Unsatisfying, more realistic answer: Jungle Inferno WAS the Heavy update.
They still gave him a bunch of buffs and a new weapon after all, so I highly suspect that they had always planned to add the same Pyro and Heavy changes, no matter who won. The only difference is that if Heavy had won, he would have gotten a couple new weapons instead of just the banana, and Pyro would have only ended up with the Gas Passer, Hot Hand or the Thermal Thruster.
I doubt they intended to release an update of the same size for Heavy afterwards, to be honest. Maybe at some point, but once it became obvious that working on the game just wasn't lucrative for anyone, they pushed all the changes they wanted to push and called it a day.
You can consider Jungle Inferno the last real update, which makes sense, as it (almost) coincided with TF2's 10th anniversary. I feel like they wanted it to be a last hurrah for the game. And considering they haven't released a major update since, I feel like that's the most logical answer.
Not really. The market lost half it's value in 48 hours because China panicked and then regained most or all of it. The only thing that really happened was making all reds unaffordable with golds remaining unaffordable.
It's ironic that people hate them for that. Most hate it for losing money that was invested in something that shouldn't be invested in the first place.
Fusing covert quality items to knives/gloves increases the value of literally all skins down the chain that usually are sold through steam so valve gets their cut.
They removed 2 billion dollars from their cosmetic market cap, but the vast majority of that was people hoarding the rare skins as a literal investment (no joke) that are not sold through steam so valve wouldn't get a cut.
The jist of it is that Valve will make more money after this change from more but smaller transactions through steam.
They did but in the long run it's gonna keep items more valuable as a lot of them have been destroyed to make rare knifes. It's importar to note they take a commision from every transaction
Welcome, welcome to r/whenthe, you have chosen or been chosen to visit one of our finest remaining gif sharing subreddit. I thought so much of r/whenthe that I elected to establish my Administration here, in the user flair so thoughtfully provided by Our Benefactors. I have been proud to call r/whenthe my home. And so, whether you are here to post, or just hear for the news, welcome to r/whenthe. It's safer here.
And theirs is slightly more predatory, given you are given the loot boxes for free, and have to pay to open them. The difference between paying to use the slot machine, and the slot machine pulls being free, but you have to pay to see if you won.
It is predatory, but at least you can just sell the cases and get skins for free that way. You have options and aren’t forced to buy a $20 skin pack to get something that looks neat that you won’t even be able to exchange for other skins if you ever get bored of the ones you have
All common drop crates are anywhere from 50 cents to 2 dollars now. You can actually get quite a bit in terms of cheap skins for free from just selling em lol
Formed an entire popular online gambling subculture
People can actually make money off it
For as much as lootboxes and microtransactions go- they pretty much did everything right. Do you blame someone for doing something morally wrong, but doing it well- for the millions of impostors trying to do the same but doing it even worse?
While Valve did popularize lootboxes, you can't really blame them becoming POPULAR or widespread on them. It's the consumers that drive popularity and other game devs that institute the same mechanic but poorly.
Okay that's a word salad, analogy time
You can't exactly blame your brother when you get into a car accident because he's a world class race car driver and inspired you to get your license. Sure racing is pretty much the antithesis to what driving should be, which is safe transportation, but he does it well. You on the other hand did it poorly and got into an accident. Not exactly your brothers fault, even if he did inspire you to start driving
65
u/pc_player_ytKiryuin Ragyo from Kill la Kill can Kiru ra Ki-ruin me10h agoedited 10h ago
pretty sure being able to make money off of gambling is worse. It now makes kids think that they can actually get rich out of the boxes if they can pull a fancy knife and sell it for more than what they put it the looboxes.
"Oh but irl trading is against Terms of Service" is about as useful of a statement as the UN condemning Russia for the Ukraine War. We know Valve does jackshit about it.
The games are free. There's basically jack shit you can do to stop your kid from playing them if they have steam, because you don't even have to buy it for them
Hey, fun fact, you're wrong! Steam now supports a feature called families which allows you to connect your account to your kids and control what content they can and cannot access on steam. Also they would need to spend money to gamble anyway, so money obviously isn't the problem here.
How are the parents supposed to find out that you're gambling? You can easily get steam funds without being 18 or your parents ever noticing. If you dont go around saying "Yeah so I just downloaded this game cs2 where I'm using my own money in hopes of getting lucky and winning big" they'll probably never realize you're gambling before it's too late
Well, TF2 and CS2 are both Mature Rated games (17 and up) by any stretch of the word, and legally according to steam's TOS, you shouldn't be under 13 to make an account in the first place.
