It seems Valve are quite serious about getting back into making games, as Campo Santo the developer of Firewatch has joined them.
Writing on their official website in a post, the team from Campo Santo confirmed that the news is true. They said they found that people at Valve share the same values that they do, so it became an "obvious match". Expanding on that, they said this:
We had a series of long conversations with the people at Valve and everyone shared the satisfaction we take in working with people whose talents dwarf our own to make things we never thought possible. Both sides spoke about our values and how, when you get right down to it, we, as human beings, are hard-limited by the time we have left when it comes to making the things we care about and believe in. They asked us if we’d all be interested in coming up to Bellevue and doing that there and we said yes.
They confirmed that their next game, In the Valley of Gods, is still being made and so it's now a Valve game.
Personally, I think it's great that Valve are bringing in some obviously talented folk to make games. Valve have a lot of resources and contacts that can help for sure. It should also mean they have good Linux support, since Valve are still committed to Linux gaming.
Since it will now be a Valve game, it will be interesting to see if In the Valley of Gods will make it to GOG. I wouldn't expect it to now, but maybe Valve will surprise us there.
Quoting: ScooptaI disagree simply because once you download a game from steam(assuming it doesn't use the steam DRM) nothing stops you from making a backup of it.
Did you even follow the discussion above? You aren't allowed to do it if you are using Steam.
Quoting: GuestQuoting: Doc AngeloQuoting: GuestYes, I have a source. Me. In details here, it was a demo, downloaded via Steam itself. It was later decided (either by Valve themselves, or a ratings board) that the demo wasn't suitable for the country. The next time I fired up Steam, the game (demo, in this case) was summarily removed in its entirety - without notification to me. I had to go hunting for what happened.
Thanks for the answer! Out of interest: Which developer decided to do that and which game was it?
Rebellion, with Sega as publisher. Demo was AvP (2010).
To be clear: Valve probably had a legal obligation to remove it based upon a review board, but I just like to point out their level of control that not everyone may be aware of. I was mostly irritated by their lack of notification on the matter.
yeah, it sucks when actions like this are not properly communicated and I can understand that you wouldn't trust Steam with your important stuff. It is indeed good to understand that Steam is much more an ecosystem for publishing content than just a wrapped browser for a store. That said, the ability to revoke games, e.g. when the key seems to originate from credit card fraud, is not necessarily a bad thing imho. There are still enough people out there thinking that key reselling is a sane business. I consider it positive that developers have something at their hands to act in cases of most easy/accessible/obvious forms of fraud.
Obviously with great power come great responsibility. I cannot imagine that Steam would revoke a normally purchased game, but if this is ever going to happen harsh responses from customers are justified. Excluded are cases where Steam would (be forced to) remove a game due to e.g. the game itself doing something not very legal, though proper communication is still a must in this cases. If my neighbor purchased a nuclear bomb I would also very glad that their are legal actions possible to prevent him from keeping it ;)
PS: Steam is only about games, similar with e.g. Netflix or Spotify it is only entertainment. I'm not that emotionally attached to it and would just move on. Actual personal data (e-mails etc) in cloud services is a different matter, though I'm much to lazy to maintain proper offline backups of that...
PPS: I had a reverse case recently. I wanted to remove a settings file from a game (Shadow Tactics) because after an update the game wouldn't start due to mangled settings. I had removed that file on disk, but initially it kept coming back due to Steam cloud synchronization ;)
Last edited by jens on 27 April 2018 at 7:08 am UTC
Quoting: ShmerlYou're not allowed to photocopy a paperback either, that doesn't mean there's DRM in your stack of paper.Quoting: ScooptaI disagree simply because once you download a game from steam(assuming it doesn't use the steam DRM) nothing stops you from making a backup of it.
Did you even follow the discussion above? You aren't allowed to do it if you are using Steam.
Quoting: SalvatosQuoting: ShmerlYou're not allowed to photocopy a paperback either, that doesn't mean there's DRM in your stack of paper.Quoting: ScooptaI disagree simply because once you download a game from steam(assuming it doesn't use the steam DRM) nothing stops you from making a backup of it.
Did you even follow the discussion above? You aren't allowed to do it if you are using Steam.
There are very different definitions here in this thread what DRM actually is/what the scope of it is/what degradation it has (direct rendering manager, anyone?? ;)). That's one of the reasons why this discussion starts again and again and runs in circles forever. The question "Is Steam DRM" is the wrong one imho. A much better question would be "Do I want to fully legally own digital assets (and are allowed to do no matter what I want to do with it) or do I merely want to use digital assets as there are intended to use (thus buying a permission to play) after doing a purchase in a digital store?". The last one is really just personal preference, something which is very hard to influence by facts.
Edit: replaced some parts I realized that could be read differently than I meant it...
Last edited by jens on 27 April 2018 at 9:32 am UTC
Quoting: SalvatosYou're not allowed to photocopy a paperback either
You are allowed, for your personal backup. It's called fair use. DRM takes that away.
Last edited by Shmerl on 27 April 2018 at 12:35 pm UTC
Quoting: ShmerlYou are allowed, for your personal backup. It's called fair use. DRM takes that away.
IMHO, that describes exactly the situation of DRM free games on Steam.
Quoting: EikeIMHO, that describes exactly the situation of DRM free games on Steam.
They are trying to take that away too. Exactly the difference with DRM-free stores that makes Steam not DRM-free :)
Last edited by Shmerl on 27 April 2018 at 12:52 pm UTC
Quoting: ShmerlQuoting: EikeIMHO, that describes exactly the situation of DRM free games on Steam.
They are trying to take that away too. Exactly the difference with DRM-free stores that makes Steam not DRM-free :)
They (paperback makers) are trying to take that away, too. No difference.
The makers don't want to you to, try to disallow it, but it's allowed by law in many countries.
Neither the paperbacks (obviously) nor DRM free games on Steam use digital means to prevent it.
Quoting: EikeThe makers don't want to you to, try to disallow it, but it's allowed by law in many countries.
Sane countries should allow breaking DRM too. That doesn't make such stores DRM-free.
Quoting: ShmerlQuoting: EikeThe makers don't want to you to, try to disallow it, but it's allowed by law in many countries.
Sane countries should allow breaking DRM too. That doesn't make such stores DRM-free.
You didn't show a difference to the paperback. Because there isn't any.
Disallowing copying is what every paperback does, just like the Steam store does.
And for many games, that's all what the Steam store does.
No digital rights-management (for those).
(The attempt of) juridical rights-management isn't digital.
Last edited by Eike on 27 April 2018 at 1:20 pm UTC
See more from me