News Valve lets slip Steam.TV streaming site

Read more

 

Remember this?



You've got two things, there. The first is that after Grand Theft Auto V and its hated Shark Card microtransactions came out, the games stopped because Rockstar now had a way to ensure recurring income without having to release new games every year. The second, which is often missed, is that the games they're developing take a lot longer and cost a lot more: the original GTA's development budget was £2.50 and it was made by two men and a surprisingly talented dog; GTAV's budget was a hundred bajillion dollars and had a team of programmers, voice-over artists, motion capture artists, musicians, artists, and drunks roughly equivalent to the population of Venezuela working on it.

You can't do microtransactions forever, though, so Rockstar's releasing a new game Real Soon Now. Hooray!

Valve, though, Valve figured out something better: instead of taking a little bit of money from everyone who plays one of its games, it takes a little bit of money from everyone who plays anyone's games. Like Rockstar, that means it doesn't have to make games any more to make money. Like Rockstar, any attempts to continue its much-loved franchises will require a budget of All The Money in the World and the population of a small solar system to complete - and why would you do that when you can just sit on a beach and earn 20 percent?

The joke goes: Valve used to make games, now it makes money. There's a lot of truth, there.

(Yes, I know Valve does still make games: Artifact, a collectable card game, is coming out in November this year, while Valve now owns Campo Santo and thus will get the credit for 2019's In the Valley of Gods too. They ain't Half-Life 3, though, are they? Hell, they're not even Portal 3. Or Left 4 Dead 3.)

 

Aye - it's officially launched now, though still The International exclusive. Article updated with Valve's announcement.