Steam is so shit now - In fact Valve in general is shit

[The Ugly One]

I think even Valve knows that's idiotic, they won't be able to migrate every PC player to the Deck. However they will contribute to Linux gaming, but of course they will only do it for profit. Every single corporation that supports open source projects supports them only because it benefits them to do so.

Three out of four top OBS sponsors are YouTube, Twitch and Facebook. They only support the development of the project because they know that if OBS is gonna be good, then more people will be willing to stream on their platforms. It's always a case of a mutual benefit.

Switching their game platform priorities from PC to console worked out pretty well for Microsoft. Xbox division books a lot more revenue than Valve Corp, and both Playstation and Nintendo book more revenue than Xbox Division. They don't need to migrate everyone to their console, just enough people that it can serve as a base to grow their market, and then they can start treating PC gamers like second-class citizens, just like Microsoft already does.

You can break down PC games into three segments, with associated revenue:
Free to play ($24b)
Games-as-a-service ($18b)
Pay-to-play (aka "traditional games") ($7.3b)

Valve only has a small piece of that F2P revenue. Facebook is much more successful there, because they link the mobile and PC world. Now that MS has partnered with Google to bring the Play Games app to Windows 11, Steam can just forget about any meaningful inroads into this space. Best option for them is to create a platform they control, with a hook to draw people in, that targets people who are more graphics conscious than people who will drop $50 on gacha items in a tower defense game...such a system is also known as a "console."

 

[Slav Power]

then they can start treating PC gamers like second-class citizens

The only way I can see they will treat PC games like second-class citizens is if game devs give up on giving mouse and keyboard controls for their games, the devs lower the graphical fidelity to adjust to the Deck, and Valve abandoning Windows as a platform, otherwise playing games on the Steam Deck is exactly the same as playing them on PC.

Not to mention that it'll be impossible for Valve to make the vast majority of Steam users to move to the Deck in any forseable future where they will be able to lock down their platform to just their hardware. You're comparing Xbox, PlayStation and Switch, which were designed as closed ecosystems from the ground up and were designed like that since their very inception, to PC gaming, which was very much open since it's inception in the 80's and 90's, with Valve's current survey results saying that Steam Deck's custom GPU is only 0.18% of all the GPU's used by Steam users, with the vast majority of GPU's being desktop grade Nvidia cards.

Please tell me, how do you think Valve will manage to pull off getting 99.8% of their userbase which is mostly comprised of desktop PC users to switch to their mobile console and have it be profitable, and in what timespan you think they will be able to do it. Because what you're predicting is an incredibly unreal scenario. There is no way Valve can pull of what you've said in the near future and be more profitable than they are right now.

 

[TheDarknessGrows]

I always feel like people forgot how ugly the original 2004 Steam design was, even by early 2000s standards:
View attachment 5102424

That being said, if you really want Steam's old design in Current Year, you could always utilize Steam's rarely-used custom skin feature. Here's a pretty cool one that tries its hardest to replicate the 2004-era Steam.
View attachment 5102432

It is ugly but you know what? It didn't bog my system down witj bullshit. It just worked. I could start my gamea and update my games AND IT WORKED.

 

[Slav Power]

I feel like for the next big game changer thing to hype everyone up Valve should try and make a "minimal authorization client". Basically if you just want to run a game on Steam that you have installed with a shortcut and you don't need all the community features as you play, when you launch a game from the said shortcut and Steam is closed, what will instead load is a more compact Steam client that does the bare minimum needed to authorize with Steam servers and launch the game. Perhaps even make it customizable if you want to run it with Steam Overlay or not. This would be a very good callout to the issue of excessive game launchers, and I'm sure they'd love this kind of publicity.

 

[Dom Cruise]

I just wish Valve still made games more often.

There's no excuse for them to not come out with something at least once in a blue moon since 2011 just to please fans, there's no excuse for Episode 3 not dropping any later than 2015.

