Then again, Valve gets 30% to 20% of the benefits from all sales from their platform. It’s easier to be generous when everyone has to pay you to make cash.
Valve doesn’t release games, it releases ads for Steam.
Which is fine. It’s great. Makes for great, cheap products and long-term strategies that aren’t trying to shake all the money off of you.
But that’s the end goal, still.
As a friendly reminder, Valve also universalized DRM, invented multiple new types of microtransactions and actually kinda invented NFTs for a little bit.
Honestly I’ll defend TF2 loot boxes til I die. There are valid complaints as far as casual gamers go but as someone who played the game for thousands of hours the cosmetic system added a lot of longevity to the game. It was a fun ecosystem to engage with and compared to modern games where you spend $15-20 on a single cosmetic item it was an absolute bargain. If you got tired of an item you could trade it for something else too.
Idk maybe I just got indoctrinated but I have so many positive memories of that game and interacting with the cosmetic system. These days every game you play is shoving their store front in your face. Every cosmetic is $20 and if you don’t buy it now it’s lost forever. Don’t want to spend money? Ok here’s an “event” where you need to play the game 2 hours a day for a week to unlock some meh items and if you don’t then fuck you those items are gone forever.
Agreed. It sounds weird saying, but I feel that Valve did these things right or at least fixed them quickly thereafter. I’ve never felt any sense of pay-to-win or being left out playing TF2. Quite the opposite. I’d get the new items quick enough, and if there was anything in there articular I’d want then there was a robust market willing to make it happen for cheaper than I thought. And “cheaper” referring to in-game items.
Then again, Valve gets 30% to 20% of the benefits from all sales from their platform. It’s easier to be generous when everyone has to pay you to make cash.
This.
Valve doesn’t release games, it releases ads for Steam.
Which is fine. It’s great. Makes for great, cheap products and long-term strategies that aren’t trying to shake all the money off of you.
But that’s the end goal, still.
As a friendly reminder, Valve also universalized DRM, invented multiple new types of microtransactions and actually kinda invented NFTs for a little bit.
Invented the loot box y’all love so much. Tried to invent paid mods. Valve is still a Corpo and corpos gonna corpos
Honestly I’ll defend TF2 loot boxes til I die. There are valid complaints as far as casual gamers go but as someone who played the game for thousands of hours the cosmetic system added a lot of longevity to the game. It was a fun ecosystem to engage with and compared to modern games where you spend $15-20 on a single cosmetic item it was an absolute bargain. If you got tired of an item you could trade it for something else too.
Idk maybe I just got indoctrinated but I have so many positive memories of that game and interacting with the cosmetic system. These days every game you play is shoving their store front in your face. Every cosmetic is $20 and if you don’t buy it now it’s lost forever. Don’t want to spend money? Ok here’s an “event” where you need to play the game 2 hours a day for a week to unlock some meh items and if you don’t then fuck you those items are gone forever.
Sorry I’m ranting.
Agreed. It sounds weird saying, but I feel that Valve did these things right or at least fixed them quickly thereafter. I’ve never felt any sense of pay-to-win or being left out playing TF2. Quite the opposite. I’d get the new items quick enough, and if there was anything in there articular I’d want then there was a robust market willing to make it happen for cheaper than I thought. And “cheaper” referring to in-game items.