ignoring the ressentimental screeching ['valve should intervene and make their online services adhere to US law to avoid endangering the good willing actors in its userbase' would be a different point from 'every sight that doesn't conform to the whims of my imaginary world drives me into a panic attack expell them all mrs principal' 💋], i have to add that valve through its entire history sought to imitate and one up their older sierra/vivendi brother blizzard. steam was a response to battle.net, tf2 and ventures after were a response to the overwhelming success of wow, the company disorganization model mirrored that of blizzard north. they even got dota!

it is painfully common to see normies conflate valve giving modders employment opportunities and appropriating their work with earnestly supporting modding [on this misconception we can blame how '''indie''' gamedev slid into a state as thoroughly corporatized as casual/mobile games were in mid aughts: IPs sold to devolver and embracer splinters, grifts around reselling abandonware junk, neverending streams of regurgitated vomit cashing in on replicating whatever is the latest tumblr aesthetic trend or astroturfed talking point. game design is only a strand of marketing, can you name a difference between EA MTX patents and your favorite video essayist hypnotically droning on about 'satisfying gameplay loops'? are you content with being a gooner slave for as long as the media/content is 'ethically sourced'? hilarious that EA has ultimately been the far more virtuous (uninvasive) publisher in regards to community content]. giving out goldsrc [25 years closedsrc] and source toolkits served only to further the reach of steam in years around the farcical hl2 launch by entrapping enthusiast developers into its gated off DRM ecosystem [they seem to like it, warfork now enables steamworks by default]. indeed, i can only recall valve spitting in their faces repeatedly with the transitions to steampipe and cs2, trying to limit the reach of tf2c and of, gradually limiting access to the shared developer repository for everyone because of black mesa leaks [put up with the culture you have cultivated!], closing tf:s2, stealing the spotlight from fortress forever and stalling the release of classic offensive because right now would be the most inconvenient time for a cspromod 2 to come out [rembember that?]; spitting in faces of their own partners – the quirky and bloated l4d2 was rushed out only to snatch the l4d IP away from turtle rock. the praise of valve on linux exaggerates their contributions [dxvk –the only real breakthrough necessary– would have been developed without their involvement], downplays the profit incentive [valve mobilized in this direction only when opportunities arose to snatch the PC platform from microsoft] and cooperation with ibm red hat. steam isn't even a good service, -no-browser was gutted with their webapp update that has no point other than looking contemporary and lacing more telemetry without fixing leaking shared memory! i have very little hope for osc surviving.

launch tf2 was a thoroughly boring afterthought of a game, grounded not in quake but the worst aspects of halo with molasses movement and minute-long respawn times, class distinctions achieved by individually gimping everyone, embued in a universally attractive funny shell – from the very beginning a 3D chatbox without a subscription fee. deadlock is guaranteed to be better. in achievement rewards [miss the golden age of microsoft banning free DLC for third parties?] comes the genesis of GaaS, sink more time into the game's tasks to gain an advantage over your peers [class update weapons were decidedly overpowered]. d2jsp and the wow auction house were systems of organically equalizing ladder/character progression between all players; cosmetic items –initially not too conspicuous but truly unveiled with mann-conomy– would strip in-game drops of any real utility and become a point of speculative trading, exploited to its fullest with cs:go's arms race community market [a response to the auction house from diablo 3]. with tf2's status as steam's ps home came the numerous collaborations; the extent to which the community was involved too was drawing item models. tour of duty would come as state-issued GDKP runs. the only way your watercolor memories could be saved is a private server. sucks to be you.

it would be hard to read the two stay awhile and listen books and see the life-damaging crunches of diablo 1 and 2, its deep managerial and interpersonal turmoil as anything positive. valve has successfully gaslit their playerbase just by putting a smiling face on the carefully moderated ViDocs and thorough obfuscation of their indev projects. i would anticipate many revelations in the years to come. or not. they had swept max payne 3 under the rug pretty well