Valve is good. Perhaps Good Guy Valve did exist, at one time. But beneath the glassy smile of Good Guy Valve today lurks an altogether more cold and corporate beast , a textbook rent-seeker that is profiting from both hostile practices and a bizarrely customer-supported near monopoly on PC game sales. It seems increasingly unlikely that Good Guy Valve ever existed. Good Guy Valve is a clever marketing conceit, a machine operating on a massive scale and one that can only do so because it is powered by the one thing Valve would later come to exploit above all: the free labor of adoring users and consumer goodwill that often feels both unearned and bottomless.
Valve controls an unprecedented slice of the PC gaming industry, and there can be no doubt that the power behind the throne is, and always has been, us. Good Guy Valve worked hard to make us believe that willingly installing surveillance and control software onto our computers was a morally benevolent, perhaps even righteous act — and we swallowed it hook, line and sinker.
All of this began when Valve released an easy way to keep Counter-Strike updated. And then Valve figured out it could get a lot of people using the software by making it a mandatory part of Half-Life 2. Once this has been completed, the owner of either the retail or the Steam version can play Half-Life 2 single player in offline mode.
Remember that even the retail version of Half-Life 2 required the installation of Steam, which means any store that sold PC software was selling you their doom with every copy of the game. Anyone who wasn't immediately convinced it was worth it only needed a few minutes with Half-Life 2 to see the error of their ways, reaching for the gravity gun to hurl a toilet into the face of a Combine soldier, leaving the EULA unread and untouched but agreed-upon nonetheless. Innovative titles like Team Fortress 2 and Left 4 Dead cemented the decision, reassuring us that our lopsided relationship with Valve had more benefits than it did drawbacks.
It was convenient. It worked. Valve bought our loyalty with cloud-saves and claims of piracy as a customer service issue. Steam gave a lot back in the early days, even when it was laying down the tracks for a lot of questionable decisions in the future. EA launched its Origin client in , and demanded that we install it if we wanted to play Battlefield 3.
But when you step back and look at the situation, it just doesn't make sense. They are giving away games, refunding the broken ones, and trying to manage all of this through a poorly designed digital game service. It only makes sense when you remember that EA is a greedy company that just wants more money and more power, which they seem to lust after in an almost blinded like fashion. There is almost a sense from the writing in that everyone should just roll over and accept Steam.
Valve had all your information and was tracking your data, but it would be wrong for other companies to do so. Eight short years after feeling concern about one forced DRM installation, we suddenly had nothing but vile contempt for another, as if being forced to use one particular monopoly-surveillance-control channel was the most natural thing in the world, but the existence of a second is untenable.
Steam is Good, and Origin is Bad. We know these things to be true We all eventually discovered that our close, personal and entirely fictional relationship with Valve did not entitle us to any kind of refund on our purchases. We could go talk to someone. We hate Robin. If you want Gabe hate, go to an Episode 3 board.
Never underestimate the creativity of a sexually deprived nerd. More topics from this board Weapon ideas thread? Weapon ideas thread. What's the command for the fps and ping to show up on the bottom right corner? General 1 Answer Why can't i join or have friends join my game?
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Ask A Question. Browse More Questions. Keep me logged in on this device. PSN: LemonatedOrange. User Info: arleas. I'm pretty sure you misunderstood. They didn't say "hate" So for the question "Why does everyone hat Gabe Newell? And if that's not good enough, he uses MORE hat. Do you even know who you're talkin' about here? He's kinda a big deal. He's the co-founder and President of Valve. And for the most part people don't actually hate him, they just like making fun of him because he's really, really fat.
For the people who genuinely do hate him, it's because as the head of Valve it's convenient to blame him whenever Valve does something wrong e. This is pretty dumb, of course, since a lot of the time the serious Gabe-bashers act like Gabe is Valve's only employee and every single thing that happens he did himself. It's especially funny when people blame Gabe for the Mann Co. Store or anything else TF2-related , since he has no direct involvement with this game.
We carry a harpoon! Showing 1 - 15 of 92 comments. Yaz View Profile View Posts. Originally posted by TheBloodyViking :. Originally posted by Yaz :. Why would anyone hate GabeN?! A View Profile View Posts. Originally posted by Wido08GP Youtuber :. Yeah I get it but lots of people are complaining about him not making HL3 and offending him saying that he can't count to 3 or something like that.
Viso View Profile View Posts. Because there is no Half Life 2.
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