View Full Version : President of Gearbox Calls Out Valve
"I'm actually kind of mad at Doug because with the Orange Box, he said the 360 and PC versions are the good ones and the PS3 version is like the stepchild because some other developer made it. Well you Valve don't really think that, because look what you've done on the PC side. You've supported that, you've added all this content to Team Fortress 2, and you've left us hanging. It's hard to accept that genuinely, because I know the business, I know you guys make half the money on the PS3 version because you've got other fingers in the pie, and other developers getting a cut. It benefits you if nobody buys that, and only buys the PC version, because you make the most money. There's this underlying sleaziness.
http://www.analoghype.com/2009/11/president-of-gearbox-questions-valves-lack-of-ps3-support/
tinman_licks
11-05-2009, 02:04 AM
awesome rant.
coleipoo
11-05-2009, 02:45 AM
The president of Gearbox says this, when Borderlands was promised to be streamlined for PC gamers yet is the same exact game as the console versions -- dumbed down and designed for a controller.
SynGamer
11-05-2009, 03:04 AM
The president of Gearbox says this, when Borderlands was promised to be streamlined for PC gamers yet is the same exact game as the console versions -- dumbed down and designed for a controller.
The PC hasn't really been profitable for a while now compared to consoles...
Anyway, great rant. Doug is a douche and the sole reason I refuse to buy anything Valve makes (I want L4D2...especially after playing the demo). It's bullshit that they won't own up to the fact that they suck at programming when new tech comes along. If you can't swing it in this industry, then get the fuck out.
LordKefka06
11-05-2009, 03:20 AM
Valve can kiss my ass.
anticulture
11-05-2009, 03:33 AM
I just gained some respect for Randy, despite the fact that he's responsible for creating that awful game, Brothers in Arms. :P
He's right about most of their motives. Consoles are the second-class citizen up in Bellevue, because Steam brings in such a glorious amount of revenue, off of products that are outdated by a decade. None of the bigwigs there understand why people buy console games, and are of the mindset that the PC is the way to go. If it isn't obvious to you: Valve's focus is on the PC platform, largely because there is little-to-no competition in their sector (with Steam).
It's kind of like this: you run a world-class restaurant that has been the recipient of the Michelin Star, you've got this world-renowned chef and you're in a prime location for traffic and tourism-spending. For whatever reason, you are the only restaurant of this kind in the area. You're doing fine, business-wise, and see no reason to change a good thing. So, along comes your kid, who says: "You know, it's summer. People love lemonade. We should start selling lemonade." Well, that's true (people do love them some lemonade), but the real money to be made is in selling $100+ dinner plates and bottles of wine to your big spenders. The restaurant business is booming. So, you tell your kid to go out back, and sell his lemonade, while you focus on running the real business of the distinguished restaurant. "God bless you, Timmy. Go learn about capitalism, and if you fail, it's okay -- I'll still love you." Maybe the lemonade stand brings in enough money to the point where it's profitable (good job, Timmy!). Profitable is good, but that's no reason to leave the restaurant business.
Valve is not your friend. Valve is a business. And like any business, they are always looking to expand into new markets to tap into new revenue streams. In Asia, it is the cafe model. In the west, the big buzzwords are WoW and Call of Duty. Cafes won't work in the West, but they want revenue streams from their customers, besides the single sale. So what are your options?
Well, you can go the MMO route, or you can offer subscriptions. That's about it, really. But those are long-term goals. In the short term, you can just quickly produce more smaller games.
The reason for the lack of TF2 updates on the 360 is twofold. One, because they are cheap. Two, the shelf life for console games is remarkably short. It would cost them money to put out these updates (certification and the limit on title updates before being charged), and seeing as how you don't see The Orange Box on store shelves anymore, there's little incentive for them to continue support. This is the same reason for the lack of PS3 support. Valve is cheap. They like having a giant warchest of money, and they could care less about making console gamers happy. Their support for the 360 is simply an experiment; one could even call it a 'self-fulfilling prophecy' -- seing as how TOB was sent to die, post-launch. The people running the company honestly don't think consoles are the future of gaming.
Is it because they haven't been to a GameStop, to look at the hilariously sad PC gaming section? No, it's because they're the only game in town, when it comes to PC gaming. And it's good to be king.
