happy to see them trying things nobody else is, even when they fail.
- Strom 6y ago
  On top of all that Dota 2 is one of the best supported games in history, comparable only to the likes of World of Warcraft and Fortnite. It's not like they released Dota 2 and that was that. They've kept developing it to this day at a breakneck pace, including even swaping out the engine like pfranz mentioned.
on_and_off 6y ago
They are no longer interested in making games. They are steam's landlords and hat makers, that's pretty much it.
imtringued 6y ago
I don't know how you managed to interpret "Dota 2 is Gabe Newell's favorite game" into "he does nothing but play DOTA 2 all day, even at his office". That's downright malicious.

by na85 6y ago

kipchak 6y ago

Digital item economics/lootboxes/items is a big one[1], they even hired Yanis Varoufakis for a bit. They also did a good deal of the foundational work for VR working with HTC and Oculus. Then there's steam link, Steam controller/SteamOS/Steam Machines, Player created layers in Portal 2, Steak Workshop/Mod support (and paid mods) to name a few. There's a lot of not hits and a lot of not games, but they've been at least doing some stuff. [1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-I6Qn56QWI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-I6Qn56QWI

tomc1985 6y ago

I'd hardly consider the Index and Half-Life Alyx to be "nothing innovative"

phaus 6y ago

>Valve has been resting on their laurels for years. They aren't just a game development company anymore. Their primary product is Steam. If Half-Life Alyx was playable on any PC or console it would have been one of the best selling games of the year. Its only a niche product because, instead of resting on their laurels, they are trying to drive the industry forward. Not only did they make the Index, which is by far the best VR Headset yet, they also supposedly helped HP develop the Reverb G2 that's coming out soon. GabeN likes playing Dota but the idea that he sits around all day playing videogames when he's been building, improving, and expanding a billion dollar gaming empire is ridiculous. There's also the massive progress towards making Linux a viable gaming platform. Really the only thing keeping me on Windows on my gaming system is the fact that most competitive multiplayer games' anti-cheat software can't run on Linux yet. If I played mostly single player games or casual multiplayer I could play almost everything I want to on Linux. IMO they are plenty innovative. I wish they released more games, but aside from gaming they are doing a lot of great things for the gaming community.

pfranz 6y ago

I think it's been easy to miss a lot of Valve's recent work since they haven't been cranking out games. Here are a few things since 2013 when DOTA2 was released: * SteamOS, Steam Machine, Steam Controller, Steam Link (2015) hardware, porting Steam, Source, and tooling to Linux (and patching Linux to improve gaming performance). Cross platform and streaming features. Facilitating porting of games to Linux. * Source2 (2015) wrote a new game engine and ported DOTA2 to it. Neither is a small undertaking. * HTC Vive VR (2016) hardware, software, tooling, and VR content. None a small undertaking. * Valve Index (2019) * Half-Life: Alyx (2020) In addition, there were a few projects and games that never made it to market and a few I probably missed. I'm really happy to see them trying things nobody else is, even when they fail.

Strom 6y ago
On top of all that Dota 2 is one of the best supported games in history, comparable only to the likes of World of Warcraft and Fortnite. It's not like they released Dota 2 and that was that. They've kept developing it to this day at a breakneck pace, including even swaping out the engine like pfranz mentioned.

on_and_off 6y ago

They are no longer interested in making games. They are steam's landlords and hat makers, that's pretty much it.

imtringued 6y ago

I don't know how you managed to interpret "Dota 2 is Gabe Newell's favorite game" into "he does nothing but play DOTA 2 all day, even at his office". That's downright malicious.