You'll notice the special mystique and fan following Valve and by extension GabeN had has mostly fallen by the wayside, they wouldn't have lost any significant money and could have kept fan goodwill, that's got to be worth something, like how movie studios still release "Oscar bait" films primarily for prestige.

 

[PipTheAlchemist]

For instance, they made it so sprays are disabled by default in TF2 unless to enable them and they also made swearing and other "bad words" filtered by default in both TF2 and CS:GO which although can be turned off It is certainly a sign of things to come.

You got to think of the children, OP. God forbid, what if they get exposed to porn and gore and racial slurs while playing their M-Rated 17+ video games?

 

[Toolbox]

I just wish Valve still made games more often.

There's no excuse for them to not come out with something at least once in a blue moon since 2011 just to please fans, there's no excuse for Episode 3 not dropping any later than 2015.

You'll notice the special mystique and fan following Valve and by extension GabeN had has mostly fallen by the wayside, they wouldn't have lost any significant money and could have kept fan goodwill, that's got to be worth something, like how movie studios still release "Oscar bait" films primarily for prestige.

The whole god king gaben meme has fallen entirely by the wayside over the years, partially because the era of the internet it was created in is dead but also Valve has just become so impersonal, people used to feel like they at least had a pulse on the general gaming community. Maybe it's just because PC gaming has become a lot less niche but I think it's entirely due to them not caring about game producing anymore. The only times they parade gabe out are when they have a hardware announcement, it really just doesn't feel like it fits.

 

[Mr.Miyagi]

I just wish Valve still made games more often.

There's no excuse for them to not come out with something at least once in a blue moon since 2011 just to please fans, there's no excuse for Episode 3 not dropping any later than 2015.

I'd be fine if they just tossed out whatever prototypes and failed non-starters they have lying around. There must be plenty over the years. Maybe one could have a neat premise or gimmick that a fan could pick up and spin into their own project, like how they picked up the Narbacular Drop guys for Portal.

The whole god king gaben meme has fallen entirely by the wayside over the years, partially because the era of the internet it was created in is dead but also Valve has just become so impersonal

I wonder if you could still go and send him an email and actually get a reply. I always thought that was cool, and it was neat having him just put his company email at the end of his developer commentary node. Honestly, I wish more game devs did commentary stuff like that in their game, there's lots of cool design tips in stuff like L4D's, loved going through them all when I first got the Orange Box years and years ago.

 

[Dom Cruise]

The whole god king gaben meme has fallen entirely by the wayside over the years, partially because the era of the internet it was created in is dead but also Valve has just become so impersonal, people used to feel like they at least had a pulse on the general gaming community. Maybe it's just because PC gaming has become a lot less niche but I think it's entirely due to them not caring about game producing anymore. The only times they parade gabe out are when they have a hardware announcement, it really just doesn't feel like it fits.

Valve had some powerful memetic energy, every new game they released would spawn a meme, you wonder why they just pissed all that away.

I hate that it's been the better part of 20 fucking years and we still don't have a game taking place after Episode 2, the revelation that you were headed to an Aperture science ship was mind blowing and then... it was never followed up on.

 

[Toolbox]

Valve had some powerful memetic energy, every new game they released would spawn a meme, you wonder why they just pissed all that away.

I hate that it's been the better part of 20 fucking years and we still don't have a game taking place after Episode 2, the revelation that you were headed to an Aperture science ship was mind blowing and then... it was never followed up on.

The writer(s) got pissy that it was just 'too hard' to merge the lore of both titles, as stupid as that seems it sure seems to be what actually happened. Just a few years later they entirely gave up on the concept with Portal 2 as it only includes a nod to the Borealis as an easter egg and essentially rewrites half of what portal 1 implied. Now that we've had modders make titles like Entropy 0 2 that successfully combine half life and portal in some form it just makes it all the more pathetic. Wolpaw seems like a cool guy and he was the backbone for a lot of what made Valve work but he's got his own little problems that added up. I would not have preferred his Epistle 3.