It's not that they want their console versions to fail (who would want that?), it's just that there isn't any reason to support the longevity of those products, as the market typically doesn't support it.
And yes, there's an EA logo advertised heavily with their 360 games; but again, that doesn't mean they want those games to fail, so they can sell more Steam copies. The 360 is simply another revenue stream. And Valve is content with just letting those profits trickle in, while they build you another game to buy next year. The 360 is Valve's lemonade stand.
They develop in-house (a cost), but porting from the PC to the 360 is a rather simple process for lazy developers. So, the cost is minimal to the potential revenue stream. The fact that they foot the bill for the creation of the game, yields them a better publisher deal (and a higher percentage of the profits).
My point is: they're simply not going to support console games like they do with their PC products, because on the PC, the only people who lose are themselves. They view them as two separate beasts, entirely. And to be honest, they are. How many people are still playing a console game, two months after it launches? The drop-offs in both player base and retail shelf space is staggering, unless your game is called Call of Duty or HALO. Now, how many PC gamers do you know that are still playing WarCraft III, WoW, CS and all of these legacy games? Exactly.
And we're seeing their new business model with the L4D games. Traditionally, Valve has supported their PC games with years and years of updates and support. Suddenly, we're cranking out sequels as if we're producing a Madden game? Yes, this is a tired debate (which is sure to draw out fanboys and stupid arguments about boycotts), but you'd be insane to not see that it was a business decision to release an annual L4D game. They wanted to get in there, before the 'Zombie Game Saturation' point hit, because the first game was such a phenomenal success.
What yields more money for you? Releasing a DLC pack for a game that will probably be discounted at $30-40 on retail shelves? Or releasing a new $60 product?
When that saturation point hits - and it will - I promise you that Valve already has another co-op shooter, designed around the AI Director's ability to send swarms of enemies at you, just waiting to be released. This co-op genre is their new cash cow, while they figure out what to do with Half-Life and their other 'in limbo' projects.
So far as the PS3 is concerned: It's not like Valve can't bring in some talented PS3-savvy programmers to crank out amazing products on Blu-Ray or even PSN; just like it's not impossible (or out of their budget) to port Steam to OSX; and just like it's not impossible for them to acquire a company who specializes in transparent emulation, allowing Windows binaries to run in a 'nix environment. All of these things are possible (and profitable). But again: they just don't see the point.
It's this simple: they don't want to do it. Is that evil or wrong? Perhaps not. It's simply business. But they certainly are lazy. Very, very, very lazy.
For a company like Gearbox, it's almost suicide to not launch on all available platforms. For Valve, they could care less that they're missing out on PS3 sales because they don't make a living, game-to-game. Valve can afford to have a game flop (if that day ever comes). Valve could stop making games, for the next twenty years, and still remain profitable. Gearbox, however, cannot.
And Randy is absolutely right: Steam is the bigger picture for Valve. Their obscene amount of money has been made almost solely off of VAC and Counter-Strike: Source. Until that well dries up (fat chance), they will continue to operate, as usual.
How old is that guy? What is it to him what Valve does. :cry: :cry: what a baby
Puffa469
11-05-2009, 09:54 AM
Why would you buy Valve games on any other platform but PC?
The PS3 version of Orangebox is crap. The 360 version better, but no updates. Part of that is Microsofts fault, with it's long and winding approval process and insistence that no DLC be free.
Just get Valve games on the PC and you'll be sound as a pound.
punkmaggit
11-05-2009, 11:18 AM
It's bullshit that they won't own up to the fact that they suck at programming when new tech comes along. If you can't swing it in this industry, then get the fuck out.
This. :applause:
Jodou
11-05-2009, 12:08 PM
The president of Gearbox says this, when Borderlands was promised to be streamlined for PC gamers yet is the same exact game as the console versions -- dumbed down and designed for a controller.
Yeah, pot meet kettle.
Why would you buy Valve games on any other platform but PC?
The PS3 version of Orangebox is crap. The 360 version better, but no updates. Part of that is Microsofts fault, with it's long and winding approval process and insistence that no DLC be free.
Just get Valve games on the PC and you'll be sound as a pound.
That's the point, Valve wants you to buy the PC version because that gets them the most money. Anticulture that was a great post and I believe what you're saying, there is still a part of me that believes Randy though.
