4 ms·

Valve still seems like a great company, with a strong customer focus (refunds, sales, mods, community, reviews, etc.), decent hardware (Deck, Index), good open

Valve still seems like a great company, with a strong customer focus (refunds, sales, mods, community, reviews, etc.), decent hardware (Deck, Index), good open source software (Proton), and good customer support.

KomoD 2y ago
Valve lets their games rot whilst still extracting tons of money from them. Example: Team Fortress 2, the official servers for the game have been overrun by bots that aimbot, votekick, say slurs, spam illegal content, what are they doing about it? Nothing. https://save.tf https://save.tf Example 2: CSGO/CS2, also full of cheaters and illegal gambling sites
DarkNova6 2y ago
Let’s hope Valve never goes public
- ChoGGi 2y ago
  The day when Gaben retires.
meindnoch 2y ago
Valve, the gambling company?
- strictnein 2y ago
  I don't think enough is made of this aspect of Valve. Who knows if it's accurate, but a report claimed they did $1 billion in Counter Strike cases last year. https://insider-gaming.com/valve-cs-cases-earnings/ https://insider-gaming.com/valve-cs-cases-earnings/ And you have a skin that has sold for over $1 million now. https://www.ign.com/articles/counter-strike-skin-sells-for-over-1-million https://www.ign.com/articles/counter-strike-skin-sells-for-o...
  - jprete 2y ago
    Based on the first article, it's all cosmetic items, which I think matters a lot to the ethics.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
- solardev 2y ago
  Are you talking about lootboxes? That's only for one or two of their games, isn't it? Meanwhile Steam single handedly remade the PC gaming industry.
  - dataflow 2y ago
    > That's only for one or two of their games, isn't it? What difference does that make when the magnitude for one game was on the order of a billion cases?
    - solardev 2y ago
      This is like saying Microsoft is an evil company because Overwatch has cosmetics. It's just one of their products. Counterstrike doesn't define Valve. They do so much more than that, especially for those of us who don't even play CS. The lootboxes were something they added much later. It was originally just a Half-Life mod.
- numpad0 2y ago
  Looks like rich companies tend to look respectable
aquova 2y ago
Valve is a good pick, at least as much as any company can. but the one mark against them is that by pushing Steam, they normalized DRM in the video game space and killed physical media on PCs.
- solardev 2y ago
  I think customers chose that. GOG has been around forever, but Steam is so much better that DRM was worth it to millions of gamers.
- sickofparadox 2y ago
  I think that "killing physical media on PCs" is a bit of a misattribution here. Physical media is all but dead on consoles as well, and people mostly buy their games online. PC gamers are fortunate enough that at the exact right time, a company operated with a bit of moral character essentially created the killer app for digital distribution, and with its dominant position forced tons and tons of positive changes to the PC ecosystem. Without Valve there would be no proton/Linux support, granular regional pricing, unobtrusive DRM, game library sharing, steam workshop, the ability to mod accessibility into games through forced controller mapping, booting games directly into friend's lobbies through the friends list, and probably more I can't think of offhand.
dataflow 2y ago
The fact that your one-time purchases are perpetually held hostage by Valve is a pretty rotten principle at the very core, and Valve is guilty here just like many other companies. Why should your continued ability to play games you've purchased offline depend on Valve deciding you're still in their good graces? Why can't you have your own independent & transferable copy of what you've purchased so they can't dictate what you do with it outside their servers? How do you respect a company that sells you something but still maintains the right to revoke your access to it? Oh and did you forget about lootboxes? and their effects on children? (Note I'm taking a somewhat exaggerated position here -- I don't think Valve is a terrible company as far as companies nowadays go. But the bar in this question seems intended to be absolute, not relative.)
- solardev 2y ago
  I guess none of that has ever bothered me? I grew up in the 90s with physical media, and many of those games are now unplayable too. But Steam enabled indie gaming like never before, surpassing even the shareware scene. The easy storefront plus good discoverability and community and good downloads management makes me choose Steam despite DRM. GOG has been selling DRM free for a decade or so now, but I still choose Steam because their software is so much better (Galaxy is atrocious and has gotten worse recently). And I don't really care about cosmetic lootboxes, I guess? I've bought some (too many) for Path of Exile. I'm glad they are a funding model that enables free to play. I find it less obnoxious than the paid DLC model, in-game advertising, etc. As for kids, well, shouldn't parents control their spending anyway?
  - dataflow 2y ago
    > I guess none of that has ever bothered me? I grew up in the 90s with physical media, and many of those games are now unplayable too. Unplayable because you don't have the machines to execute them (or because you didn't take care to copy your media that got damaged), not unplayable because the companies subsequently revoked your access to them. Those are... pretty darn different things. It's like saying "my groceries spoiled" is the same as "the supermarket came back and seized my groceries" just because they have the same end result. > I still choose Steam because their software is so much better You're of course welcome to, but your question wasn't about product quality. Great product != great company. > And I don't really care about cosmetic lootboxes, I guess? Lots of countries did. If your bar for respectable is "I don't care about it"... that's not really a question to pose to the rest of the world. > As for kids, well, shouldn't parents control their spending anyway? This is a much bigger conversation than we can have in this box, but suffice it to say lots of people don't buy this kind of excuse.
Fire-Dragon-DoL 2y ago
Family view. Everybody forgets until you get children. The upgrade currently in beta allows the family to lock the library only per game and not per library, so we can finally have a real gaming library

