It is absolutely depressing how much lower Valve gets in my personal view year after year, I spent most of my childhood being a diehard Valve fan and they do nothing but repay their customers with NOTHING.
We're talking milking a game with cosmetic drops made by community members for months, taking a majority profit off of those, and not producing any actual meaningful content updates, they did this somewhat for CS:GO during its many long hiatus periods, and they do this incredibly for TF2, It is genuinely insane that this is okay, these games generate massive amounts of profit, any other dev would be bending over backwards to support it, at the very least hiring a crew just to support it, but they do nothing, but they'll gladly continue screwing community content creators with bad cuts, and pushing people into gambling, causing high tier items to become stupidly rare, going to hundreds and sometimes even thousands of dollars.
Why? Because Valve's management, are the dumbest fucks on the planet, rivalling some of the worst in any other industry, Coyote VS ACME cancellation level, they've got some of the best talent in the industry but they're so mismanaged due to their shitty corporate structure that all they're ever incentivized to do is work on new projects, new projects you'll never see, outside of the blue moon chances, like a VR Half-Life game that barely made it past the finish line and was totally reworked from the bottom up a year before release, and an update to Valve's second biggest cash cow, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.
Onto that disgrace, we have Counter-Strike 2, the Counter-Strike you knew, but now everything is worse.
To start the game, you have this gross sleek competitive style they're trying to go for, that looks like complete and total dogshit, 2011 called, they want their art designers back, and it's piled on with the shitty menu design that prioritizes you seeing your shitty ugly agent skins and gloves before anything else, great!
You fire up a game, but oh no, what's this? They've removed short and long matches, now you can only play this middle of the road medium length match that appeals to nobody, Yay!
Oh well, at least the gameplay isn't that much different, all they did was add the smokes, and to start off the gameplay just feels like shit now, something changed and everything feels floaty and imprecise, it's gotten a lot better than what it launched at, but the fact that this was a replacement for one of the biggest competitive games in the world, and it launched like this, after months of beta, is nothing short of a colossal embarrassment.
And what's this? The buy menu, it's shit now!
You have to pick a small selection of weapons in this Valorant styled menu list, effectively dooming most off-meta weapons to be never picked again, and thanks for just reinventing the wheel to blur together with your vastly superior competition.
And to top it all off, there's been a gigantic cheater problem, bigger than I've ever seen when I was playing CS:GO, Multiple times when I infrequently play in friends in low rank lobbies, you will run into blatant wallhackers, the ones you can check in replay and see them staring at people through walls, fucking fantastic, and the matchmaking isn't much better either, did I mention that there were multiple bugs of innocent users getting VAC banned for extreme things like using a console command to look like you're spinbotting, or simple things like, using certain AMD software?
And guess what? Several fucking things from the original were just completely dropped in the transition, Arms Race was removed, only to be reintroduced months and months later and advertised as a content update, thanks for bringing back the thing you took away, dipshits!
Danger Zone was removed, though I doubt anyone will miss it.
Wingman lost like most of its map pool.
Riot Shield was removed from Casual hostage playlists, no fun allowed I suppose.
Multiple console commands stopped working, like net_graph, left-handed viewmodels, and the anti view bob commands.
Achievements were removed for no reason.
And to top it all off, now all the maps use the same default operators, incase you were worried that they weren't shoving the awful agent skins down your throat enough.
I'm pretty sure it didn't launch with community server support, so thanks for pissing in the face of what your companies games were built on, douchebags.
But here's the good part of the game, they update3d the graphics.
That's it.
That's all there is to this.
There's the interactive smokes I guess, but they're a pretty minor thing and it's nothing that couldn't have been done on the old engine.
Onto those graphics, it just looks... bad.
Sure, CS:GO's graphics weren't great either, ranging from oversaturated to too dirty and gritty, one looking like a fashion show model and the latter looking like a Call of Duty NPC.
But this? This is fucking awful, Half-Life Alyx is one of the prettiest games I've seen in my entire life, and this just looks like complete and total dogshit, like the models were just sloppily ported from source 1 to 2, and then hiding any imperfections with their new shading.
Sure, the shading is pretty, but it makes the aesthetics of the game wildly inconsistent, realistic guns, colorful shiny pseudo-cartoonish characters, oversaturated world, realistic blood, disgustingly ugly bloom coated fire, etc.
It just makes the whole thing look like a visual mess, and a sloppy attempt at converting the game to a clean visual ala Valorant.
Sorry Valve, as much as I love you, your art team is no match for Riot in terms of aesthetics mixed with readability, they're placing your teeth on the curb and jumping on your head from a second story window, and the viscera left from the aftermath is in the shape of a shiny Phoenix Terrorist Model.
All there is to know about Valve at this point is that you just should not interact with their live service games after like 3-5 years of release, that's around the time they just totally give up and stop giving a fuck and start screwing their customers.
And all there is to know about their upcoming products is that their upcoming game that is basically a total blur at this point, Neon Prime is rumored to be dropping the sci-fi aesthetic because some idiot at Valve got spooked by sci-fi games not doing so hot lately, mainly in context to Starfield, which is a game that sold well and only bombed due to being a shitty Bethesda game.
To all of the people fucking their customers day in day out on the live-service areas of Valve, Fuck you. Except Eric on what's left of the TF2 team, love you man.
To all the Valve devs slaving away at new single-player titles? Bless your heart, as your monetization pisses your customers respect for your company away, thank you for constantly reminding them what Valve was built for, making quality games that don't ask for anything more than the entry ticket price, Half-Life Alyx is one of the best games Valve ever made, and Counter-Strike 2 is going to live in the pits of hell next to Ricochet.
