They get criticised all the time for this wtf is this guy on about?
No, but the rest of the industry is so incredibly scummy that they look good by comparison.
Just don’t gamble if you don’t like gambling (or if you like it too much). I never got into any skin microtransactions ever (except for a voice pack for Starcraft 2 which is something for myself and not something that other players see). I don’t play CS2 a lot, but when I do I have a good time and I just ignore all the skin stuff. It’s out of sight and out of mind. Other players show me their skins and ask if they’re cool. I don’t know man, I don’t do arts and crafts with my tools.
“I agree with a lot of the people who get mad about the DLC approach. I don’t really like the Icarus approach. We needed it to survive,” he said. "I actually think a lot of gamers don’t realize that 99% of devs out there are sitting there going, ‘I don’t like this.’”
Game devs so often get public flack for decisions outside their control i really wanted to highlight this part
Flack? Giving someone some slack is giving them a break. Giving someone flack is giving them a hard time. If something’s outside someone’s control, giving them slack about it is a kind thing but giving them flack would be unfair.
Flak. If you think the spelling is weird, it’s someone’s name.
TIL
Thank you!
Oh sure, brainfog on my part
Yes I don’t know why they don’t get more hate over this.
From my perspective its because they’re still somehow not even among the worst. Their only way of advertising their gambling is by giving the player a crate. This crate can be opened for $2.50, or sold on the marketplace to someone else who wants to open it. This money can be spent on buying real games.
In cod, you get full screen advertisements on the regular for $10+ skin bundles. In almost every game as a service you get progress in a battle pass that ALWAYS directly contrasts your usually untradeable rewards with what you could be getting if you paid this month’s subscription fee.
Valve does have a scummy system, but they make it less annoying and if you choose to not participate you usually benefit with real funds to use on steam. Its hard to hate that over the aggressive advertising of its competitors.
All IMO, though. I’m no psychologist.
I agree.
But it’s important to note that just because it flies under the radar of most people, doesn’t mean it isn’t an absolutely deplorable system that exploits the difficult to control tendencies of vulnerable people.
It’s evil, and while it’s “only a little bit of evil” compared to most similar system, there is no amount of evil that is ok.
Being ‘least shitty’ isn’t really a worthwhile acolade.
Yes. That’s what I said.
I don’t want to defend them too much but honestly out of all the loot boxes out there theirs is the least bad. You can even just sell the boxes you get for free by playing and buy shit (on Steam) with the money.
This, I bought a Triple A title once with money from drops without never interacting with this shit. I would play anyway but I got “paid” while playing. It’s a marketing tactic and we need to be aware of this, some people will see the opportunity to “make money” playing and will invest a shit ton of cash to maybe drop a rare item but if you don’t do that you just getting a little bit of money to buy games with.
Selling is the problem, it makes it actual gambling.
No, being able to find items for free and sell them is not the problem or what makes it gambling
“First one’s free”
As in you get infinitely more by buying than you are given for free (hence why people buy them) is always the sign of a well intentioned business.
Not really, you need to spend money to open a crate but you can sell a crate for free. So any rational person would sell their crates for guaranteed money instead of buying a key to probably lose money.
Rationality is rare.
Keep trying.
I never put money into the game for many years until I could afford to support the creators because I was happy with the items I could find for free
What do you think they’re buying it for?
Selling is not gambling. It’s kind of the opposite of gambling.
Is valve buying the boxes and destroying them?
That doesn’t make any sense.
If valve isn’t buying them and destroying them, then where are they going and why?
You’re trying too hard.
Cause Gaben. He’s your cool buddy uncle guy that’s into video games, hunting and sous dive and not another billionaire. He’s a cool good billionaire! His yacht is a cool yacht!
This is half true at least. It’s not just insane nonsense.
For most people it’s harder to hate Valve with the positive things they do. Obviously they shouldn’t get a pass for this, but forming a conflicted opinion seems to be against human nature.
There’s bigger things to worry about than Valve
Brand and billionaire loyalty.
They do.
Advertising and marketing, and a lot of it. There’s always a few puff pieces per week.
Steam makes so much fucking money and Gaben is enjoying the soft monopoly he has just as much as Microsoft and Nintendo. Gabens mega yatchs cost an estimated 100 to 150 million just in yearly maintenance. He has 8 of them (worth 1 billion in total).
FIX YOUR GAME DEAN!.. sorry old habits
Yes seriously. Pot calling the kettle black. I’m one of the people who got burned by DayZ standalone. Fucker lied to our faces and said we needed to buy early because the price was just going to go up as more content was added and it reached feature parity with the Arma mod within like a year
Icarus is solid and Kitten Space Agency appears to be coming along nicely.
Oh, I thought this was going to be about the trading cards they implemented in steam. Those are so lame and cheap I wasn’t bothered by this.
For any non-readers-of-articles, this is about a loot box mechanic added to counterstrike (which is fair criticism imho)
Counterstrike has had loot boxes for many years, they weren’t recently added. What was recently added was a mechanic that allows 5 lower value items (certain gun skins) to be exchanged for a random higher value item (glove or knife skins). It’s acting to level the market. If anything, this change serves to inhibit loot box gambling by cutting the possibility of hitting a real money jackpot.
