Facts not everyone knows about Valve

Steam. Summer Sale. GABEN. If you are a PC gamer, you certainly know Valve’s influence in the gaming industry. Steam was the big gamble for the company when it first launched in 2003. But since its launch, Steam has largely controlled the PC game market, with just a handful like Fortnite, Blizzard games, or League of Legends succeeds without using Valve’s services.

Despite its massive success and near-exclusive PC gaming, Valve has remained tight-lipped about its titles and upcoming plans for Steam. That creates an intriguing mystery, but it also creates a few problems when Valve makes decisions that don’t please fans. Today, we’re going to take a look at some facts that not everyone knows about everyone’s favorite digital gaming platform.

Be prepared to face untold truths about Valve Software, and protect your wallet. Maybe the Steam sale is coming soon.

Gabe Newell has a net worth of nearly 4 billion dollars

Steam makes a lot of money and of course CEO Gabe Newell benefits a lot from it. Since Valve is not a publicly traded company, it doesn’t have to disclose its revenue, but we do have some metrics that show how rich the CEO of Valve is.

Forbes peaked Newell’s wealth at $5.5 billion in 2017. That number has fallen a bit at press time: the “real-time” estimate for Gabe Newell’s wealth comes in at $3.9 billion.

Note this is just a wealth estimate, but we can sense Newell is quite pleased with how Valve is doing.

Forbes estimates put Gaben in the top 100 richest Americans, the top 50 richest people in technology, and the #334 billionaires globally. Not bad at all for someone who dropped out of college midway.

Artifact is Valve’s first major game since 2013

Valve is still a software development company in general. They are the company that created monuments like Dota 2, Counter-Strike, Half-Life, Team Fortress 2 and Portal. The upcoming game Artifact is the latest major piece of software released by the company since 2013, when Dota 2 officially left the “beta” phase. So what did Valve do during that time?

One, Valve released two important pieces of hardware: the Steam Machine (started in 2013 but not released until 2015) and co-developed HTC Vive – a virtual reality (VR) gaming device, released in 2016. .

As for the other reason, it seems that Valve doesn’t really need to release a new game this time around. Dota 2 and Counter-Strike are still the moneymakers on Steam, not to mention Valve gets a percentage of everything it sells on its digital store. Anyway, this is a good sign that Valve has decided to develop the game again.

Valve took a risky gamble with Half-Life 2

Believe it or not, there was a time when Steam wasn’t really popular. Valve took the risk when it came to integrating the online store in the game’s Half-Life 2 in 2004. It’s not unlike the failures we’re seeing with some modern PC games that “require to be online all the time.” like Diablo 3 or SimCity, it is merely a “copyright protection” tool when installing. Once Half-Life 2 is installed, players can play the game offline without any problems.

But sooner or later Steam will be on your computer.

The Polygon website summarizes Valve’s idea of ​​”being a good person”: “Even the version of Half-Life 2 sold in the store requires Steam to be installed, which means that any store that sells this game will force you to install Steam.”

Gradually Valve improved the online store and players began to believe in Steam’s idea. The company quickly found new markets and began to take out its competitors. Now, it’s hard to play PC games without Steam. While the company doesn’t disclose revenue, Forbes estimates Valve made more than $1 billion in 2010 just from selling games on Steam.

Many of Valve’s successful titles started as mods

Valve is clearly a talented development studio, but what sets them apart from other developers is their ability to spot game trends and embrace them. From the successful mods that Valve has brought back and then molded them into larger projects. Valve’s three most-played games on Steam are all mods of different games. Valve buys mods, hires developers, and helps shape them across different products.

Counter-Strike is one of the oldest esports, and it started out as a mod from another Valve title: Half-Life. Team Fortress was also originally a Quake mod, adding classes to this popular shooter. And Dota 2 was created from a mod called Defense of the Ancients – derived from Warcraft 3.

These games clearly could not have become the current monuments without Valve. Valve has amazed everyone with its ability to optimize popular mods and take them to the next level.

Valve was once described as a “high school”.

While Valve is tight-lipped about how it operates, is it a fun place to work? Video games, gaming communities, and record-setting titles. Let’s take a look at the Valve employee handbook, leaked in 2012. It’s packed with funny drawings – so why couldn’t this be a great place to work?

One former employee said that the “leaked notebook” was actually the recruitment book Recruiting 101. And according to him, Valve is absolutely NOT a FUN place to work.

