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Comment by flamtap | Hacker News Reader

Now this is going to sell some headsets.

Initially, at least.

Valve isn't the same company they were back when they developed things like HL2. They've basically been sitting back and sucking up money for a long time. They're good at that, but there's no indication they're good at anything else at this point.

I'll go out on a limb and say this game is going to suck, and after the initial hype people are going to hate that Valve did this.

I’m guessing it’ll be an okay game. But because it isn’t excellent, that’ll be enough of a blow.

Yeah Valve has barely made any games this decade.

I've read somewhere that the flat company structure, which had an initial boost has started to be a detriment to the company.

Something about, even though it’s supposed to be flat, human organizations just don’t work that way, so the hierarchy is still there but instead of explicit it’s implicit—kinda like high school.

A classic essay on this phenomenon: "The Tyranny of Structurelessness" https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm

> but there's no indication they're good at anything else at this point

You mean apart from creating and still consistently updating CS:GO and DotA 2, which are both some of the most played games in the world?

Their "The Lab" VR demo, which is a collection of mini games, is also one of the most enjoyable VR experiences, so I'm very optimistic they can make something great again if they put their mind to it.

I've been playing CS:GO since 2001 and have no intentions in stopping :) (Almost) Best game ever!

CS:GO launched in 2012 so that's impressive :). You might have meant Counter-Strike (2000), Counter-Strike Source (2004) and then Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (2012), which are three different similar games in the same series.

>CS:GO and DotA 2, which are both some of the most played games in the world?

Yes, I mean exactly those games, which are neither new nor ground breaking, and which were originally authored by outside firms/contractors, not valve. Since then, most of Valve's additions to the games are in the form of monetization.

If you didn't notice the news articles, they even laid off almost all the people responsible for HL2 and its episodes, including the writer.

It's a stretch to say DOTA 2 or CS:GO were initially made by outside firms. Sure they're based on community mods, but so is PUBG, TF2, all the autochess games. Outside of Half-Life and L4D (which was originally a Turtlerock game) all of Valve's games are polished commercial versions of mods or student games (Portal series), but with the exception of Counterstrike all of the originals were good ideas with fatal execution flaws.

Valve has also released DOTA Underlords and Artifact in the two years. With HLA and Underlords Valve is actually releasing two games this year.

CS:GO was literally made by an outside dev (Hidden Path). It's definitely unfair to say Valve's only additions have been monetization though, it seems Valve took over development pretty soon after the initial release and there have been a lot of major updates since then.

This, plus Star Citizen in VR, might be enough for me to drop the $2500 to get an Index rig. So, not soon.

It'll definitely be good for some Let's Play views for a few youtubers.

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