Valve adds "all the Team Fortress 2 client and server game code" to its Source mod tools, letting modders "build completely new games based on TF2" and publish them on Steam
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Valve has made an emasculatingly large amount of money this way. Following in the footsteps of Id Software, Valve has been very open with their development tools. I don't know about the very earliest copies but the ZOMG GOTY edition of the original Half Life included its SDK on the disc. Counter Strike and Team Fortress started out as mods that Valve just...hired.
Releasing the tools to their customer base and then hiring the cream that rises to the top is a strategy I struggle to get mad at.
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You're a good doctor!
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Wow, this is an awesome move! We are honestly so lucky that Valve hasn't enshittified like so many other gaming companies out there.
I would say the marketplace is a form of enshittification. They're not burrowing headfirst into the shit like some platforms, but it's an inevitable trend regardless.
Plus who knows what happens when gabe isn't around any more. Best case scenario is he leaves the company to the workers as a co-op and then it has a chance to be a lasting legacy, but maybe it goes to someone who puts it up to be publicly traded and that's game over.
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Nice to see Epic isn’t the only company that cares about games. I might check this out just to learn
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Nice to see Epic isn’t the only company that cares about games. I might check this out just to learn
Epic isn’t the only company that cares about games
Bait so low quality it rotted away already
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Lol. It's so greedy of them!
Jokes aside. It's an interesting distinction to make. Even though the source code is freely available, it doesn't mean developers have free reign to do anything they want like they could with open source software. Apart from special circumstances, everything made with the source code will still be mods.
You can't do whatever you want with open source either. One big stipulation of copyleft licenses is the share-alike clause, which means you can't make modifications and then decide your program is now closed-source, so it protects the code from being enclosed again.
I mean yes you can make whatever modifications you want, generally, but it's not totally unrestricted.
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3dfx cards were cheating! I can't see through water with my 1998 Packard Bell!
What's the point in switching to TFC anyway when QWTF was still quite alive and well with tons of mods!
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Valve has made an emasculatingly large amount of money this way. Following in the footsteps of Id Software, Valve has been very open with their development tools. I don't know about the very earliest copies but the ZOMG GOTY edition of the original Half Life included its SDK on the disc. Counter Strike and Team Fortress started out as mods that Valve just...hired.
Releasing the tools to their customer base and then hiring the cream that rises to the top is a strategy I struggle to get mad at.
Thinking back, HL had a ridiculous quantity of high quality mods and TCs back in the day. Hell, Valve have even allowed HL to be remade and sold on steam.
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Lol. It's so greedy of them!
Jokes aside. It's an interesting distinction to make. Even though the source code is freely available, it doesn't mean developers have free reign to do anything they want like they could with open source software. Apart from special circumstances, everything made with the source code will still be mods.
It does harken back to the original HL mod scene though - some high quality stuff came out of that (and valve picked up the Devs too)
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Epic isn’t the only company that cares about games
Bait so low quality it rotted away already
I swear I see most trolls from lemmy. ca and feddit. uk
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Thinking back, HL had a ridiculous quantity of high quality mods and TCs back in the day. Hell, Valve have even allowed HL to be remade and sold on steam.
"We'd prefer you didn't use the word "Source" in the game title. You wanna sell Black Mesa on Steam?"
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What's the point in switching to TFC anyway when QWTF was still quite alive and well with tons of mods!
MPlayer. Your gaming cred checks out. How are your knees doing these days?
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Exactly.
This!
(upvotes are to the left FYI)
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I would say the marketplace is a form of enshittification. They're not burrowing headfirst into the shit like some platforms, but it's an inevitable trend regardless.
Plus who knows what happens when gabe isn't around any more. Best case scenario is he leaves the company to the workers as a co-op and then it has a chance to be a lasting legacy, but maybe it goes to someone who puts it up to be publicly traded and that's game over.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding you, or what enshittification is, but how is the steam marketplace an example of it?
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Maybe I'm misunderstanding you, or what enshittification is, but how is the steam marketplace an example of it?
The steam marketplace is an attempt to monetise the user base by creating a bunch of microtransactions and taking a cut for the store. They have created a speculative market, which is essentially gambling, and made it available to minors. This market is designed to exploit people's psychological weaknesses.
Yes, users and devs get a cut too, and that's better than some sites will do to you, but creating a market also has a bunch of externalities - extra problems that are offloaded onto other people and not borne by valve.
So suddenly we've got a bunch of scammers creating accounts to make money, which obviously can scam users, plus it generats spam, and it creates a need for user-hostile security. Now I can't friend my kid's account without spending money on it for instance,
Also there's the item spam. Now when I get a notification I don't know if it's a community forum reply, or just more worthless junk in my inventory.
Some of these are minor inconveniences, but that's how enshittification happens. It's little, creeping annoyances that get worse and worse until it starts to make people look for alternatives.
