Valve have recently rejected EA from purchasing their company
Source
Original Source

Gabe says that, if Valve were to be bought by EA, EA will simply take their IP and Steam, and the company will be dead in two years.

I just wanted to take this time and say...

THANK GOD FOR THAT!

Valve is THE Best gaming company at the moment. They take so much love and care, and are always trying to push the medium forward.

I'm going to use this thread to point out why Valve is so great, and just really gush :3

• Steam is really the only platform for PC Gamers where one can socialize, play games, and Buy games at the same time. (Origin can go shove its EULA up its ass)
  
• Steam is a HUGE support for Indie games. Without it, I would not have ever known/bought games like Super Meat Boy, Binding of Isaac, Rock of Ages, Recettear, Limbo, Braid, Bastion, Lone Survivor, and many more. Honestly, each game can be it's own point!
  
• Steam Sales allows me to buy old classic games for extremely cheap (without the need to pirate it). Games like Bioshock, Psychonaut, Prince of Persia sands of time, etc.
  
• Steam Sales is just awesome in general. Remember how EA said Steam Sales "cheapen" games, and then they have their own Origin Indie sale, and are now trying to buy out valve? Yeah, FUCK You EA.
  
• Even some better Indie games from EA's "Indie dept" were sold on Steam. I bought WARP on steam. Suck it, EA Origin.
  
• Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2 release was really close together and got people angry, So what did they do? They made players from both games be able to play together, on ALL maps!!
  
• The Orange Box - Wow....
  
• Half-Life!!! ! ! ! ! !
  
• Portal 2 was amazing!! But they didn't stop there, they went ahead and made a LEVEL CREATOR For Portal 2!!!
  
• Team Fortress 2 is an old game.. But they've literally been updating it all the time!! Right now, they recently release Mann vs Machine!
  
• NO Other companies can love their games and put so much attention to them. The important thing is that they made sure every single detail of the game is well designed and gives their customer as much mileage as possible. The Portal 2 level creator was awesome and so easy to use. You hear that? Blizzard? Fuck your editor.
  
• Steam is also being updated constantly, recently with Game Hubs and Greenlight - Further providing help to indie developers!
  
• They listen to the community! They actually do!!
  
• Valve's business model has such an impossibly high reputation! Almost every game created by valve have become an internet meme. Valve is truly the real face of the gaming industry. Blizz, EA, activision and all of their "hardcore" shit can go to hell. I don't need shitty editors, and esports, and 14 year old kids teabagging me.

Anyway, not much to discuss other than that Valve is amazing.
Share your love here!

(Also, when I rant about blizz, I meant blizzard of today. Blizzard of yesteryear was just as amazing as valve. Too bad they sold out)

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Sep 11 2012, 6:25 pm by UnholyUrine.

EA didn't offer to purchase Valve, you little circlejerker, you.

I'm not one to back up Valve but man EA sucks. Origins sucks. I'd be so pissed if EA took Valve.

As we were discussing yesterday in the shoutbox though, it is my personal believe that Valve is not going to stay as a gaming company only, and EA wouldn't be willing to or be capable of handling their other projects.

Maybe not recently, but certainly have... somehow the news only surfaced now.

Sarcasm aside,
EA has done many things far worse than making mediocre games.

They have bought and basically killed off many game companies
They have done controversial advertisement with Dante's Inferno and Dead Space in order to get publicity, which just makes the entire industry seem juvenile.
They were picked to be the worst company in America, and while it may be internet trolls, I'm sure their work condition is nothing to be proud of.
They encompass the worse tropes and cliches of the gaming culture today.
Their statements are often hypocritical, with bad PR and reputation.

And this is just a small list in conjunction with the poor games they continually shit out every year, stagnating the entire industry

---

On a brighter note



Apart from the advert very obviously focusing on casual gamers (not that it's bad, it's just too obvious)
I Love you Valve (fanboy mode engaged)


Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Sep 11 2012, 9:05 pm by UnholyUrine.

That's what I mean by going in a different direction. I doubt this is going to stop at games, movies or any entertainment beyond that.

