Saying Counter Strike is still limping along is a pretty inaccurate portrayal as well. CSGO's popularity is in a constant increase currently - as I write this, there are 433k players currently in game in CSGO. It's honestly probably more popular than old CS ever was, even prior to the popularity decrease with 1.6 and then Source.
With the overwhelming success of Dota2 and CSGO, I don't think you can really suggest Valve is in a decline.
As has been seen time and time again, with complete freedom over when to release a game generally comes greatness (given the caveat that they developers actually have a clue, and by golly Valve staff are clearly among the best).
ps: I can understand your comment of "Dota 2 exists, I guess" if you're measuring it against LoL. Take a broader view of it in the entire online market and it is a massive success: http://store.steampowered.com/stats/
I've found steam is by far the best digital distribution client when it comes to managing my game library, mainly because of the 'steam libraries' feature that lets you create a steam library on any hard drive to install games to, and it makes restoring your games on a clean install of windows extremely simple too (just go into steam library settings, point it to the steam library folder(s) on your drives and all your games are back).
Origin and uplay aren't nearly up to par when it comes to stuff like managing games on multiple hdd's.
I think you can do both of these in Big Picture Mode.
"that was id’s mantra for so long: 'It’ll be done when it’s done.' And I recant from that. I no longer think that is the appropriate way to build games. I mean, time matters, and as years go by—if it’s done when it’s done and you’re talking a month or two, fine. But if it’s a year or two, you need to be making a different game."
1) http://www.gamefront.com/john-carmack-on-doom-4-id-quake-liv...
Maybe their famous no bosses, flat structure doesn't actually work.
What great ideas have come out of Valve in recent history?
And that sentence pretty much illustrates why the shine has come off Valve, at least for me. The last Half-Life game was in 2007 (as was the last Team Fortress game). The last Portal game was 2011, and Kim Swift has moved on to other things. Left 4 Dead's developers have moved to another publisher with Evolve. Counter-Strike is still limping along. Dota 2 exists, I guess. The only thing they've released since Dota 2 are Linux ports of old games, unless you count the ports of old games that Nvidia did to Android. Meanwhile the Steam Machine hasn't seen commercial release, we still don't even know what their Steam Controller is supposed to look like in its final form... and they're announcing a VR headset? After all their big names in VR already jumped ship to Occulus? Is there an adult somewhere at Valve minding the store?