zlacker

>>evolve+(OP)
Everything valve doing for linux is making such a huge impact.

The HL3 memes don't even seem fair to use anymore. I don't even want to un-seriously make joke fun of them at this point. They are just genuinely doing so much for the community.

>>adverb+H53
Valve is one of the few companies regularly seen on HN where the headline is something like "[company] is secretly doing something really great" as opposed to "[company] is secretly doing something evil"

>>levoca+Yb3
People complain about the gambling/loot box stuff, and yeah there's legit ethical concerns there.

But overall Valve just seems straightforwardly less shitty towards the consumer than other major companies in their space, by a long shot.

>>Tulliu+2d3
Valve is estimated to make $16.2 billion from Steam alone in 2025 [0], and CS:GO loot boxes only netted them ~1bn in 2023 [1] (and CS:GO player count is only slightly higher now compared to 2023, so I expected the income number is similar).

Why don't they just take a 6% pay cut and make sure there is nothing to criticize them about :/

[0]: https://www.tomshardware.com/video-games/pc-gaming/valve-mak...

[1]: https://csgocasetracker.com/blog/2023-Year-Review

>>nialv7+6o3
There's an argument that loot boxes that give you cosmetics just aren't that big of a deal, at least if we're talking about adults.

Especially since Magic the Gathering and similar card games are very normalized, and have a straightforwardly more evil monetization strategy, since you need to do gambling there to even play the game, it's not cosmetic.

There's always this question when Valve comes up of, "why are people more upset about gambling for cosmetics in a game than gambling for power/features in a game?" It's a clear double standard, and I've never heard an actually good explanation for it that makes it sound justifiable.

edit: The other thing is that the people blowing money on cosmetics gambling fund the game such that all the core gameplay stuff in Dota and CS and be totally free for the average player, and that's pretty great for a lot of consumers.

It's not exactly the same yet since Deadlock isn't being monetized yet, but I've spent hundreds of hours in the game having a blast for free, I can't give Valve money even if I want to, and that buys a fair amount of goodwill from me.

>>Tulliu+Tq3
>There's always this question when Valve comes up of, "why are people more upset about gambling for cosmetics in a game than gambling for power/features in a game?"

Aren't people upset about both? The whole "gamble for features" is pretty much why the mobile market and console market are divorced in audiences (or at least, community).

People are "more" upset about Valve here because this is in the console space. They've long dismissed the mobile scene as lost.

>>johnny+3Y3
> Aren't people upset about both?

I'm sure a few people are, but typically no. People are aware that trading card games can be a monetary black hole, but Magic and similar games usually don't take the same heat for the business model that Valve does for loot boxes, even though they're actually worse on paper.

> They've long dismissed the mobile scene as lost.

I'm not talking about the mobile market. Are you not aware that Magic the Gathering is a physical card game? (though it does have some digital implementations too)