Very cool, in a semi corpacracy-dystopian sort of way.

It's those companies faults for letting EA buy them out, then. Like I said in my first post in this circle jerk of a thread, nobody's forcing anyone to trust EA. Sure, Valve's smart for not letting EA buy them out, but any company that does let them do it is stupid, and all the fault should lie on them, not EA. And if you're going to bring shit games into this, I'll reiterate what I said in my first post. Nobody's forcing you to buy them. Also, apparently the millions of people who buy their games don't think they're bad. But wait, they must be EA sheep, right? Madden '13 sold 1.65 million copies in the first week, whereas Left 4 Dead 2 sold 2 million copies in the first two weeks. Apparently, people like EA games more. I realize those stats don't mean anything, and I'll agree with you that their games (especially the sports ones) can get dry and seem recycled, the fact of the matter is that they still sell a lot better than most companies (regardless of game quality), so saying that they stagnate the market is completely false. Also, if bad games are such a problem to you, I'm pretty surprised that you haven't made a Treyarch/Infinity Ward thread.

How did Valve not let EA "buy them out" I thought companies have no choice in the matter. These companies are run on shares, if EA sweeps in and purchases all the shares, becoming a majority shareholder, they effectively own the company? No?

I'm confused how this shit works.


Also here is the article about EA being the worst company ever, beating the Bank of America lol:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2012/04/04/ea-is-the-worst-company-in-america-now-what/


But anyway, if you want to protest EA there is only one way you can do it - with your wallets. Just stop buying EA games. Still want to play the game? Pirate it! Market loss is the only thing those massive corporations will listen to.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Sep 12 2012, 1:20 am by Oh_Man.

I think Valve's a private company or something, so you can't just buy out their shares. And if that's true for other companies, I guess it really isn't their fault if they get bought out.

Valve is privately owned.

I have a hard time telling whether Valve (specifically Steam) is making gaming better or worse.

There are plenty of indie game blogs, news feed, and websites. You could say Steam is doing a good job at providing a platform for indie developers to advertise their games. You could also say that Steam is providing Valve control over indie developers - and a cut of indie developers' profits. It's also a possibility that people eventually expect Steam to spoonfeed them quality indie games, and that any indie game not on Steam must either be a scam, spyware, or plain bad.

monopolymonopolymonopolymonopolymonopolymonopoly

So far, Valve has done well. However, it has a lot of power to screw with gaming too.

EDIT:

Private as in it doesn't have shares to begin with.

@I Iz Leet
It's pretty obvious you have not read my posts at all.
I pointed out many things that EA was in the wrong for besides their stagnant, bad games

sooo. yeah. I don't know what's your beef? Especially since this is a Valve tribute, and not a Bash EA thread.

EDIT: To be fair, there is a reason why these games exists... Because people do buy them. But it is because of the company's bad business model that perpetuates the problem.

---

@Sand Wraith
I am not sure where your doubts lie.
You say that Steam makes the Indie market more accessible and therefore more competitive. Yea, it makes it more challenging for indie developers, but it's always better to be more competitve, as it forces people to make better games.
Also, you say that Steam takes control over Indie games, but that is only if Indie games fail anywhere else, and that's not true (Look at Fez, and other XBLA games).
Finally, Steam provides a great service for Indie developers, giving them the opportunity to be heard by a big community.
The monopoly gambit is interesting to think about, but I have not seen Valve ever abusing that privilege.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Sep 12 2012, 2:51 am by UnholyUrine.

No, I didn't say that it makes it more accessible. Steam can help advertise for games, but at the cost of giving up a certain amount of control (which was fairly minimal IIRC; a plus). Steam can be just another avenue of distribution, one that is figuratively well-lit and well-known, amongst other forms of distribution including posting on random forums/communities, websites like kickstarter, or a private website.
In a way, Steam makes a game less accessible, as it reduces the likelihood of pirating (although even Steam games can be pirated), which is, ultimately, another form of distribution that can result in viral popularity.

