[015a]

> things that normal companies do successfully are impossible at Valve.

By "things" do you mean "build an even moderately successful PC game distribution platform"? Because no one else has managed to do that. Epic, EA, Xbox, Ubisoft, and a dozen others have tried, none of them reached 10% the popularity of Steam, and if they still exist today its because they have one keystone game keeping them alive.

Or, by "things" do they mean "make successful games"? Because Valve does that too; they produce games that have far more and longer success than most publishers. They've had failed projects, sure; its funny how when projects fail in hierarchically structured companies, as they do every day, we just put our hands up, retro it, and move on; but when they fail at Valve it has to be because they don't have managers, right?

Do your friends mean "be profitable"? Couldn't be that; Valve is tremendously profitable by any account. Highly productive? No... they're also that. Loved by customers? Strike three, Valve also checks that box.

I guess you could argue that "things" means "build twenty different directly competing messaging apps". Got me there, Google's army of managers did manage to do that when Valve couldn't.

[fngjdflmdflg]

Valve's largest game, CS2, is still full of bugs and almost unplayable on valve servers due to lack of a working anti-cheat. They even removed existing anti-cheat features such as the overwatch system that allowed players to review games for potential cheating. They also removed a lot of the game modes and maps. Coasting on being a marketplace (where they also had first mover advantage) shouldn't score valve any points for the topic at hand, which is about their ability to get things done. CS2 is "successful" in that they run a gambling site and marketplace within the game that brings them a lot of money.[0] But they are also slowly killing their game and have ignored it for over a year. The best thing Valve has done in recent years is the steam deck. Their games are not getting better and my guess is Deadlock will end up closer to Artifact in reception than CS or Dota.

[0] https://store.steampowered.com/charts/topselling/global - in top 100 games by revenue for 12 years

[015a]

Deadlock is already within 10k of Artifact's all time peak player count; and it "legally" doesn't exist and is closed invite only [1] [2]. So, you can guess whatever you want; no one in their right mind would assert that a hero-based shooter MOBA will achieve similar levels of success as a card game. But maybe you're not in your right mind.

As for Counterstrike 2; I'll believe anything you're rambling about actually matters when it spends just 24 hours outside of the top 5 most played games on Steam. Its #2 right now. Dota is #3. You're welcome to channel Trump and argue that they're cooking the books on their player-counts, but that's about the only argument you've got that has any chance of being right.

[1] https://steamdb.info/app/1422450/charts/

[2] https://steamdb.info/app/583950/charts/

[fngjdflmdflg]

>I'll believe anything you're rambling about actually matters

Why do you think long time players of CS use FaceIt to play? That should immediately strike you as odd that the most dedicated demographic of the game is not even using Valve's servers. And do you really think people would still play at the rates they are if there were no skins?

>they're cooking the books on their player-counts

They are not, however some non-zero amount of the player base is bots farming free weapon case drops.[0][1] At one point these were making hundreds of thousands a week. No other game has this issue.

>that's about the only argument you've got that has any chance of being right.

Do you even play this game? It seems strange to make a claim about a game you have never played. Everyone who plays this game agrees that Valve has failed to make the game better and after almost a year people still agree that cs:go was better, although Valve deleted cs:go from steam so nobody can play it anymore.

[0] https://www.pcgamesn.com/counter-strike-2/csgo-case-drops

[1] https://www.dexerto.com/csgo/csgo-community-mocks-player-cou...

[sdmcelroy]

I imagine what is impossible at Valve is keeping people working on projects that the employees have lost interest in. I suspect this is what is happening in CS2. As a player, I can feel the lack of interest in the well-being of the game, the lack of skilled talent working on the fundamentals. Even though this game has made Valve more money than any other game on its platform, they just don't support it enough probably because it just doesn't excite the employees much anymore.