Valve have too much employee direction to participate in the race to the bottom that is modern video games.

But, to your point-- everyone got out of the AAA game development business. We've had one Elder Scrolls and one GTA for ten years now. All of those insane articles dramatizing Bioshock: Infinite as the last AAA title were true. It's like the Waterworld of games, the last big effects movie before everything became cheap CGI.

Games are lootboxes, middling cartoony style, addiction mechanics with some social stuff lightly sprinkled on top now.

Sidenote: Making TF3 would be especially weird because Valve basically popularized all of those trends.

That's just the format now. Even CDPR and other companies clinging to the old formula are just coasting on past momentum, with the cracks starting to show.

Sony manages to pull this off still, if only to sell hardware.

The Last of Us pt. II is an incredible, highly detailed, long single player game with no microtransactions of any kind. Most modern Sony titles are like that.

Yeah the consoles are little islands of genuine content too (Although, a new Zelda could come out a bit faster...). But it's almost like it only works there, as a loss leader.

> Making TF3 would be especially weird because Valve basically popularized all of those trends.

> That's just the format now.

It simply doesn't need to be this way. It would take 1 executive decision to change all of this.

Artifact was a good card game only killed by really dumb marketing and monetization decisions.

Half-Life Alyx is almost universally hailed as the best VR game and as good if not better than the previous Half-Life games.

That being said, you're right about them neglecting a lot of their IP. Specifically a TF3 might be really cool to see, along with more love for Counter-Strike.

Artifact was just straight up a trash game.

I hate this new idea that every failed game is just "bad marketing"

I would argue that games lasting 30-60min was an issue as well (for a 1v1 card game)

> Half-Life Alyx is almost universally hailed as the best VR game

MS Flight Simulator 2020 and Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice might be other "best VR game" contenders.

I haven't played Hellblade but FS 2020 can't be even really be called a VR ready game. Even with a 3080 you struggle to reach 90 fps. It's a vomit machine.

Try to increase cache from default 8GB to 64GB, that helped a lot. I play it on a 10980XE/128GB RAM/RTX3090 and HP Reverb G2 at high details and flying over Paris with the latest update is now very smooth.

That’s some billionaire’s PC in most of the world.

It's slower than some $300 Ryzen (5600X), just more threads and memory. It's for VR development.

I thought the UI for MSFS in VR was awful.

Though I think some of that may be because of the game controller I use. It's an Astro C40, which due to driver issues, can't decide to tell Windows if it's an XBox 360 controller or an actual Astro C40. If it identifies as a C40, then games don't know what it is and don't have any default bindings and I have to configure it all, and with a game like MSFS 2020, there's a lot to bind. But also, lately, I've been having an issue with it deciding that the controller only has two buttons and nothing else, not even analog sticks.

But I digress...

I think MSFS in VR would be a LOT better if it gets support for controller-free hand tracking, like the Leap Motion. I'd still use a game controller for the main inputs (Flight stick, brakes, rudder, probably throttle as well), but I'd love to be able to just reach and flip light switches, turn dials, etc.

> Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice

How so? I wasn't able to play past the intro when they literally letterboxed me in a cutscene.

You probably hit some bug, I was able to finish it completely without any major issues (I think it crashed like twice). Alyx, while cool, is too static, Hellblade features some fast combat movements and both are atmospheric in their own way.

Actually I "ragequitted" (well, not rage, just disappointment) when it seemed to be an adaptation of the 3rd-person perspective.

Might have been infantile on my part, I'll give it a chance again once I repair my rig.

The most recent update for Counter-Strike is honestly really great. It's a difficult game to touch as the community is in a pretty good spot meta game wise. I'd love for them to shake things up faster and more frequently, but as a spectator it's a super competitive game and I love watching it.

Oh, I feel you! CS is one of those games where, at least with regards to weapon balance, it's in such a good spot that the community actively doesn't want many changes. Most people are also content with the same 7 maps and don't play new ones when they're added. Still, I think seeing a proper map rotation with competitive seasons would be really cool, especially since the community makes so many high quality maps! A bit more could be done to battle cheaters though, as those have been getting very bad in the last few months once again.

Definite agree on the watchability, CS is the only e-sport I really watch the big tournaments for, they just nailed the aspect of it being easy to understand and creating a lot of high-adrenaline moments.

> Half-Life Alyx is almost universally hailed as the best VR game and as good if not better than the previous Half-Life games.

Yet weirdly, Valve refuses to sell their Index VR system to people in Australia.

As I discovered recently, when looking to get one, here in Australia. :/

There are people selling some international version via Amazon, however apparently if any kind of warranty issue happens then you're screwed. So, "no" to that.

Probably related to

https://www.accc.gov.au/media-release/high-court-dismisses-v...

Hardware devices have an even higher cost burden for warranty handling then software products, So given they're not really wanting to do proper warranty on software I don't see hardware being better.

Interestnig. Valve doesn't honour that agreement anyway.

I bought a game a while back that turned out not to work on my system (very clearly), and Value rejected the (several) refund requests I created for it.

So it became a matter of "do I want to do a chargeback on this (and lose my entire Steam account), or not?". Decided to just put up with it, as it wasn't much money.

That being said, I rarely buy via Steam any more, and never full price.

From memory they give refunds based on some time threshold of hours played. So if you’ve played more than say 2 hours, it’s much harder to get a refund

Yes, that's well known. The game in question had about 15 mins of total time, as it _wouldn't run_ on my system.

So, not even close to the threshold. Still, they just kept rejecting it with some form-letter-like excuse (eg no actual conversation), and that's the end of the matter each time. No appeal, etc.

Alyx is fun to play but the jokes and dialog are really bad. Previous half life games did a lot more with a lot less.

Being the best VR game isn't a very high bar. From what I read from people who play a lot of VR games, the amount of polish was the only thing to make it stand out, and without the Half-Life name, it would just be a slow hallway shooter that didn't do anything innovative like the previous Half-Life games did.

Half-Life: Alyx was definitely nowhere near as good as previous Half-Life games. Graphics and VR don’t determine a good game.

Half-Life 2 and associated technologies put Valve in the position they are today.

I would say Half-Life: Alyx is better. Immersion is much better, gameplay is better. I don't see any reason to prefer HL2 over Alyx. User scores at least indicate they are very, very close to eachother. On steam Alyx has a higher score (98%) then HL2 (96%).

> Why did Valve get out of the AAA game development business?

Dota 2 and CS:GO are both AAA games that are still under development. Valve never stopped developing.

The more accurate question would be why did Valve get out of the single-player AAA game development business? The answer is risk and profit. The same reason why Disney keeps making Marvel and Star Wars content. Established properties are good earners with very low risk - and there's no lack of rabid fans who love the companies for it.

Or 1% of that cash into improving Steam?