Competitive? What makes a game better than another? What makes a song better than another?
What makes Madden games any worse or better than Mass Effect? What about StarCraft, Total Annihilation, and Red Alert (and C&C)? How about WoW and Guild Wars, or EVE Online and Perfect World? The Sims and a LotR video game (my personal favourite being The Two Towers)? What about Dark Soul's (and its predecessor, Demon's Souls) vs. Skyrim? If you ask me, Demon's Souls is much more fun and challenging than Skyrim.
Any competition between video games, like paintings, music, TV shows, stories, and so on, is only a popularity contest for the vast majority of the time. I find it rare for video games to actively compete against each other, considering all of the nuances that can distinguish one game from another, including its date of release.

What do you mean, "fail anywhere else?" (IIRC, Valve only governs certain financial aspects of the game's sales, but I may be wrong.)

I probably misunderstood your 1st post, the part about "spoonfeed quality games"
...
Okay I had to read it a few times I think i get it.
You're saying that, because Steam games are so prevalent and pretty much defines the Indie game market, any games outside of Steam may seem not as good.
Again, I think that's not true, games like StepMania, and Little Fighters 2 are all pretty good without Steam.. And then there are XBLA games like Fez and Castle Crasher..
It's somewhat retroactive to think that Steam is doing such a good job of providing a platform for indie games that it harms indie games that do not use it... Why would they not use it when it is such a good platform and provide such a large base

As for the competition thing
There is clearly competition in terms of who on steam plays your game, as a person's game library, and the game he is currently playing, is all displayed. There are also game hubs, recommendations, the direct link to the metacritic, and etc. Now there's even the game contribution numbers. It is also possible to look at the steam chart to see which game is being played the most.
All of this has a huge effect on what games people will take a look and maybe buy.
The way Steam is set up allows games to compete with each other, and this pushes games to be better.

Obviously, not all games fall well under this system, as you've pointed out. But I think it is something very important to have.

EDIT: Also, just to clarify.. saying Pirated games means the game is more accessible is ludicrous. It does not benefit the developer and it does not help the game whatsoever.
Also, assuming that Steam makes games harder to pirate is false.
Finally, Pirating games to make them Work on Steam is nearly impossible FOR A GOOD REASON. It gives players incentive to NOT pirate the game. Isn't that what we're supposed to strive for?

Most (if not all) of those games can be found on other platforms. Meat boy was even a big hit on Newgrounds before it was developed for the game market.

What did they do? Well, they completely lied about several promises, and then they thought by combining the games that everything would be fine. Yeah.. nice work there, Valve. You really delivered on that one.

Hey, the Campaign Editor was one of the best things in my gaming life. It made already fun game nearly unkillable with tons of user made content for endless hours of gameplay. Honestly, I cannot see myself playing puzzles in Portal more than playing UMS in Starcraft.


ALSO: Where is the hat love? This is Vavle we are talking about, right?

Guys, please read the post in its entirety before quoting it and posting retorts... srsly.

@L4D - Yeah, Ive heard about the launch boycott, but was never part of it, so I don't know. However, many companies would just do it without giving back to the community in any way. They'd just shrug it off and say "too bad, if you want smth better, you gotta buy it". A lot of DLC's are like this (like Mass Effect 3). Valve made a mistake, but they apologized with grace.

Hats are.. meh.. I mean, they gotta monetize TF2 SOMEhow XD

Being a console owner, I did have to buy it.

I want to say, "Oh, they had achievements, and Micro$oft's policy on DLC with achievements means it cannot be released for free."
WELL, the Cold Stream pack (totally achievement-less) came along recently and I still had to lay 7USD down for it.

...
It's free for PC users

I guess Valve no likes consoles... .. that's the first legitimate bad thing about Valve I've come across...
(And also how the game "Seduce me" was taken down from Greenlight)
(I'm pretty sure they're not stupid.. they probably want everyone to go on the PC and use Steam)

That's not even a game, that's someone trying to make a quick buck because sex sells.

http://www.vgcats.com/comics/?strip_id=300

I laughed at the last panel

tho in all seriousness, only if you're really easy to pursuade would you open those crates XD

@lil-inferno: i'd have to see how the game is played ... but then that'd mark me as a bad person