 

[tofudelivery]

Switching their game platform priorities from PC to console worked out pretty well for Microsoft. Xbox division books a lot more revenue than Valve Corp, and both Playstation and Nintendo book more revenue than Xbox Division. They don't need to migrate everyone to their console, just enough people that it can serve as a base to grow their market, and then they can start treating PC gamers like second-class citizens, just like Microsoft already does.

You can break down PC games into three segments, with associated revenue:
Free to play ($24b)
Games-as-a-service ($18b)
Pay-to-play (aka "traditional games") ($7.3b)

Valve only has a small piece of that F2P revenue. Facebook is much more successful there, because they link the mobile and PC world. Now that MS has partnered with Google to bring the Play Games app to Windows 11, Steam can just forget about any meaningful inroads into this space. Best option for them is to create a platform they control, with a hook to draw people in, that targets people who are more graphics conscious than people who will drop $50 on gacha items in a tower defense game...such a system is also known as a "console."

Looking at revenue is an odd take. Xbox is almost certainly not profitable and can only exist because the rest of Microsoft is profitable.

Valve on the other hand is likely the most profitable company on a per-employee basis in the world. They have something like 400 employees and just CS and Dota likely bring in 9 figures a year.

Epic's 3rd party revenue for 2022 was 350 million (non Epic games) on a store where games barely sell. What do you think Valve is making with a 30% cut vs 12% and a store where people actually buy games?

 

[The Ugly One]

I just wish Valve still made games more often.

There's no excuse for them to not come out with something at least once in a blue moon since 2011 just to please fans, there's no excuse for Episode 3 not dropping any later than 2015.

The excuse is there's no value-add to the investment. They are the dominant platform for PC gaming now and don't need first-party exclusives to drive you to it. The money they'd invest in making HL3 could be more profitably invested in the platform.

You'll notice the special mystique and fan following Valve and by extension GabeN had has mostly fallen by the wayside, they wouldn't have lost any significant money and could have kept fan goodwill, that's got to be worth something, like how movie studios still release "Oscar bait" films primarily for prestige.

The reason GabeN & Valve have lost their mystique with the fans is we're all old as shit now. Half-Life 2 came out almost twenty years ago.

Epic's 3rd party revenue for 2022 was 350 million (non Epic games) on a store where games barely sell. What do you think Valve is making with a 30% cut vs 12% and a store where people actually buy games?

They make about $7b a year right now. They're extremely profitable per employee, but if there's one thing every corporation wants, it's more money. The game market, as a whole, is over $180b. If Valve was a game publisher, that would put them in the top 10 for revenue. But they're not, they're a game store. Rough estimate based on their 30% cut is that Steam only captures about 12% of game sales. There's an enormous amount of money, especially in mobile and F2P, that Valve isn't getting. The convergence of mobile and desktop is a legitimate threat to them - you don't get richer by ignoring how the market is shifting.

 

[Slav Power]

The writer(s) got pissy that it was just 'too hard' to merge the lore of both titles, as stupid as that seems it sure seems to be what actually happened. Just a few years later they entirely gave up on the concept with Portal 2 as it only includes a nod to the Borealis as an easter egg and essentially rewrites half of what portal 1 implied. Now that we've had modders make titles like Entropy 0 2 that successfully combine half life and portal in some form it just makes it all the more pathetic. Wolpaw seems like a cool guy and he was the backbone for a lot of what made Valve work but he's got his own little problems that added up. I would not have preferred his Epistle 3.

And the entire reason they've even decided on merging Portal and Half-Life universes in Episode 2 was because... they wanted to do it for the sake of marketing Orange Box.

This useless bundle that had no point existing on PC because of Steam being a thing, and which became obsolete on consoles as soon as the next console gen came around because Valve never bothered to keep the console versions of their games up to date, is why Episode Three never happened.

