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Valve have been nothing but competent and financially successful. In sure they know exactly what they're doing, and it's not optimizing for customer ergonomics.

542458 5y ago
I disagree on the “nothing but competent”. They have done things like left critical zero click RCEs open for years without patching them. https://portswigger.net/daily-swig/valve-belatedly-fixes-steam-gaming-platform-rce-vulnerability https://portswigger.net/daily-swig/valve-belatedly-fixes-ste... People who have left valve often report that the organization is extremely dysfunctional. https://medium.com/dunia-media/the-nightmare-of-valves-self-organizing-utopia-6d32d329ecdb https://medium.com/dunia-media/the-nightmare-of-valves-self-... From where I’m standing, Valve looks like a company cursed by success. They have the advantage of controlling the world’s biggest PC game distribution platform (an advantage that is self-sustaining due to network effects), and as such have a fountain of near infinite money. This allows them to run an extremely inefficient organization without suffering the consequences that most companies would.
- ljm 5y ago
  I used to think Valve's approach to management (to essentially remove it) sounded like a great idea. But now it feels to me to be more of a curse than a blessing - there's a machine that prints money and what's the point of trying to kick off any project when no one has any real skin in the game and can abandon it when they get bored?
bob1029 5y ago
Valve have been resting on the laurels of their prior successes and are destined for the dustbin of history if they don't start innovating again. The gaming market has grown incredibly competitive, and statistically speaking the steam store has the most garbage out of all the stores combined x100. The most depressing thing about Valve Software is that they are a privately-held corporation and have far more agility than the likes of EA, ATVI, et. al. There aren't quarterly earnings calls or other confining economics that would spook away investors if an ambitious AAA project were to be announced this Monday.
- Hamuko 5y ago
  >statistically speaking the steam store has the most garbage out of all the stores combined x100. That's basically a non-issue. Steam has had a ton of random shit in there for years and people still prefer it to all of the other stores. It's in fact preferable to have too much than too little. GOG might have DRM-free games and a fancy launcher that combines ALL of your game libaries from different launchers (GOG Galaxy is pretty neat), but it doesn't really benefit me when Mass Effect Legendary Edition isn't on sale there.
- COGlory 5y ago
  Valve is absolutely innovating in a way that can only be done by companies that are privately held. They are laying the groundwork for a shift from Windows to Linux. They are playing a veeery long game there.
  - MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
    We need better Linux software support before that happens. As long as it's easier to develop on windows, it'll never happen. I'd love for windows to go the way horse, but for now Valve is hedging bets on a Frankenstein that is Linux. I'm being critical only cause I'm aware of the difficulties of working with Linux. It's great if your a CS person who likes tinkering. It's god awful when you just want your computer to work. Meaning not having to deal with drivers, deal with scaling issues, weird software bugs that require you to install something obscure and run 4 different commands to get that one thing to run. Linux has gotten better immensely over the past decade, but it's still not even in Windows 7 reliability category of use yet. Maybe if there wasn't 100+ distros or whatever and people just focused on getting a couple at the level of XP, we could see a lot wider of adoption. But I guess that's the allure of it.
    - smoldesu 5y ago
      > As long as it's easier to develop on windows, it'll never happen. It's not though. Windows is a pain in the ass to develop for, and the only thing keeping most developers from writing cross-platform titles is DirectX. Luckily, there's a DirectX-to-Vulkan translation layer that will run 80% of Steam's "legacy" Windows games, as well as any new exclusives. As the industry starts to shift to Vulkan, developers will have much less incentive to ship Windows exclusives. The final nail in the coffin is probably sandboxing. Linux support for sandboxed applications is next-level, and projects like Flatpak and AppImage have made it possible to ship software that's more stable on Linux than it is on Windows. Valve's probably wants to combine this with their Proton project to create truly "immortal" Linux applications: imagine being able to download a file containing a compressed VM image with Diablo 2 perfectly configured like a Docker container. > Maybe if there wasn't 100+ distros or whatever and people just focused on getting a couple at the level of XP, we could see a lot wider of adoption. The only difference between distros is package management, and 99% of them will install Steam, Discord, Spotify, and any of your other "normal" apps the exact same way.