In fact, we don’t know for sure if former Valve employee Rich Geldreich is really talking about Valve when he posted a lot of Tweets in 2018 about the terrible working conditions at the company he used to work for. However, PC Gamer is pretty sure about the company Rich alludes to when talking about the house Newell built. Geldreich describes it as rife with layers of security surveillance, a workplace rife with gossip and backstabbing, “big hands” who can handle new hires in a flash.

All in all, it sounds like a disaster job, if Valve is really what Geldreich has described.

The terrible secret behind the dream job at Valve: draconian policies and ‘self-governance system’

Valve is making progress in bringing Steam to the world’s most populous country

China has the largest population on Earth and of course Valve wants to expand Steam to this country. Steam’s store is available, but it could be banned by government authorities at any time. Like other content on Steam – communities, inventory, user information – is blocked in China.

The cooperation with the major Chinese game company Perfect World helps Steam to be more optimized in China. Perfect World has taken over the publishing rights of Dota 2 and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive in China, allowing it to compete with other Chinese game mogul Tencent. Tencent owns Riot Games (League of Legends) and 40% of Epic Games (Fortnite), but the partnership with Valve will help Perfect World stand out in the Chinese gaming market.

An interesting point about following the official Steam page in China is that the games on this platform will be subject to the laws in China. Let’s see how many games are available here and how Valve will behave in China.

Valve is about to enter the streaming segment

Just like the Steam service that is dominating in the sales of digital games on PC, in the livestream segment there is also another platform that is very exclusive: Twitch. Steam has had game streaming since 2013, but it doesn’t have the same easy-to-use interface and built-in community as Twitch. Currently, Valve is testing the stream array; and now they are ready to enter the big tournaments.

Steam.tv is the answer and all-in-one for streaming Valve’s most popular esports titles. The website first appeared at Dota 2’s The International 2018 tournament, although it appeared earlier than planned and was subsequently taken down. Steam.tv is now fully on air even though the interface is not much. According to many sources, Steam.tv will integrate chat and many tournaments, however, we will wait and see how Valve will compete with Twitch (if that is really Valve’s intention with Steam.tv).

Valve still doesn’t know how to manage adult content on Steam

With the steps Valve has taken with Steam, the company is causing quite a bit of controversy – especially about the sexually explicit content appearing on its platform. Obviously, sex plays a big part in games like The Witcher 3 and Mass Effect, but other titles are starting to want to venture on Steam as well. Here’s how Steam behaves, and maybe things will change completely in the next week.

In May 2018, Steam spoke out about sexually-themed games, asking many developers to ‘cover’ their games or face being removed from Steam. These companies say Valve alleges their games contain unhealthy content, although that’s not true. Under these criticisms, Valve announced that they would not be monitoring games on the service, beyond legal issues and true trolling titles.

In September 2018, Valve released an “Adults Only” section so Steam could make sure games with adult content weren’t in the eyes of children.

In mid-September, Steam’s first adult uncovered title, Negligee: Love Stories, was approved for release on Steam. Let’s see how the situation develops and if Valve can continue to do what it wants.

Steam’s refund policy stems from a lawsuit in Australia

Remember when Steam first released its refund policy? Prior to 2015, Valve only refunded digital products on Steam “as the case may be.” It seems the policy has completely changed as Steam turns into a global company and a major refund policy lawsuit has cost the company millions of dollars.

Under Australian consumer law, all products sold in the country, whether physical or digital, are eligible for a full refund. Because Valve’s policies at the time were different, the lawsuit pointed to the company’s failure to comply with Australian law. Obviously, Valve has repeatedly complained after this policy did not go in the right direction with Valve.

However, in 2018, Valve lost the court case and was forced to pay. The lawsuit cost A$3 million, or $2.3 million. Currently, Valve offers full refunds under certain conditions without having to be approved by Valve.

Valve is the main culprit bringing loot boxes to the mass market

Loot boxes have become indispensable in modern games (fortunately, loot boxes are now gradually being controlled in many countries). Similar to global gaming trends, Valve played an important role in popularizing loot boxes.

The idea of ​​loot boxes really comes from Korean and Chinese MMORPGs, but Team Fortress 2 is the Western game that really applies this idea. The game started as a free-to-play game in 2010, after the big update “Mann-conomy” introduced the drop rate of chests as well as the opening of chests in the game. Gabe Newell changed the game to free – only profiting from loot boxes – which increased the player base 5 times and they have never regretted the decision to make the game free.

Currently, almost every game has a “free” decoration or a type of loot box present in the game. The good news is that this form of “gambling” is gradually losing its shadow as countries begin to participate in the management of loot boxes as a form of gambling.

According to SVG