Salamando3000
11-05-2009, 08:52 PM
Didn't the President of Gearbox rant about Valve last month? Think it involved Valve owning Steam presenting a conflict of interest. Only after he made those comments, lots of developers voiced their opinion in support of Steam and how relatively legal-friendly it is.
anticulture
11-06-2009, 12:28 AM
Anticulture that was a great post and I believe what you're saying, there is still a part of me that believes Randy though.
Thanks, but I'm not entirely sure I was really disagreeing with him in my post?
And for the record: The whole Steam operation almost is an entirely different company. There are different managers and teams working on Steam than there are with the games and tools. The whole Steam operation is on a separate floor, and the bigwigs from upstairs dare not venture down there, to see how the sausage is made.
It's not like you have the teams who make games planning out how things will or won't go down with Steam (which may, in theory, be a conflict of interest). None of those developers even have access to the inner-workings of the Steam API or administration tools. And I think that's where Randy is dead wrong in his theory. The 'Valve' as you know it (game designers) have little to no interaction with the Steam teams.
Basically, it's like this: Steam is the online equivalent of retail - let's say, a GameStop - in the middle of Nowheretown, USA. Well, what do they have to gain, in having a CoD MW: 2 flop? They're the only game in town. Every game sold is money in the bank, regardless of who made it. And to this day, Valve games are in their own category; sort of like when you buy a Nintendo system, the attach-rate for first-party Nintendo games is 100%. Which means: the sale of so-called 'competitor games' does not influence the sales of their own products. If anything, there's a 'perceived' sleaziness (on the part of Randy), because Valve wants third-party games to sell on Steam. Why?
Well, because the more third-party games they have, the bigger the service becomes. The bigger the service becomes, the more people flock to it. The more people that flock to Steam, enables Valve to push their platform to other third-parties, which brings in all of the AAA games; thereby cutting Microsoft, Stardock, D2D and the like, out of the game. More money, less competition. We're not technically at that point yet, but it's obvious that they've won the so-called 'war' of digital distribution. I would put money on this test: gather up ten PC gamers, and ask them where they'd like to buy a digital download. I say nine of them go with Steam, while the lone D2D holdout goes his way.
All in all, the entire company is very, very poorly-managed. This is the type of company where a couple thousand dollars gets racked up onto a company credit card, and the person responsible for those charges walks away clean. The very idea that they're hatching these plots with third-party game promotion on Steam is humorous to me. The amount of negligence going on behind the scenes is quite astounding. But again, that just goes to show you just how obscenely rich and fruitful the company is. They can afford to dawdle around, burn money, hire bad employees and so forth. Any other company would have fizzled out, following the same path. But again, it's Steam that keeps them afloat.
It's not the worst place in the world, but it's certainly not the wonderland many of the Valve Defense Force would have you believe. Valve is the kind of place that rewards and swims in negligence; not exactly the type of Volcano Evil Lord's Lair that is capable of cooking up delicious conspiracies.
Randy is mostly correct. Valve is lazy.
The only real questionable act of 'sleaziness' is that Valve holds the keys to Steam. Which means, they can essentially hand out copies of third-party games to their friends on a whim (which is frowned upon, but happens anyway). Not only that, but all employees have access to every game on the service, and will often avoid purchasing a game, because they can get it for free.
Anti Lifesaver
11-06-2009, 01:02 PM
Why would you buy Valve games on any other platform but PC?
Some people, like I, hate updating their system constantly to keep up.
Gets expensive fast.
bmachine
11-06-2009, 01:15 PM
The president of Gearbox should fix the fucking VOIP on Borderlands for the PS3 before talking shit about some other company's games.
Jodou
11-06-2009, 01:24 PM
Some people, like I, hate updating their system constantly to keep up.
Gets expensive fast.
^ Obviously clueless about PC gaming.
Anti Lifesaver
11-06-2009, 01:29 PM
^ Obviously clueless about PC gaming.
Umm no.
I rather spend a few hundred bucks on a gaming system which lasts over 5 years rather than spend 800 bucks custom building a good computer that will run most games up to their true potential. Then you start wanting the best that you can get and that is when it gets expensive.
I am on CAG after all.