542458 5y ago

I disagree on the “nothing but competent”. They have done things like left critical zero click RCEs open for years without patching them. https://portswigger.net/daily-swig/valve-belatedly-fixes-steam-gaming-platform-rce-vulnerability https://portswigger.net/daily-swig/valve-belatedly-fixes-ste... People who have left valve often report that the organization is extremely dysfunctional. https://medium.com/dunia-media/the-nightmare-of-valves-self-organizing-utopia-6d32d329ecdb https://medium.com/dunia-media/the-nightmare-of-valves-self-... From where I’m standing, Valve looks like a company cursed by success. They have the advantage of controlling the world’s biggest PC game distribution platform (an advantage that is self-sustaining due to network effects), and as such have a fountain of near infinite money. This allows them to run an extremely inefficient organization without suffering the consequences that most companies would.

ljm 5y ago
I used to think Valve's approach to management (to essentially remove it) sounded like a great idea. But now it feels to me to be more of a curse than a blessing - there's a machine that prints money and what's the point of trying to kick off any project when no one has any real skin in the game and can abandon it when they get bored?

bob1029 5y ago

Valve have been resting on the laurels of their prior successes and are destined for the dustbin of history if they don't start innovating again. The gaming market has grown incredibly competitive, and statistically speaking the steam store has the most garbage out of all the stores combined x100. The most depressing thing about Valve Software is that they are a privately-held corporation and have far more agility than the likes of EA, ATVI, et. al. There aren't quarterly earnings calls or other confining economics that would spook away investors if an ambitious AAA project were to be announced this Monday.

Hamuko 5y ago
>statistically speaking the steam store has the most garbage out of all the stores combined x100. That's basically a non-issue. Steam has had a ton of random shit in there for years and people still prefer it to all of the other stores. It's in fact preferable to have too much than too little. GOG might have DRM-free games and a fancy launcher that combines ALL of your game libaries from different launchers (GOG Galaxy is pretty neat), but it doesn't really benefit me when Mass Effect Legendary Edition isn't on sale there.
COGlory 5y ago
Valve is absolutely innovating in a way that can only be done by companies that are privately held. They are laying the groundwork for a shift from Windows to Linux. They are playing a veeery long game there.
- MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
  We need better Linux software support before that happens. As long as it's easier to develop on windows, it'll never happen. I'd love for windows to go the way horse, but for now Valve is hedging bets on a Frankenstein that is Linux. I'm being critical only cause I'm aware of the difficulties of working with Linux. It's great if your a CS person who likes tinkering. It's god awful when you just want your computer to work. Meaning not having to deal with drivers, deal with scaling issues, weird software bugs that require you to install something obscure and run 4 different commands to get that one thing to run. Linux has gotten better immensely over the past decade, but it's still not even in Windows 7 reliability category of use yet. Maybe if there wasn't 100+ distros or whatever and people just focused on getting a couple at the level of XP, we could see a lot wider of adoption. But I guess that's the allure of it.
  - smoldesu 5y ago
    > As long as it's easier to develop on windows, it'll never happen. It's not though. Windows is a pain in the ass to develop for, and the only thing keeping most developers from writing cross-platform titles is DirectX. Luckily, there's a DirectX-to-Vulkan translation layer that will run 80% of Steam's "legacy" Windows games, as well as any new exclusives. As the industry starts to shift to Vulkan, developers will have much less incentive to ship Windows exclusives. The final nail in the coffin is probably sandboxing. Linux support for sandboxed applications is next-level, and projects like Flatpak and AppImage have made it possible to ship software that's more stable on Linux than it is on Windows. Valve's probably wants to combine this with their Proton project to create truly "immortal" Linux applications: imagine being able to download a file containing a compressed VM image with Diablo 2 perfectly configured like a Docker container. > Maybe if there wasn't 100+ distros or whatever and people just focused on getting a couple at the level of XP, we could see a lot wider of adoption. The only difference between distros is package management, and 99% of them will install Steam, Discord, Spotify, and any of your other "normal" apps the exact same way.