your (and many others) idolizing of Gabe is creepy, stop it.

no

Stop idolizing Gaben? Is such a thing even possible?

He is idolized for many very good reasons.

I just imagine the OP buying a phone, paying it. First thing, just throwing it at the wall and yelling at the thing "You're over-rated, Fuck you! Stu..

because people is insecure and we live in a society with a cult personality disorder.

gabe is a cool dude. he is not the savior of video games and should not be worshipped as such because it's intensely creepy.

He might not have saved gaming as whole but it sure as shit would be in a much worse state without him around. Hopefully his fatness doesnt prematurely kill him.. that would suck.

Put out a ok game every 25 years and have thousands of weirdos worship you.

"Have you accepted Gabe Newell as your lord and saviour?"

Everyone shut the fudge up about idolizing Newell and don't derail the thread's point.

I agree with you OP, we can give the power back to the user by having DLC content created by users for users and rated according to quality, rather than buying over priced DLC that may or may not suck.

Am I a bad person for feeling envy and anger at the fact that kids are making FIVE FIGURE SALARIES creating TF2 hats and Skyrim swords? Who the fuck pays them? Someone explain this economic thing to me NOWWWW

Half Life 2 isn't a very good game.

I think it might be the worst game I've ever played.

/S

he kinda saved pc gaming though?

sure, i'll idolize him. :)

the beard suits him well btw *insert santa claus joke here*

I think what's lost is how well written this post was. And for the record, I like hats.

Uh... alright. I'll take the Book of Valve if I must, but you really need to get off my porch. I'm sure one of my neighbors will love to listen to you explain the Gospel of Gaben, but right now you're just making me feel a little uncomfortable. Thanks.

Just want to add that when Steam came out, we didn't "cynically lol", we got appropiately annoyed because it was a terrible service. It was Always-Online DRM with little benefit for people that were still more accustomed to buying PC games on discs. The initial reaction to Steam was justified, as is the current love most people have for the service. If you didn't mess with Steam back in the early days, you have no point of reference to understand why people bitched about it, so intensely. Yea, they brought it around and that's great (I refuse to buy PC games anywhere else, now), but saying people that hated it in it's initial iteration were "cynical" is terribly short-sighted.

When steam came out the whole idea of digitally purchasing a game was sneered at. Thats a fact. Anyone claiming otherwise wasnt around at the time or is simply an American Dog lying.

Valve are anything but short sighted. This is why people should not be too quick to piss over the steam box.

PC MASTER RACE GO!!!!1!

Um...

So, you call out Bungie as being inferior to Valve because Valve allows user to create and distribute stuff, which doesn't make any amount of sense. Along with Media Molecule, Bungie is at the forefront of user generated content on consoles.

Halo 3 and Reach had absurd amounts of user created maps and gametypes, which were eventually integrated into public servers at no cost as well as being readily available to everyone for custom games. Reach also had a solid system for rating and sorting user created content. The things created may not be up to the level of mods, but for things made on a console with a controller, the system was quite robust. Obviously the "inferior" Bungie understood the benefits of user generated content as far back as 2007 (the same year TF2 came out).

... and all Valve asks is for you to not own any game you buy.

Gabe Newell is right.

I don't know if "people like hats" as much as they want a fair exchange otherwise they don't want the vendor involved.

Never said Valve were short-sighted. I said Steam sucked at launch. People sneered at buying games digitally because a 5mbps connection back then was awesome and no one wanted to wait a day and a half to play their game. However, most people's first interactions with Steam happened when they brought home games they bought at a store on a disk that required them to get on the internet before they could play it. It was bothersome and annoying and didn't always work right. I am not questioning Valve's vision or foresight, I am simply saying that people had every reason to dislike Steam in it's early incarnations.

To bring this back on topic somewhat, I think that this sort of shared game economy is one of the greatest things to come out of the previous generation. Mods becoming easier to get at for everyone on Workshop, and the potential that TF2 has shown for a marketplace of game items is very exciting to me. Imagine a Borderlands game with gun drops that go into a real, permanent vault that you can buy and sell from. Or a mode on Skyrim where you can become a shopkeeper, buying and selling in game items to traveling adventures who wander into your version of a town. And when you're done with a game? Cash our your items to a shopkeeper and get Steam Wallet or PayPal (although probably not PayPal) funds towards your next game. You would create a much more immersive game with a realistic economy and a player base that is invested in your world. That seems like the future to me.

DOTA 2 is technically not out yet, so Counter Strike GO.

Anyway, The whole idea behind the marketplace kind of thinking though is that ideally the publishers wouldn't have to do much of anything other than provide the baseline amount of DLC they usually provide. TF2 items nowadays are 100% pulled from the community, with Valve making only a small profit from each sale. Especially after MvM, Valve is essentially done with TF2, they're happy to put out community maps and items for the rest of time, keeping the game alive despite its age. This obviously wont work for every game out there, but it is a fascinating space for developers to play around in in the future, and it would be a great move for some publishers (EA for example) who have a tendency to shut down their games prematurely It would be effective for everyone if the game could prove its keep in the long run and continue to produce money and content for all involved.

From what I remember, Valve wasn't even running official TF2 servers until the F2P update, so I would assume the answer is no.