KomoD 2y ago

Valve lets their games rot whilst still extracting tons of money from them. Example: Team Fortress 2, the official servers for the game have been overrun by bots that aimbot, votekick, say slurs, spam illegal content, what are they doing about it? Nothing. https://save.tf https://save.tf Example 2: CSGO/CS2, also full of cheaters and illegal gambling sites

DarkNova6 2y ago

Let’s hope Valve never goes public

ChoGGi 2y ago
The day when Gaben retires.

meindnoch 2y ago

Valve, the gambling company?

strictnein 2y ago
I don't think enough is made of this aspect of Valve. Who knows if it's accurate, but a report claimed they did $1 billion in Counter Strike cases last year. https://insider-gaming.com/valve-cs-cases-earnings/ https://insider-gaming.com/valve-cs-cases-earnings/ And you have a skin that has sold for over $1 million now. https://www.ign.com/articles/counter-strike-skin-sells-for-over-1-million https://www.ign.com/articles/counter-strike-skin-sells-for-o...
- jprete 2y ago
  Based on the first article, it's all cosmetic items, which I think matters a lot to the ethics.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
solardev 2y ago
Are you talking about lootboxes? That's only for one or two of their games, isn't it? Meanwhile Steam single handedly remade the PC gaming industry.
- dataflow 2y ago
  > That's only for one or two of their games, isn't it? What difference does that make when the magnitude for one game was on the order of a billion cases?
  - solardev 2y ago
    This is like saying Microsoft is an evil company because Overwatch has cosmetics. It's just one of their products. Counterstrike doesn't define Valve. They do so much more than that, especially for those of us who don't even play CS. The lootboxes were something they added much later. It was originally just a Half-Life mod.
numpad0 2y ago
Looks like rich companies tend to look respectable

aquova 2y ago

Valve is a good pick, at least as much as any company can. but the one mark against them is that by pushing Steam, they normalized DRM in the video game space and killed physical media on PCs.

solardev 2y ago
I think customers chose that. GOG has been around forever, but Steam is so much better that DRM was worth it to millions of gamers.
sickofparadox 2y ago
I think that "killing physical media on PCs" is a bit of a misattribution here. Physical media is all but dead on consoles as well, and people mostly buy their games online. PC gamers are fortunate enough that at the exact right time, a company operated with a bit of moral character essentially created the killer app for digital distribution, and with its dominant position forced tons and tons of positive changes to the PC ecosystem. Without Valve there would be no proton/Linux support, granular regional pricing, unobtrusive DRM, game library sharing, steam workshop, the ability to mod accessibility into games through forced controller mapping, booting games directly into friend's lobbies through the friends list, and probably more I can't think of offhand.

dataflow 2y ago

The fact that your one-time purchases are perpetually held hostage by Valve is a pretty rotten principle at the very core, and Valve is guilty here just like many other companies. Why should your continued ability to play games you've purchased offline depend on Valve deciding you're still in their good graces? Why can't you have your own independent & transferable copy of what you've purchased so they can't dictate what you do with it outside their servers? How do you respect a company that sells you something but still maintains the right to revoke your access to it? Oh and did you forget about lootboxes? and their effects on children? (Note I'm taking a somewhat exaggerated position here -- I don't think Valve is a terrible company as far as companies nowadays go. But the bar in this question seems intended to be absolute, not relative.)

solardev 2y ago
I guess none of that has ever bothered me? I grew up in the 90s with physical media, and many of those games are now unplayable too. But Steam enabled indie gaming like never before, surpassing even the shareware scene. The easy storefront plus good discoverability and community and good downloads management makes me choose Steam despite DRM. GOG has been selling DRM free for a decade or so now, but I still choose Steam because their software is so much better (Galaxy is atrocious and has gotten worse recently). And I don't really care about cosmetic lootboxes, I guess? I've bought some (too many) for Path of Exile. I'm glad they are a funding model that enables free to play. I find it less obnoxious than the paid DLC model, in-game advertising, etc. As for kids, well, shouldn't parents control their spending anyway?
- dataflow 2y ago
  > I guess none of that has ever bothered me? I grew up in the 90s with physical media, and many of those games are now unplayable too. Unplayable because you don't have the machines to execute them (or because you didn't take care to copy your media that got damaged), not unplayable because the companies subsequently revoked your access to them. Those are... pretty darn different things. It's like saying "my groceries spoiled" is the same as "the supermarket came back and seized my groceries" just because they have the same end result. > I still choose Steam because their software is so much better You're of course welcome to, but your question wasn't about product quality. Great product != great company. > And I don't really care about cosmetic lootboxes, I guess? Lots of countries did. If your bar for respectable is "I don't care about it"... that's not really a question to pose to the rest of the world. > As for kids, well, shouldn't parents control their spending anyway? This is a much bigger conversation than we can have in this box, but suffice it to say lots of people don't buy this kind of excuse.

Fire-Dragon-DoL 2y ago

Family view. Everybody forgets until you get children. The upgrade currently in beta allows the family to lock the library only per game and not per library, so we can finally have a real gaming library