It’s like going to Google and wanting to only work on search. It’s an ads company.
That's been proven untrue by the MBAs and the market. Google no longer creates good products, but the ad dollars flow more and more. People still significantly use Google search.
I'm of the belief that that's purely inertia - That Google was so successful at it's products that even though they're losing steam fast, they're still good products for now, but that they're gonna see a steep dive soon and not be able to recover.
Or if they’re not superior they’re not inferior.
Whereas when I use other search engines I have the nagging feeling I’m missing better information on Google.
Are you though?
I've been using DDG for years now as my primary search engine.
When I started, I used !g quite often precisely because of that feeling. These days I have a hard time even remembering to try it when a search is unfruitful.
The reason being that it became less and less useful, and these days even when I do remember trying it, it generally doesn't add anything useful to my results.
So it couldn't just be called Valve or Blizzard, it'd have to be called something else.
If they do it right though, some interesting things could come from it. VW's high end is always full of parts that started life on an Audi and they learned to make more cheaply over time.
It seems counterintuitive: if there’s money to be had, go get it. But there’s a cognitive load and time sink at the senior management levels. Why bother us with this idea for a game that represents 1% of our annual profit if successful?
I feel a possible answer to this is to create a “prestige” studio that is more focused on fortifying your brand rather than profit. And I feel that what’s needed is full autonomy. Blizzard or Valve can wholly own this studio, but there is no cross-resourcing. Hire a passionate team, give them IPs to tenderly care for, and then leave them the ^%#* alone.