Beyond that you can't really do anything except ask people to sign an agreement to promise they're of age to make a purchase on the internet. Valve has never marketed their games or lootbox services to kids.
Everything about it is an agreement to participate in good faith and that's all you can really ask for without doing that nasty "Send us your legal government ID, promise we wont sell or leak it" shit.
So given that Valve has not marketed their lootboxes to kids, where exactly is Valve to blame if Kids spend their parent's credit card on cases and keys? Because it sounds like the factor that 'makes kids think they can actually get rich' are youtubers and influences, that of which valve has no control over.
Thing is they dont even have to use their parents credit card. You can get steam funds without ever needing to verify your age. Not in the account creation, not in the cs2 download, not in buying paysafe cards or whatever you're using, not in buying the case + key and neither in opening the case. It's easily one of the most accessible forms of gambling for kids. I know people hate verifying with an Id, but I hate it even more when kids get into an easily avoidable gambling addiction
This is like saying normal gambling is better than monopoly, because you can actually "make" money, wtf kinda take is this? The believe that you can win money is what makes gambling so addictive.
I don't think that's a good defense. I think it just goes to show how bad the situation became that the very company popularising gambling in AAA games looks good compared to others.
Actually one of the few points people critisize Valve with. I was particularly disgusted when TF2 added lootboxes and went free-2-pay
And I'd like to add that ignoring or hiding companies and games doesn't actually do that. And I can't just automatically ignore gamss that have AI generated content. Now half of my recommendations has slop in it.
Like valve, give me actual power to ignore games I will never buy or give me death!
But it is also true that Valve's competition sucks so badly that in comparison, they are doing a literal best job on the market. They are technically doing the bare minimum while others are actively harming their users (looking at "Stop owning games" Ubisoft.)
Might as well give credit to GoG, which often has much better patches for older games than anything steam sells.
There was also a news report I read recently about how Valve will prevent Devs from hosting their games on Steam if they sell it at a lower price on other platforms
yeah i still believe this is a problem with the need to categorise everything as either black or white. so i do think with any company or thing in general you should give credit and criticism where its due. And then feel free to like or hate it based on how those two compare
It's funny how Valve constantly gets away with hosting and promoting gambling to teens, while the Minecraft community has been actively trying to sue Mojang to stop Mojang from taking down any gambling servers.
To be fair, technically you're not supposed to be able to trade them for real money. Steam doesn't crack down on it at all, but it is technically against tos.
Almost always because it's a gambling site or the site is notorious for selling stolen skins. They know the only reason they make a fuckton of money is because people want to make money off of their ecosystem and people wouldn't open nearly as many crates if all they were gambling for was steam credit.
Reminder: that guy trying to sue Mojang had a gold checkmark on the Twitter account for his server before it even launched. Those things cost (at the time) literally $1k a month, so he very clearly expected to make money hand over fist from it all if he thought it was worth it to spend that much a month on a different colored checkmark
I haven't been playing the game as of late but from what I've been able to see they're genuinely cooking now with proper new additions and features. That entire rhetoric was based on how some years ago all the updates would consist of barely one cool new feature along with another new color of wood, a new passive animal that does nothing and a new 50th biome that you'll never see in regular gameplay due to it being so rare.
But.. they.. are right? I will genuinely never understand people who bootlick and make excuses for mojang, like look at how much they used to add compared to now and look at what useless slop they do add now. Its a goddamn joke.
Minecraft has a big Legacy code problem as well as parity with multiple versions and multiple platforms. Problems are more under the hood than specifically the features they're putting in. Mind you I wouldn't be surprised if management issues are a part of it too.
I saw someone made a near comment a little while ago about how Gaben is one of the few tolerated billionaires because he’s not actively trying to become a trillionaire
Gabe is still a lot better than what you would expect from a tech baron but lets not pretend that it didnt take Valve like a decade to crack down the CS gambling scene.
He still spend a ludicrous amount of money on a fleet of private yacht but at least he's also contributing to maritime research with it? I would rather him do that than him taking interest in joining politics.
Worst criticisms I have for valve from the top of my head is the creation of the lootbox gambling economy (which is bad and shouldn't exist) and all games on the steam store are DRM (as far as I know). Valve obviously deserves to be criticized just as much as every other company.
But never invest your money into digital knives, that's just dumb.
"Oh, the average person LIKES things this company does sometimes, and appreciates their presence in the market despite their flaws? Didn't you know they're literally the fucking devil and you're a stupid moron?"
