The Steam Deck is quite excellent. And it just shipped.

Though I would love to see a game come out of there again sometime. :)

I would love to see the Steam Deck release in Australia mind you. Still kind of wild to me that it hasn't been. Conspiratorialy, I always wonder if it's punishment for the ACCC forcing Valve/Steam to handle refunds via Aus consumer law, but I have no evidence of that.

Valve appears to have determined that for whatever reason it's not worth selling hardware in Australia. No Index here either.

From the document provided in TFA there seems to be a probable explanation (see pg. 55):

Australia — A place that’s either very near or is New Zealand where more than half of Valve’s employees were born.

That's the funniest part too, they don't sell their hardware in New Zealand either.

Hence my conspiracy theory! My wild assumption is that they don't want to deal with our consumer law, and/or they want to punish us for the ACCC forcing them to respect it wrt. Steam.

? https://www.ebgames.com.au/featured/valve-index

Well there it is. Definitely wasn't available from EB within the first 12 months of launch though. I know because I wanted one.

Took two whole years to arrive according to PCGAMER, appearing online for preorder in June last year

HL-3 would never make as much revenue as all those hats they made for Team Fortress 2.

Valve's only real product is the digital store. The 30% Steam tax is what drives the company. Everything else is a hobby.

Alyx was high quality for a hobby.

They're more than just a game studio these days, they're a major driving force of the entire industry. Linux gaming is totally viable today, something valve did almost singlehandedly over the last 7ish years (with big help from google, intel, and a few others). I'd say that's a pretty impressive feat.

Then you have their VR and steam deck hardware that is setting the bar for new gaming platforms. The fact that they also found time to ship a game is just icing on top IMO.

Here’s a small list of what Valve invented or developed over years:

Counter - Strike

Steam (and numerous innovations within it)

Dota 2

Portal 1 and 2

The entire VR industry as it exists today comes from Valve showing Oculus their far more advanced prototype and giving them the tech, which later led to FB acquisition

CastAR which was initially developed at valve - so far not successful but I think it has potential.

The best VR game currently available - half life Alyx

Gaming on Linux through Proton

Steam Deck

> Counter - Strike

> Dota

> Portal 1

> Gaming on Linux through Wine

These were all invented outside of Valve.

Portal 1 was definitely not invented outside of Valve - students had built a game with some similar mechanics. Portal was funded and developed at Valve afaik.

Does wine even compare to what Valve has accomplished with Proton?

Half-Life Alyx in 2020 and the Steam Deck this year?

I wasn't attempting to troll here, my reply was directly to this claim from the parent comment: "they moved to a more normal corporate structure so they would actually finish projects instead of people bouncing when the project got hard"

And they finished Half Life Alyx and the Steam Deck. I don't get your point. The origin of that quote is from the written documentary they made about the development of Alyx.

"people bouncing when the project got hard"

My point, in response to this specific quote from the person I was replying to, is that good people don't bounce when a project gets hard, they in fact do the opposite.

If you disagree with the statement I quoted from the person I was replying to that's fine, I have no bone to pick.

And the Index on which to play Alyx.