We're talking milking a game with cosmetic drops made by community members for months, taking a majority profit off of those, and not producing any actual meaningful content updates, they did this somewhat for CS:GO during its many long hiatus periods, and they do this incredibly for TF2, It is genuinely insane that this is okay, these games generate massive amounts of profit, any other dev would be bending over backwards to support it, at the very least hiring a crew just to support it, but they do nothing, but they'll gladly continue screwing community content creators with bad cuts, and pushing people into gambling, causing high tier items to become stupidly rare, going to hundreds and sometimes even thousands of dollars.
Why? Because Valve's management, are the dumbest fucks on the planet, rivalling some of the worst in any other industry, Coyote VS ACME cancellation level, they've got some of the best talent in the industry but they're so mismanaged due to their shitty corporate structure that all they're ever incentivized to do is work on new projects, new projects you'll never see, outside of the blue moon chances, like a VR Half-Life game that barely made it past the finish line and was totally reworked from the bottom up a year before release, and an update to Valve's second biggest cash cow, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.
Onto that disgrace, we have Counter-Strike 2, the Counter-Strike you knew, but now everything is worse.
To start the game, you have this gross sleek competitive style they're trying to go for, that looks like complete and total dogshit, 2011 called, they want their art designers back, and it's piled on with the shitty menu design that prioritizes you seeing your shitty ugly agent skins and gloves before anything else, great!
You fire up a game, but oh no, what's this? They've removed short and long matches, now you can only play this middle of the road medium length match that appeals to nobody, Yay!
Oh well, at least the gameplay isn't that much different, all they did was add the smokes, and to start off the gameplay just feels like shit now, something changed and everything feels floaty and imprecise, it's gotten a lot better than what it launched at, but the fact that this was a replacement for one of the biggest competitive games in the world, and it launched like this, after months of beta, is nothing short of a colossal embarrassment.
And what's this? The buy menu, it's shit now!
You have to pick a small selection of weapons in this Valorant styled menu list, effectively dooming most off-meta weapons to be never picked again, and thanks for just reinventing the wheel to blur together with your vastly superior competition.
And to top it all off, there's been a gigantic cheater problem, bigger than I've ever seen when I was playing CS:GO, Multiple times when I infrequently play in friends in low rank lobbies, you will run into blatant wallhackers, the ones you can check in replay and see them staring at people through walls, fucking fantastic, and the matchmaking isn't much better either, did I mention that there were multiple bugs of innocent users getting VAC banned for extreme things like using a console command to look like you're spinbotting, or simple things like, using certain AMD software?
And guess what? Several fucking things from the original were just completely dropped in the transition, Arms Race was removed, only to be reintroduced months and months later and advertised as a content update, thanks for bringing back the thing you took away, dipshits!
Danger Zone was removed, though I doubt anyone will miss it.
Wingman lost like most of its map pool.
Riot Shield was removed from Casual hostage playlists, no fun allowed I suppose.
Multiple console commands stopped working, like net_graph, left-handed viewmodels, and the anti view bob commands.
Achievements were removed for no reason.
And to top it all off, now all the maps use the same default operators, incase you were worried that they weren't shoving the awful agent skins down your throat enough.
I'm pretty sure it didn't launch with community server support, so thanks for pissing in the face of what your companies games were built on, douchebags.
But here's the good part of the game, they update3d the graphics.
That's it.
That's all there is to this.
There's the interactive smokes I guess, but they're a pretty minor thing and it's nothing that couldn't have been done on the old engine.
Onto those graphics, it just looks... bad.
Sure, CS:GO's graphics weren't great either, ranging from oversaturated to too dirty and gritty, one looking like a fashion show model and the latter looking like a Call of Duty NPC.
But this? This is fucking awful, Half-Life Alyx is one of the prettiest games I've seen in my entire life, and this just looks like complete and total dogshit, like the models were just sloppily ported from source 1 to 2, and then hiding any imperfections with their new shading.
Sure, the shading is pretty, but it makes the aesthetics of the game wildly inconsistent, realistic guns, colorful shiny pseudo-cartoonish characters, oversaturated world, realistic blood, disgustingly ugly bloom coated fire, etc.
It just makes the whole thing look like a visual mess, and a sloppy attempt at converting the game to a clean visual ala Valorant.
Sorry Valve, as much as I love you, your art team is no match for Riot in terms of aesthetics mixed with readability, they're placing your teeth on the curb and jumping on your head from a second story window, and the viscera left from the aftermath is in the shape of a shiny Phoenix Terrorist Model.
All there is to know about Valve at this point is that you just should not interact with their live service games after like 3-5 years of release, that's around the time they just totally give up and stop giving a fuck and start screwing their customers.
And all there is to know about their upcoming products is that their upcoming game that is basically a total blur at this point, Neon Prime is rumored to be dropping the sci-fi aesthetic because some idiot at Valve got spooked by sci-fi games not doing so hot lately, mainly in context to Starfield, which is a game that sold well and only bombed due to being a shitty Bethesda game.
To all of the people fucking their customers day in day out on the live-service areas of Valve, Fuck you. Except Eric on what's left of the TF2 team, love you man.
To all the Valve devs slaving away at new single-player titles? Bless your heart, as your monetization pisses your customers respect for your company away, thank you for constantly reminding them what Valve was built for, making quality games that don't ask for anything more than the entry ticket price, Half-Life Alyx is one of the best games Valve ever made, and Counter-Strike 2 is going to live in the pits of hell next to Ricochet.