LordKefka06
11-06-2009, 01:48 PM
The only game I want from valve would be "The Orange Box" (PS3) for Portal & TF2. But until they fix the PS3 version (never), it's a no go. I stopped supporting valve when they stopped supporting us (PS3)
Jodou
11-06-2009, 02:26 PM
Umm no.
I rather spend a few hundred bucks on a gaming system which lasts over 5 years rather than spend 800 bucks custom building a good computer that will run most games up to their true potential. Then you start wanting the best that you can get and that is when it gets expensive.
I am on CAG after all.
You can spend $500 and build a current gen PC that can 'run most games to their potential' and still have it last five years plus. When I built my latest PC, the 360 Elite was still $400 and PS3 was $500 for equivalent hardware. I built that PC to run Crysis at high to very high, which it does just fine. I have upgraded the video card once since then and because eVGA rocks so hard, it cost me next to nothing. I have no plans to retire the PC I built for quite a while, so it will be a race to see which technology catches up first: my two consoles or the PC. Chances are, I'll be building a new PC for the same cost as the next gen consoles once the cycle begins anew.
So don't tell me that a solid $500 PC is expensive, especially after the headache of your 10th 360 when it dies.
SynGamer
11-06-2009, 04:09 PM
I built my PC last summer for about $600. C2D, 2GB ram, ATI 4850. After recycling my old HDD and monitor (and OS), I think I got a pretty decent computer for what I paid. The problem with PC gaming is drivers. A single program can cripple your system until an update is released and that can suck if all you game on is a PC.
FroMann
11-06-2009, 05:47 PM
Why would you buy Valve games on any other platform but PC?
Exactly. I love PlayStation as a console, but when it comes to other gaming platforms for me. Its PC, and Valve makes the best FPS's that work perfectly on PC with Steam. As for PC gaming being expensive.
My PC is back from 2004. The only upgraded part in this computer is the power supply and my video card which is a Nvidia EVGA 7800 GS 256MB video card which is only supported by a AGP 8x slot. I have a old AMD Athlon 64 3200+ which runs at 2Ghz, Single core. Using 1 gig of Corsair RAM. You can probably build this with a 1280X1024 (above 720P) monitor, gaming mouse, and basic keyboard for about 600 dollars. I can run games like Team Fortress 2, Gears of War, and Left 4 Dead, at 30-40 FPS. Yes they are playable.
Most PC games are 50 bucks at launch, and have more replay value online due to the mod community using Steam. WHICH IS FREE AND BETTER THAN XBOX LIVE.
lokizz
11-06-2009, 06:32 PM
The only game I want from valve would be "The Orange Box" (PS3) for Portal & TF2. But until they fix the PS3 version (never), it's a no go. I stopped supporting valve when they stopped supporting us (PS3)
whats wrong with the ps3 version?
LordKefka06
11-06-2009, 07:02 PM
They stopped supporting TF2 with the class updates & general patches and TOB getting a bad port in general (framerates & graphics...etc.). It's still playable, but it lost its appeal with me because of those things.
"Fix" wasn't quite the right word, but "I stopped supporting valve when they stopped supporting us (PS3)" sums it up perfectly.
LordKefka06
11-06-2009, 07:27 PM
Some Digital Distribution websites (http://g4tv.com/thefeed/blog/post/700530/Several-Digital-Distribution-Services-Wont-Sell-Modern-Warfare-2-Due-To-Steam.html) are refusing to sell MW2 since it requires steam to be installed.
Also, here's (http://g4tv.com/thefeed/blog/post/700533/Randy-Pitchford-Criticizes-Valve-For-Fanboy-Attitude-Toward-PS3.html) G4's take on it.
coleipoo
11-07-2009, 02:29 AM
I wish some places would refuse to sell MW2 because it is a fucking ripoff, but that will never happen.
First PC game for 60 dollars, and doesn't even have dedicated servers or a console. OR mods.
Also, this is 2009, hating on steam was cool in 2004.
anticulture
11-07-2009, 05:54 AM
Here's a neat little gem from Chet Falisek (http://www.destructoid.com/valve-xbox-360-community-head-and-shoulders-above-ps3--154325.phtml). Proving my point that anyone named 'Chet' is a dick.
Also, for all you Steam users out there: was the L4D2 demo automatically placed into your pre-load lists, or did you try to manually download it?
LordKefka06
11-07-2009, 12:45 PM
Nobody at valve has even touched a PS3.