this post was submitted on 17 Nov 2024
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Gabe is absolutely right on this. If it doesn't completely recenter the first person shooter genre, it's not really a half life game.
Valve really only releases things that shake the industry up. I've been playing through Alyx for the first time this weekend and oh my god is it good.
Valve buys up dev teams that are about to shake the industry up. Valve haven't actually been the ones to make something new in a long time. TFC, CS, Portal, DoD, L4D, Alien Swarm, Dota 2... were all made by outside dev teams that Valve absorbed and put their name on. The only things Valve have actually made, themselves, in the last 5 years are Alyx and CS2, neither of which brought anything new to the industry (although they are wonderfully-executed games) and are both sequels of existing franchises.
Personally, I'm not a fan of this practice, because I feel like Valve inadvertently stifles these studios after they bring them onboard. For instance, the team from DigiPen that Valve bought for their Portal tech? Imagine if they were still able to make games. Imagine if they were still able to stretch their creativity and create new tech and ideas. Instead, their intellectual properties are all tied up at Valve and they got to release two whole games in the last 20 years. Who knows what we could be missing out on from these guys if they were able to actually still make stuff.
A lot of studios develop with the intention of being absorbed and/or bought out. The plan is usually to develop some niche incredible tech that's only around PoC quality and then be acquired.
They didn't get crushed by the big man here. That's simply how the reality of the market goes.
It's like pharmaceuticals. No one starts a new pharma company expecting to compete with Pfizer or Merck, the whole game is to develop a promising drug and then get your company bought out by one of them so they can use their resources to get it to the market.
Valve does seem to contribute substantially to the development of their games, at least. Turtle Rock's Evolve and Back 4 Blood had nowhere near the success of L4D/2, which is still going strong 15 years later.
They're still at it, they bought Campo Santo (Firewatch Devs) in 2018 and now their game In The Valley of Gods is never gonna happen, they worked on Alyx instead.
They poached a bunch of folks from Hopoo Games recently too.
You speak of developers as if they have no agency.
The Hopoo folk left because they didn't want to work on RoR anymore.