 

[Car Won't Crank]

I feel like for the next big game changer thing to hype everyone up Valve should try and make a "minimal authorization client". Basically if you just want to run a game on Steam that you have installed with a shortcut and you don't need all the community features as you play, when you launch a game from the said shortcut and Steam is closed, what will instead load is a more compact Steam client that does the bare minimum needed to authorize with Steam servers and launch the game. Perhaps even make it customizable if you want to run it with Steam Overlay or not. This would be a very good callout to the issue of excessive game launchers, and I'm sure they'd love this kind of publicity.

Can't you do that with Lutris already? It can aggregate from all the various clients and function as the main games launcher. When steam is closed, Lutris will start it up and launch the game.

 

[Slav Power]

Can't you do that with Lutris already? It can aggregate from all the various clients and function as the main games launcher. When steam is closed, Lutris will start it up and launch the game.

That's not what I mean. What Lutris does it it launches the entire Steam client with the library and whatnot. This takes extra loading time and extra resources running in the background for the sake of having the storefront and every single thing Steam related running, when all that is needed to just launch and play a given game can be less than that. This would result in the game loading faster from scratch without having the need of running the entirety of Steam in the background all the time, lowering the resource usage.

 

[Car Won't Crank]

That's not what I mean. What Lutris does it it launches the entire Steam client with the library and whatnot. This takes extra loading time and extra resources running in the background for the sake of having the storefront and every single thing Steam related running, when all that is needed to just launch and play a given game can be less than that. This would result in the game loading faster from scratch without having the need of running the entirety of Steam in the background all the time, lowering the resource usage.

Oh I got ya. I doubt that can be done with steam because of their activation licenses thing needing the client and such.

 

[Slav Power]

Oh I got ya. I doubt that can be done with steam because of their activation licenses thing needing the client and such.

Which is what the theoretical "minimal client" would do, it would do the absolute minimum to verify if the game is genuine, and it would only load the minimum of Steam's social features needed, and even then there would be a flag to only do authorization and verification and nothing more. You run a game in a snap and you don't have to do some automatic full client opening and closing fuckery.

GOG doesn't have that issue since their games can fully work offline, but if Valve went through with something like that, then corpos like Epic, EA and Ubisoft would now be compelled to make something similar to keep up with the biggest player. This would benefit Valve in the PR department where they'd introduce a solution to a problem they've created, and it would benefit consumers if every single major platform didn't require you to load their entire fucking launcher that takes up like 800MB of RAM just to start a game.

 

[Inafune Fanfiction]

And the entire reason they've even decided on merging Portal and Half-Life universes in Episode 2 was because... they wanted to do it for the sake of marketing Orange Box.
View attachment 5105077
This useless bundle that had no point existing on PC because of Steam being a thing, and which became obsolete on consoles as soon as the next console gen came around because Valve never bothered to keep the console versions of their games up to date, is why Episode Three never happened.

More likely that if they finished the story of half life, the fledgling steam platform would have went the way of many of its competitors and people would have largely moved on. Hence why GabeN's haunted face reactions and complete avoidance of that elephant in the room whenever the subject was asked about.

Though to give Valve credit, they were never assholes about people modding their games like just about everyone else besides indies in the industry were even back then, and even hired a few successful modding teams who were able to complete their projects.

 

[Gender: Xenomorph]

I feel like for the next big game changer thing to hype everyone up Valve should try and make a "minimal authorization client". Basically if you just want to run a game on Steam that you have installed with a shortcut and you don't need all the community features as you play, when you launch a game from the said shortcut and Steam is closed, what will instead load is a more compact Steam client that does the bare minimum needed to authorize with Steam servers and launch the game. Perhaps even make it customizable if you want to run it with Steam Overlay or not. This would be a very good callout to the issue of excessive game launchers, and I'm sure they'd love this kind of publicity.

Way ahead of you

 

[Slav Power]

Way ahead of you
View attachment 5107689

You're still running the entire Steam client to play your games. Am I not being clear enough about what I'm talking about or what?