Steam slows Valve development, suggests Stardock CEO

HL2 ep3 is taking the piss

Valve games with the exception of Team Fortress 2 are extremely overrated in my opinion.

Steam is by far their greatest contribution to gaming, so i’d rather they focus on that than game development.

There isn’t going to be another Half-Life game in our life time,so deal with it!

I dont think their games are overrated. Half-Life is revolution game in idustry. Team Fortress is so popular game because there is special visual style, funny and there comming many updates, items and maps, all for free!

@2 Well i loved HL series and L4D 1/2.I never played TF2 and didn’t like portal because there is no action But I instal EP2 to play and i just couldn’t because those levels with Bugs are so boring, just love HL2 vanilla more.For HL3,Valve must invent wheel for third time.

“Valve games with the exception of Team Fortress 2 are extremely overrated in my opinion.”

Wow… Just wow.
Maybe L4D series, but everything else they made is fantastic.

Half Life 2 ep3 > Duke Nukem Forever

There is nothing overrated about Valve games, their games are the definition of quality.

Wardell should really shut up about other peoples business. It doesn’t make you look good, especially when you’re trailing that company in the most awesome fashion, and you have a clear stake in saying things like that.

No matter which way you look at it, Valve can afford to take however long they like on Half-Life 3, they’re in the Blizzard zone.

Half-Life 2 was alright, but I didn’t enjoy it nearly as much as the first one. I thought it got way more praise than it deserved, simply for being a Valve game. To me it felt like they’d kinda gone out of their way to add filler.

Portal came close to a real Half-Life kind of moment for me though. I’m hoping the “full” game lives up to that.

Valve isn’t a “victim of its own success.”

They choose to take their time with their games, because they can afford that luxury, and because it means when the final product is finally released, we get the best product we can get. Numerous Valve games have been industry defining.

You can guarantee that when Half Life 3 is finally released, its not only going to be a stellar game, but it’s going to sell like hot cakes too. It’s been proven countless times already that making people wait for a sequel actually helps heighten anticipation and excitement for the game, and give a title a huge boost in sales too.

Seems to me like Wardell’s cherrypicking his argument when citing only Episode 3. He’s conveniently forgetting the fact that Team Fortress 2 had a tremendously long development cycle (far longer than Episode 3 so far, in fact), and the vast majority of that time Steam didn’t even exist. He’s also conveniently forgetting Portal 2, announced just last year, is getting released next week (bar any “surprises” that might move that release up a week), all in the middle of the Steam mania. Same thing for the Left 4 Dead series.

Seems to me like Wardell doesn’t have much of an argument. Cite Episode 3 all you want, Valve has actually been getting everything else done in a reasonable amount of time, all despite the fact that they’re working on Steam as well. Nope, don’t buy it. I think he just wants to justify his decision to sell off Impulse to GS, but he doesn’t make that good an argument to be honest.

@2: Have to agree. Most of their games are really overrated. Especially the Left4Dead Franchise. I still think these games are a joke.

^^ Left 4 Dead need to be played with at least 2 friend( not with some strangers) and then game shine.

@13: No, it sucks. Had more fun with Killing Floor.

I don’t get the L4D hate.

I was pretty disappointed in the sequel, I thought it handled a lot worse than the original, but I’ve spent many very intense hours playing L4D with friends.

It’s not a complex or a milestone game, it’s just you, three friends, and a whole lot of zombies trying to stop you getting through a level. Simple, fun.

I hate having to agree with O’Connor but the guy’s right. I find it funny how people complain when Valve take their time but when they release a game quickly a la Left 4 Dead 2 they go into a hissy fit.

@16 and @10

Agreeing with you

As Miyamoto has said “A delayed game is eventually good, a bad game is bad forever.”

uh…bullshit -_-

yea i’m as mad as anyone else about no ep3 so far but come on? O_o

Since steam has grown in the past few years we’ve had:

Ep1
Ep2
TF2
portal
portal 2
l4d
l4d2
alien swarm
and next dota 2

yeah i smell green envy from the ex-impulse prick -_-

@16 I apologise profusely for having to put you in such a morally conflicting situation.

I hope you can recover from what is clearly an incredibly overwhelming emotional turmoil.

Steam is more than digital distribution: it’s also DRM, matchmaking, fast-patching, demo/trailer downloads, anti-cheating tech, marketing-through-free/paid-cross-game DLC, game support etc.. The fact that Valve is seriously lacking in their support department tells you enough that they can’t find the right folks for their service, let alone for their games.

I’d say Wardell is being too discrete with his statement.

That Left 4 Dead 2 came out so “soon” doesn’t mean anything: that game never furfilled the promises of Valve (the unification of L4D1 and 2) nor did its cast/atmosphere capture the magic of the first game, even though it’s much better in gameplay terms. I also find it pretty hilarious if you list all of Valve’s titles with the knowledge they’ve actually had to expand/enlist/headhunt loads of extra developers for them.

I’ve had no problems with Steam support at all. Even during massive sales, it’s taken less than 24 hours to get a reply.

Their forum moderators are cunts, but that’s always going to be the case when you endow faceless users with that kind of power.

And how is the fact that Valve has had to hire people to make their games somehow bad? Last time I checked, businesses don’t do too well without employees.

If anything Valve is responsible for one of the greatest coups in gaming history, signing the guys from Old Man Murray.

Portal which was a game that was a project from College student gets bought from Valve and then the students were hired by Valve. Because of that fantastic lil game there is a full game that not only has sp that is worth the price but it has a different/separate part for Co Op. Nuff said. Tuesday can’t come soon enough.

“And how is the fact that Valve has had to hire people to make their games somehow bad? Last time I checked, businesses don’t do too well without employees.”

They didn’t just hire people, they acquired several small studios over the years. It’s great what they do with it but it signals the fact that they’re having trouble coming up with things of their own and I am certain that the hurdles Steam presents for their own games is a cause of that. L4D (Turtle Rock), Portal (continuation of a student project), Alien Swarm (a revamped UT2k4 mod), DotA 2 (made by a creator of the original), … .

Hiring on temporary people and smaller companies is a common everyday practise in this industry. It is not a sign of anything.

Let Valve take its time, you’ll see that it won’t be regrettable

Hiring and buying studios is not strange, no. But not having your main team putt out anything at all for years, during an episodic series that was supposed to shorten dev times leaving everybody wondering: “is half life still going?” is defintly strange.
And Steams runnaway succes would be a verry plausible answer.

@23 I still fail to see how that’s in any way a bad thing. Who wouldn’t want the most talented people working for them?

Your notion that that’s somehow an indication of Valves own ineptitude runs directly counter to the fact that all that talent genuinely wants to work for them.

Blizzard essentially built their company the same way, buying the guys who were developing Diablo.

I’m sure Steam is a major operation to undertake, and I’m sure it takes an incredible ammount of focus from the leadership to remain ahead, but it’s not as if everyone making a videogame suddenly becomes a business executive over night.

It’s hardly something that affects the core developers. Except for the fact that they can waste more money than most.

@26 It’s weird, sure, but I think peoples obsession with Episode 3 kinda hides the fact that the source engine wasn’t really the best platform going forward. It didn’t have the legs for it, and I’d personally guess that Valve are so intent on killing their darlings that that’s why Episode 3 was canned in favor of a new game – Which is essentailly the reality by now, right?