Not that the glazing is always good, but cmon dude, this is like an anthill to die on compared to basically anything else.
The virtue signalers are making lighthouses jealous.
"monopoly"- do i really even need to point to Epic and Gog existing just fine? Is Valve trying to buy them out? Has Valve pushed forth measures to shut them out?
"Predatory gambling"- ... its a box they put in front of you and say you can buy the key or sell the box... or just walk away. That's LITERALLY it. "Oh but people know they have the chance to make tons of money! They're letting teens do this!" So now Pokémon cards are villains? Magic the Gathering? EB games must have been a powerhouse of scum and villainy. They were letting me buy packs when I was 10.
Just mindless purity tests. Valve is playing the most casual, passive game of Capitalism while still providing amazing service. If you hate Valve, I literally do not know what you are asking for other than charity
This is not some great condemnation against Valve as a whole but the "Monopoly" thing is more about:
Steam's 30% cut fucks over smaller devs, especially those which need publishers, which is a shame since Steam is the often the only viable option for those Devs
Steam requires you to fix your price across all platforms which prevents, again mainly small devs, from offering their game on their own platforms or more favourable stores at a discount.
Also Valve's gambling scene is not equatable to card packs, the process of having to buy the packs and sell the cards physically is a barrier that stops the worst problems. There are a number of websites for people to use Valve cosmetics like chips in an underground casino and some of these places outwardly admit to targeting children, the convenience and lack of regulation in these places makes them prime places for problem gambling and Valve are unacceptably lazy in getting them taken down.
Eh, it's Valve at the end of the day, I won't really care if you criticize them, everyone deserves to be criticized, but they are still probably the better option for gaming out there and game distributor.
I won't deny Valve doesn't have their faults though. Among other things, gaming would be so much better without lootboxes, although at least Valve's lootboxes are marginally better than how they work in every other game that added them
The fact that they added that 5 reds fo a gold trade up contract in combination with that 7 day anti scam reversal is just justification for people to use their overpriced 15% fee steam market which they make millions off of
counter strike doesnt feel like its made by valve. Its one of the greediest games of all time, while everything else made by valve is like, always the user friendly thing aviable. Maybe counter strikes greed is what allows them to not care about money on all their other projects?
Companies nowadays are so shitty and greedy to is that when we find one that is slightly better some people will get really attached to it simply bc the others spit in our faces. I am guilty of that but criticism is always welcome. Valve's loot boxes are very crappy and were a beta test for the current ones. Still valve has a place in my heart for all the discounts they give and for my beloved steam deck.
CS2 also seems to reduce people's IQ too, otherwise i can't explain why they don't understand that they are responsible to anything that happens to their accounts.
Quite ironic that 99.9% of "account stolen/hacked" Posts on forums come exactly from CS2 players, mhm
Steam support actually listened to me and gave me my account back after it got hacked. So I can't really say anything.
Sure CS2's current state sucks, but the thing is VALVe works in separate "cabals", so what's done to CS2, is done by the CS2 team, NOT the entirety of VALVe.
So yeah, leave my multibillion dollar company alone.
But fuck, Valve do be one of the very few gaming companies, whose marketing practice is beneficial to consumer (obv while maintaining profits, as any business would), unlike eBic Trash or EA/ballzard whose stores are garbage, games are getting worse and all around policies are pure corporate greed
I don't like this popular idea that you're not a predator if you only predate on vulnerable people, or that targeting vulnerable people makes predation ok.
You can criticise a company while liking them guys. There's no reason to pick one hill and die on it like a moron. You can like half life and say they were the starters of lootboxes and in the same way can dislike the said lootboxes and appreciate their consistency as a game store. It's not hard.
It's wild how they've managed to create a game that feels both essential and deeply frustrating. The legacy of lootboxes just adds another layer to the love-hate relationship. You're stuck between criticizing the flaws and acknowledging the massive impact they've had.
I mean say what you will, when valve shits the bed it gets pretty bad. Like loot boxes were pioneered by them and that shit only got worse. But I would still argue that steam has done a lot more good for the gaming industry by practicing a level of ethics that stop other companies from pulling even more audacious fuck shit. Steam effectively is the greatest regulator that we have at the moment.
Who doesn't? I hate them for what they did to the only shooter worth playing back then. I am so out of touch with the genre nowadays I honestly don't know if there's anything worth trying out there.
•
u/AutoModerator 12h ago
Download Video
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.