[solardev]

> Microtransactions, real money loot-boxes, gambling, NFT marketplace, battlepasses

I feel like I'm out of the loop here. Didn't those come more from mobile gaming and Asian free to play MMOs or Battle Royales? Didn't Valve make the "traditional" buy-once games like Half-Life, Portal, HL-derivatives like Team Fortress/CS?

As for milking its users, Steam (the platform) is an incredible value (for purchases, refunds, reseller ecosystem, etc.) and an awesome utility (community mods, auto updates, reviews, cloud sync, streaming, Proton, multiplayer APIs, etc.). I think the one fair gripe about them is that they take a pretty large cut from developers and force them to use the Steam payment processing, which takes another big cut. But for end users (players) it's a wonderful platform, especially compared to its peers like GOG Galaxy, the EA/Ubi/Microsoft clients, the Epic Game Stores... none of those come close in usability.

Individual titles within the platform might choose to use lootboxes and other crappy monetization schemes, but that's on them, not Steam. There are thousands of games that have better monetization models, and Steam helped revive the dormant indie PC gaming industry and then blew it up a thousandfold... almost none of those games have predatory pricing models.

As for cosmetic skins, what's wrong with that? Who cares how much they charge for those if it doesn't provide a gameplay advantage of any sort, just blinky particles? Compared to any ACTUAL predatory P2W game, I'd so much rather support games that only sell cosmetics.

It seems so unfair to reduce all that Valve has done for the PC gaming to "lootboxes and high priced skins". Without Steam PC gaming would probably have died by now, and with it the most amazing renaissance in indie titles since the shareware days.

[0xcde4c3db]

> Didn't Valve make the "traditional" buy-once games like Half-Life, Portal, HL-derivatives like Team Fortress/CS?

There's a reason that the slogan "we used to make games, now we make money" has been half-jokingly attributed to Valve. For years, their biggest revenue producers have been their free-to-play games with cosmetic microtransactions such as CS:GO, DOTA2, and TF2. As far as I know, their last "traditional" game was Portal 2 in 2011. Half-Life: Alyx could be argued to have similar production value, but was released as more of an erstwhile "pack-in title" for the Valve Index headset.

[solardev]

Oh wow, I didn't realize those games evolved into cosmetic marketplaces. (I bought TF2 and CS:GO when they were still one-time purchases).

But they're purely cosmetic? That sounds like a wonderful business model for all involved, especially vs the predatory P2W crap that's really infesting the market (especially in mobiles and MMOs). I'd probably also rather than a F2P cosmetics-only game over a buy-once game... if only because that usually implies there will be a proper server farm hosting the games, lessening cheaters or peer to peer hosts with terrible connections.

[dgant]

TF2 has functional items, but you can generally receive them from playing or buying them for a fixed price, around $1 each. Realistically for $30 you won't lack items.

The cosmetics will cost you, though.

[piperswe]

I hear they also balance TF2 quite well such that the functional items don't really give an advantage, just a different play style

[ED_Radish]

Valve pioneered most of that stuff, just that they sorta let go of the accelerator at some point and let other companies who were initially following their lead surpass them in exploitativeness so theyre not too associated with it nowadays.

Although I suppose its dubious whether real world money gambling (valve) is more or less exploitative than the gambling directly implemented into game design that the rest of the industry took up.

[sangnoir]

I have a hard time accepting TF2 hats were exploitative. The cosmetic items have no impact on gameplay, and I played the game while completely ignoring trading items. It never felt like gambling, unlike in EA games.

[solardev]

Isn't there a pretty big difference between gambling for cosmetics and gambling for gameplay advantage? The former is like buying clothes... sure, you can spend as much money as you want on them, but it doesn't really affect anyone else. Whereas P2W gambling totally screws up game balance for all the other players because it monetizes the power curve.