> Valve cares.
I might get downvoted, but cares about what? Valve didn't manage to release HL2 Episode 3. That's a miniscule effort compared to pretty much anything.
Valve is just like EA, i.e. perfectly content milking the Steam and DotA cash cows.
I might get downvoted, but cares about what? Valve didn't manage to release HL2 Episode 3. That's a miniscule effort compared to pretty much anything.
Valve is just like EA, i.e. perfectly content milking the Steam and DotA cash cows.
It really is a sad state. Valve used to be the bastion of the gaming world, because players and other developers alike looked up to them as a role model of what it meant to care about releasing a good game, no matter what it took. That they would give it all up simply by allowing their reputation to languish - not with a bang, but with a whimper - really breaks my heart. I hope other game devs do not forget Valve's story and remember that there are customers and fans who really do respect and value when time, care, and true effort is put into making a game fun and meaningful, not just profitable.
I suspect their next game, the Dota 2 themed collectible card game, is going to go down a similar route, since Hearthstone has already demonstrated how a gambling-based business model can be applied with overwhelming success to a collectible card game.
At this point, I doubt they have any interest in investing in any game that's not amenable to that ethically appalling, but probably overwhelmingly profitable business model.
[EDIT: to all the people responding to me, I'm answering the parent's question of what the GP's 'cares' was referring to, which is clearly indicated by the comment they are in turn responding to. I'm not making any point or argument about Valve's commitment to quality or lack thereof]
As a dota fan, I can tell you that they are doing a LOT of things in there.
They have limited number of devs and designers and so many projects. Just maintaining the steam infra is madness.
Look at blizzard, and see how often they release stuff.
Good things take a lot of resources.
I can't speak to the F2P card game because it does not exist yet.
Where are the games for those of us who loved Half-Life and Portal? The last thing I want to do at the end of a long day is be yelled at by college kids and teenagers for an hour.
But a Card game based on DotA can only mean one thing:
- A F2P game. I can't imagine there being a different model
- A collectible card game. They won't innovate here.
- Buyable cosmetic, but not community made. It's not like they'll allow visual clutter on your cards.
More concretely, would HL fans rather have a HL3 that is merely a game, flaws and all, or are they waiting for the second coming (third?)?
If HL3 gets made, is a game with warts and all, that's not necessary a bad thing. It may be that the dev team is holding themselves to an impossible standard rather than users holding them to an impossible standard.
But it's unfair. They have a limited set of resources like everybody and they are working they ass off on so many projects already.
E.G: The whole international event on dota is just such a huge piece of work.
I can't stand multiplayer games-as-a-service. Any of them. Team Fortress, Overwatch, Dota, on and on it's all the same rehashed ideas with the same business model at it's core; continuing to make money well after release by releasing a trickle of low effort, easy to market in-game assets that are all worth exactly NOTHING when the next popular one comes out (or in the case of Destiny, even the sequel).
I've never touched any of these stupid things because it's all artificial; artificial scarcity of items by way of limiting the rate they come out and not allowing trades; artificial hype by employing the very best of marketing sleaze and artificial competition of various groups/clans/teams all pitted against each other in a dance of noise and anger signifying nothing.
And then the next one comes out and everyone goes to that, leaving all the achievements, collected items, won prizes and earned trophies to sit in the digital dust until the publisher gets tired of hosting it, pulls the plug, and then it's gone forever. Nothing was learned, nothing is retained, nothing is remembered, all packaged up and shipped off for the next set of customers.
It's the most cynical and hollow business model and hopefully will someday piss off so we can get more good story driven titles again.