And like I said, it's not as bad as other places. Steam is still the best distribution platform out there, but it has enshittified a little bit. It has to, because the interests of the owners and the interests of the users are fundamentally at odds - more money spent means more money for the owners.
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The steam marketplace is an attempt to monetise the user base by creating a bunch of microtransactions and taking a cut for the store. They have created a speculative market, which is essentially gambling, and made it available to minors. This market is designed to exploit people's psychological weaknesses.
Yes, users and devs get a cut too, and that's better than some sites will do to you, but creating a market also has a bunch of externalities - extra problems that are offloaded onto other people and not borne by valve.
So suddenly we've got a bunch of scammers creating accounts to make money, which obviously can scam users, plus it generats spam, and it creates a need for user-hostile security. Now I can't friend my kid's account without spending money on it for instance,
Also there's the item spam. Now when I get a notification I don't know if it's a community forum reply, or just more worthless junk in my inventory.
Some of these are minor inconveniences, but that's how enshittification happens. It's little, creeping annoyances that get worse and worse until it starts to make people look for alternatives.
And like I said, it's not as bad as other places. Steam is still the best distribution platform out there, but it has enshittified a little bit. It has to, because the interests of the owners and the interests of the users are fundamentally at odds - more money spent means more money for the owners.
Some of these are minor inconveniences, but that's how enshittification happens. It's little, creeping annoyances that get worse and worse until it starts to make people look for alternatives.
Ok, maybe my definition of enshittification is off then. I thought it was when some company offers some product/service for a certain price (or free), then gradually removes features from that product/service while increasing the price. Am I off?
If that definition is right, I don't understand how the steam marketplace, a completely optional (borderline tangential) part of the steam platform, qualifies as enshittification.
And I'm not trying to defend the steam marketplace, I think it's stupid and terrible and at minimum needs age restrictions. But like, you can absolutely just not use it and your experience using the steam platform is totally unaffected.
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Some of these are minor inconveniences, but that's how enshittification happens. It's little, creeping annoyances that get worse and worse until it starts to make people look for alternatives.
Ok, maybe my definition of enshittification is off then. I thought it was when some company offers some product/service for a certain price (or free), then gradually removes features from that product/service while increasing the price. Am I off?
If that definition is right, I don't understand how the steam marketplace, a completely optional (borderline tangential) part of the steam platform, qualifies as enshittification.
And I'm not trying to defend the steam marketplace, I think it's stupid and terrible and at minimum needs age restrictions. But like, you can absolutely just not use it and your experience using the steam platform is totally unaffected.
That's one way it happens, but in general the term appears to be about decline in quality for the purposes of profit-seeking, regardless of whether services were offered for free or not.
The wiki article starts with this:
Enshittification, also known as crapification and platform decay, is the term used to describe the pattern in which online products and services decline in quality over time. Initially, vendors create high-quality offerings to attract users, then they degrade those offerings to better serve business customers, and finally degrade their services to users and business customers to maximize profits for shareholders.
Other articles I looked at seem to agree with this basic concept.
And like I said, spam from scammers and inbox spam are examples of shittiness that seep in regardless of if you engage or not. There is no "no marketplace plz" option, and even if there were scammers can still send you friend request spam.
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The steam marketplace is an attempt to monetise the user base by creating a bunch of microtransactions and taking a cut for the store. They have created a speculative market, which is essentially gambling, and made it available to minors. This market is designed to exploit people's psychological weaknesses.
Yes, users and devs get a cut too, and that's better than some sites will do to you, but creating a market also has a bunch of externalities - extra problems that are offloaded onto other people and not borne by valve.
So suddenly we've got a bunch of scammers creating accounts to make money, which obviously can scam users, plus it generats spam, and it creates a need for user-hostile security. Now I can't friend my kid's account without spending money on it for instance,
Also there's the item spam. Now when I get a notification I don't know if it's a community forum reply, or just more worthless junk in my inventory.
Some of these are minor inconveniences, but that's how enshittification happens. It's little, creeping annoyances that get worse and worse until it starts to make people look for alternatives.
And like I said, it's not as bad as other places. Steam is still the best distribution platform out there, but it has enshittified a little bit. It has to, because the interests of the owners and the interests of the users are fundamentally at odds - more money spent means more money for the owners.
Imagine being this salty about steam cards and C's skins
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Imagine being this salty about steam cards and C's skins
Yes, I'm so angry and salty that I checks notes wrote a detauled and even-handed analysis of the situation with appropriate caveats. How dare I state facts with sources and explanations of my reasoning.
I'm just absolutely raging. It's embarrassing, frankly. I'm making a fool of myself. I can't believe I lost control like that and said words that I believe to be true. Who does that? Unhinged behaviour. Just wild. I should be banned.
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I swear I see most trolls from lemmy. ca and feddit. uk
Low bars for entry with high community trustworthiness, you can make a .ca account really easily and most lemmy users have a positive opinion of .ca and its users.
