During PAX Aus 2024 not only did we get the Steam Deck for Australia announcement, but the project leader on Valve's own Portal 2 did an interview with KIWI TALKZ.
The interview goes over many things about what it was like at Valve, scepticism around the original release of Steam itself, there's a Q&A section and so on. One bit that sticks out is how even the lead on Portal 2 really hopes that Valve return to more single-player games.
Here's an excerpt from what Josh Weier said in reply to a question that brings up how the Risk of Rain creators Hopoo Games joining Valve:
I've been out of Valve for 7 years now. So I don't really have a lot of insight into what they're doing. When I left the company had certainly shifted away from thinking about single player and they were very interested in VR and they were very interested in the counter-strikes and DOTA and kind of more games of service. That never resonated with me, I'm a single player person, I don't care for games as a service, I don't want to do that so that was a big reason I was like eh I'll go do something else. I'd love to see them get back to those roots because obviously that's the thing I think they did incredibly well. And I want to play that as a customer.
Full interview video is below, the particular section above is about 53:00 in:
Direct Link
Always good to hear more behind the scenes from people who used to work for Valve. You don't get this kind of insight too often, with Valve continuing to be a pretty tight-lipped company.
What single player game would you have as your number 1 for Valve to bring out next?
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Quoting: satorideponI remember Gabe (or someone other from Valve) said that they were disappointed in Portal 2 sales especially after looking at how Steam was already making them much more money than any of their single player games. TF2 hats and Steam made Valve realize that you can make much more money from services, so they focused on that
I'd like to see a quote/source for that.
Stop the "game as a service" shit and give us back real and unforgettable solo games as you did before Valve!
Quoting: kuhpunktI'd like to see a quote/source for that.Closest I can find is this post on HN from a supposed former Valve employee:
"One very senior employee even said that Valve would never make another single player game, because they weren't worth the effort. "Portal 2," he explained, had only made $200 million in profit and that kind of chump change just wasn't worth it, when you could make 100s of millions a year selling digital hats and paintjobs for guns"
From https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20099167
Quoting: whizseSeems short-sighted . . . 200 million here, 200 million there, pretty soon you're talking about real money!Quoting: kuhpunktI'd like to see a quote/source for that.Closest I can find is this post on HN from a supposed former Valve employee:
"One very senior employee even said that Valve would never make another single player game, because they weren't worth the effort. "Portal 2," he explained, had only made $200 million in profit and that kind of chump change just wasn't worth it, when you could make 100s of millions a year selling digital hats and paintjobs for guns"
From https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20099167
My mind boggles at thinking of $200 million in profit as "only" and not worth going after.
Quoting: kuhpunktI'd like to see a quote/source for that.
Quoting: whizseClosest I can find is this post on HN from a supposed former Valve employee:
"One very senior employee even said that Valve would never make another single player game, because they weren't worth the effort. "Portal 2," he explained, had only made $200 million in profit and that kind of chump change just wasn't worth it, when you could make 100s of millions a year selling digital hats and paintjobs for guns"
From https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20099167
That's probably it. I heard it in some video, but can't remember where was it.
Quoting: whizseSeems short-sighted . . . 200 million here, 200 million there, pretty soon you're talking about real money!Opportunity cost. Why make a game that only makes $200 million when they can make a game that makes several billion instead?
My mind boggles at thinking of $200 million in profit as "only" and not worth going after.
Quoting: missingnoWell, but is it an opportunity cost? Couldn't you do both? Hire some programmers for this, hire some programmers for that. And it's less lopsided than this makes it seem . . . that second game you need to run the servers, and you need to keep doing stuff with it forever. You have ongoing expenses and staff requirements. With the $200 mil game when you're finished, you go write a new game. Over the years you would have several $200 mil games.Quoting: Purple Library GuySeems short-sighted . . . 200 million here, 200 million there, pretty soon you're talking about real money!Opportunity cost. Why make a game that only makes $200 million when they can make a game that makes several billion instead?
My mind boggles at thinking of $200 million in profit as "only" and not worth going after.
I suppose though that in a weird way there are opportunity costs. Sure, Valve has the money to do multiple things at once, but I've noticed that even very large organizations have trouble paying attention to very many things at once. So for instance, even the United States government seems to struggle to really push a policy on more than a couple of major foreign policy issues at a time (perhaps luckily for the rest of the world). So, OK, on second thought you probably have a point.
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