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by chrisseaton 1592 days ago
> but without money

They do have money. They made tons from Half-Life etc. Then they now have a huge continual income stream from Steam.

1 comments

And I believe the amount the made from Half-Lifes is peanuts compared to amount they are making with TF2, CS:GO and Dota 2...
Obviously. The point was that earnings from half-life were effectively the stand-in for investor capital. And I'd wager that even with all that money, or ten times as much, Steam would not have been able to establish itself without hl2 as a tool/vector. It's been almost two decades that we haven't seen a single steam copycat that did not try to ride a flagship game release in exactly the same way (unless you consider GoG or humble as steam copycats, or Playstore and whatever itms is called these days)
Not to mention all the fees they earn as an intermediary to buying ~every modern PC game.