If anything, this change serves to inhibit loot box gambling by cutting the possibility of hitting a real money jackpot.
Oh, I didn’t think of that. With the smaller difference betwen the most expensive and least expensive items, gambling gets less random in terms of return.
That’s an improvement, though I still think the whole systems should be taken out.
That there is a “counter strike skins investment ‘industry’” is utterly insane.
I’ve bought games just from sitting there for an hour and selling those cards. All these years and i still have no idea why people buy them.
If you complete a set you get xp and level up your profile. I sell the expensive cards I get from my games and buy the cheap ones to get a full set. I’m on level 52 and I never put any money on steam for any reason other than buying games. My profile looks cool because of this and I like it.
I’m not going to knock your good time. I’m glad someone enjoys them.
They are needed to craft badges, which level up your profile. Higher level profile means more customization. So if youre into the social aspect of steam then they are required at least a little bit. Obviously for you they aren’t needed so yeah you can just sell them to others and make a buck, and thats a pretty cool system imo.
Gabe’s deification has always been disturbing to me. There are no good billionaires.
The only good billionarie is a former billionarie who had their wealth taken away and restributed for benefit society.
I definitely don’t deify him but it does help that he’s not taking his billions to try to weaken democracy… at least that we are aware of.
Valve, however, has managed to neatly skirt regulatory efforts by charging players not for directly purchasing loot crates, which can be earned during gameplay, but for the keys required to open them.
Wow, that’s fucking scummy
Hall said that even he is frustrated by the “Paradox model” of paid expansion and DLC packs his studio RocketWerkz chose for its survival game Icarus after moving away from a free-to-play scheme.
For Paradox games, it’s mostly nickel and diming since they know they’re working in a niche market. For Icarus, it’s a problem of wanting the game to stay relevant, paying for servers and not knowing when to say “ok, we’re done”.
Valve loot boxes have always worked that way. They didn’t change them to skirt regulations. I don’t really find it very scummy at all. Nothing in the loot boxes can give you an advantage in the game. Most of the games that include this feature are free to play. This is how they make money from their game. The vast majority of people don’t pay very much at all. You can play the games and have tons of fun and never interact with the loot box system. It’s an optional thing for people who like the game so much that they want to pay. It’s basically donate to valve and have a chance to unlock a cosmetic item in game.
This completely ignores the fact that teenagers play the game, it’s essentially gambling, streamers spending decent time opening cases, FOMO, the status that comes with rare skins, skin markets and so on. I sorta of get what you’re saying insofar as not being PTW and cosmetics being the least obnoxious of this type of practice but it’s still super scummy. To the exclusion of CS2 and maybe a handful of other being free is the point, so they can get you into the slot machine that is these sort of mechanics and squeeze money from people (mostly kids). Don’t get me started on Valve generating billions from this and CS2 is still a mess.
Ok so morning outrage clicks for naught?
Some good points. I can’t remember where I saw this, but a game recently made their loot boxes randomly generate loot which was then shown to the player who had the choice of whether or not to open a box. This is much better than blindly opening boxes where you won’t know whether or not you will want the item inside.
Hall said that even he is frustrated by the “Paradox model” of paid expansion and DLC packs his studio RocketWerkz chose for its survival game Icarus after moving away from a free-to-play scheme.
That pretty rich given how many DLCs Icarus has. He’s not wrong, but also shut the fuck up Dean, you’ve managed to ruin every game you built through incessant content updates no one wanted.
ah yes dean “jump the ship” hall who fucked off dayz development when it released very half baked which almost killed the games future
screw lootboxes too
I was going to say… I literally had zero clue what the hell they were talking about. So Valve implemented a crappy moneymaking mechanism in one of their various games that can actually be used to leveraged to purchase games on Steam…
I may start playing Counter Strike again just to sell loot boxes to other people and make my games cheaper.
Someone get ja rule on the phone
RIP TF2
TF2 Classic (2010 era TF2) will have an official release soon.
naw i dont game that much on PC anymore.
This guy will get tons of flak and maybe even death treats for criticizing Valve. For whatever reason there is a rabid cult like following for Valve and Gabe Newell. I remember several years ago I said something like “Valve is still a company that’s out to make money at the end of the day” and several of my gaming friends instantly were no longer friends. It’s quite hilarious for me to just think about that even today.
lol talk about looking for a ripcord. I’m guessing that wasn’t their only issue.
I’m pleasantly surpised the “Steam Circle Jerk” group hasn’t shown up to defend Valve. Valve more or less controls the digital distribution of games, to point that if a dev’s game isn’t on Steam; they are taking a massive loss in potential revenue. We are being asked take Valve on a good faith that they won’t rat fuck the consumer.
As you correctly pointed out, Valve’s main purpose to make money. Private or public, it’s only matter of time before a company rat fucks the consumer. More competiton is always better for the consumer.
