Valve is so back

Pretty sure at this point valve just does things for the love of the game. They don't need VR or handhelds and they certainly don't need their own games, but they do it anyway.
And I don't say that just cause 30% profit off their store is enough; Apple and Google both do that on mobile and they still stick their grubby hands on everything (their stores are probably a fraction of their profit anyway).
Nah, it's cause Valve doesn't have shareholders and doesn't seem interested in the myth of infinite growth. They just want to tinker; Portal was self reflecting parody, haha.
- That's what you get when the Company CEO is also the original (or at least one of) Founder
  Every time the founder CEO steps down and is replaced (Unless the founder directly, hand picks their successor (and even then sometimes not)) the company goes to shit soon after
  It happened with Google, it happened with Apple, it happened with Reddit (Little more complicated, but there were multiple founders, the one with the vision and the one with only money on the mind, you can guess which one is currently at the helm) and it'll happen with Valve too
  
  I'm terrified when Gabe dies that my library of temporarily licensed software will be stripped away.
  
  Yep, as soon as you're beholden to shareholders, you're forced to take the short term view on everything, at the expense of long term returns.
  
  I doubt Gabe actually steers anything these days. Valve as a company might already be on autopilot. Their culture permeates through every employee who works there. I am not looking forward to the day Gabe dies but I don't think vavle is gonna change much when he does. They are already winning without trying. And if they keep the company private they have no incentive to fuck it up.
  If valve goes public that's the day we panic.
  
  That is because everything an original CEO steps down to make place for a different CEO. It is because the new CEO will make the company grow. (It also means they ruin the company, but they don't say that out loud)
- I'm glad they do these things.
  It also makes me more likely to put time into Deadlock, because I know they'll support it for a while.
  
  I was talking to my friend about it today. The jury is out on whether Deadlock will be free to play or not, but I expect it will and I expect them to set it up as the new generation's TF2 - i.e. Valve's home cooked free to play game, and this thing might have a tail of 15 years or more.
  I might be wrong, but I hope I'm not. I like Deadlock so far.
- They don’t need VR or handhelds and they certainly don’t need their own games, but they do it anyway.
  Releasing a handheld was a fairly savvy marketing strategy, given how lucrative the console marketplace has proven to be. Idk if I'd call that "love of the game" so much as "optimal play at the production price point".
  Valve doesn’t have shareholders and doesn’t seem interested in the myth of infinite growth.
  Plenty of Valve's store content is absolute dogshit. I refuse to believe they are immune to the allure of infinite growth through the distribution of MOBAs and other FTP games. But they're not munching on their seed corn in pursuit of stratospheric growth, like Apple and Microsoft. They're also coasting on an environment where things are getting worse and they're just kinda treading water.
  Not getting worse is the new getting better.
  
  proton is definitely an improvement, and them actually maintaining all their functionality is better than most tech companies are doing.
- Shareholders ruin everything. That's why I'm a Mutualist.
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BeuuVCdJLSc
  
  Probably not too far off from his real thoughts, lol
- You don’t seem to have the billionaire monopolist mindset, when you reach the level steam is at you are no longer competing for money but power, steam could be making all the money in the world but that won’t stop Microsoft from shutting them down as they have already tried to do with windows store, if steam doesn’t have its own platform they are vulnerable and beholden to Microsoft, it’s true Gabe Newell could retire anytime he wants but that only applies to him not his countless employees, if steam can’t make enough money to pay a competitive wage to hire people from Microsoft, Nintendo, Apple or Sony then they will just work for them for more money so they have to charge the %30 Steam isn’t a public company but I guarantee the vast vast majority of its profits are poured directly back into the company its always that way or other companies will outcompete and they will die.
  
  I bet Microsoft also tried to buy them out at some point. They really want in on that PC gaming market share but the windows store is so incredibly bad that it'd probably be the end of PC gaming as we know it.

Since the games in the first image, Valve has released:
TF2
Left 4 Dead
Left 4 Dead 2
Alien Swarm
Portal 2
CS:GO
Dota 2
Artifact
Dota Underlords
Half-Life: Alyx
CS2

CS2 and Alyx also happened, it's a thing now.
- CS2 is a half-assed sequel meant to be the bare minimum necessary to keep Valve’s cs money printer going.
  
  Completely half-assed. They only:
  Moved the game to a new engine
  Rebuilt the codebase from scratch because the previous codebase was 100% spaghetti.
  Made sure the game feels as close to the CSGO experience as possible. The resident CS nerd Ropz said the movement is 1 to 1 with CSGO which is not a small feat.
  Rebuilt the server architecture for better online experience
  Changed how smokes work which has noticeably altered the meta
  Redoing all the maps
  Reworked the audio
  Made sure all the skins can be transferred over and look somewhat decent.
  Bunch of minor QoL things that they didn't need to do but did anyway
  Fucking lazy devs.

They'll still be printing money.

I would love a Portal 3.
- But Valve can't count to 3
  
  Portal 2.9
  
  What about skipping 3 and making Portal π?
- What would you really add or change that would warrant a third game though? The second game can already be expanded into multiple full games thanks to the mod community.
  The first game laid out the concept, the second game refined it and expanded on it. While technically nothing stopping then from making more of exactly the same game such would be disappointing against most people their expectation of improvement and would be easily criticized from all kinds of corners. Weather it is fair or makes any logical sense valve today is who they are part because of their imago, maintaining there respectable and high quality standard is economic survival.
  
  I don’t know what I’d add, I’m not nearly creative or talented enough to design games. I just love the world and want more official stories in it.
  I trust Valve to only do it if they have something that would be as big a jump as there was between 1 and 2.
  
  Time travel such as has never been implemented before
- No.

IceFrog is cooking.

My man doesn't know the genius of Dota 2.
- Dota 2 is the greatest game of all time. Not video game, but game. Take video games, chess and board games, sports, all of it. Dota 2 is insane and simply the best. The sheer amount of mind energy that people can throw into the matches is unreal and the skill ceiling is seemingly endless.
  
  Damn. Reading this comment is humbling.
  If you had to make a sequel to DOTA/DOTA2, what would it be?
  Deadlock seeks to be that sequel, but I personally don't really see it just yet

- That people seem to be playing it because they like it, instead of despite hating it?
  
  For Now
- Good movement, interesting laning mechanics mostly