It feels like Valve's management changed a few years (decade?) ago. I remember when they were still shipping SDKs and proper mod support, even for their multiplayer games. Today they are just killing everything that could divert revenue from their cash cow CS2 and shipping a half baked js-based scripting engine for their maps. (And in the meanwhile they kill fan projects like CS:Legacy, which is a whole game and not even a mod, with their army of lawyers. I don't think stuff like this would have happened 13+ years ago).
All of their games (Dota 2, CS, and the other ones they hardly maintain anymore) are basically just passion projects at this point, lingering on from a bygone age when they were a game development company.
Their most recent title, Half-Life: Alyx, probably only got greenlit because someone internally was able to convince leadership that it would help sell VR headsets.
Dota2 as well. Like I'm sure CS2/Dota2 are small compared to Steam, but the revenue from these games alone dwarfs what most other companies are making.
Valve's financials are nonpublic, and any numbers you find are rough, indirect estimates.
In any case, my point was not that these games make no money, but simply that Valve doesn't need them. The total number of people buying games on Steam vastly dwarfs the number of people who play Dota 2 and CS2 (even just counting total players - how much more when you narrow down to players who spend money).
It feels like Valve's management changed a few years (decade?) ago. I remember when they were still shipping SDKs and proper mod support, even for their multiplayer games. Today they are just killing everything that could divert revenue from their cash cow CS2 and shipping a half baked js-based scripting engine for their maps. (And in the meanwhile they kill fan projects like CS:Legacy, which is a whole game and not even a mod, with their army of lawyers. I don't think stuff like this would have happened 13+ years ago).
Valve's cash cow is Steam.
All of their games (Dota 2, CS, and the other ones they hardly maintain anymore) are basically just passion projects at this point, lingering on from a bygone age when they were a game development company.
Their most recent title, Half-Life: Alyx, probably only got greenlit because someone internally was able to convince leadership that it would help sell VR headsets.
CS2 makes an enormous and non-negligible amount of money.
Dota2 as well. Like I'm sure CS2/Dota2 are small compared to Steam, but the revenue from these games alone dwarfs what most other companies are making.
Valve's financials are nonpublic, and any numbers you find are rough, indirect estimates.
In any case, my point was not that these games make no money, but simply that Valve doesn't need them. The total number of people buying games on Steam vastly dwarfs the number of people who play Dota 2 and CS2 (even just counting total players - how much more when you narrow down to players who spend money).
They’re (genuinely) gearing up to release Half-Life 3 at the moment, and not as a VR exclusive
evidence?
https://miro.com/app/board/uXjVINqBTwM=/
They just opened up the source to TF2 with an SDK not too long ago. Explicitly for modding and community driven development.
https://www.teamfortress.com/post.php?id=238809