I agree

We can only hope that there are people waiting in the wings at Valve who are ready to take over the reins whenever Gaben is done and carry the torch forward in the same direction.

Valve is a private company. Microsoft can’t just buy Valve, Valve would have to agree to that. Considering Valve has (for a company their size) effectively unlimited resources already, and considering that Valve’s founder and leader is a known detractor of Microsoft, this is a nothing story. Microsoft will not buy Valve. This is baseless musing, like how I sometimes daydream with my wife about what we’d do if we won the lottery (which we don’t play).

Of course Microsoft would love to buy Valve. Just like they would love to buy Nintendo. I’d like to buy a Lamborghini. All these things are about equivalently likely, zero likely.

I feel this all the time. Like 3 of every 4 headlines I read are so absurd they can’t be real, except they are real. We’re truly living a comedy.

I think it’d make sense to offer a refreshed device that is either smaller, has better cooling, or both. And maybe an upper tier device with a better screen.

You’re right, they don’t need to make games. Yet they just released Alyx! Counterstrike 2 is known to be in development!

I don’t play TF2, so I don’t know what they’re doing right, but people are still playing it so whatever they are doing is apparently just fine with a lot of players. Bots have been problematic in online games forever, I don’t really know if that’s a TF2 specific issue. In any case, they’ve already supported TF2 way longer than most companies actively support their non-subscription games so I’m not sure what level of expectation is fair really.

No one has to like Valve, but painting them as this evil force in the gaming industry is a little bit silly IMO.

Valve? Profitable at all costs? The same Valve that refuses to give sequels to games for their own IPs because they can’t come up with ideas they feel are innovative enough, even though they know they would sell tens of millions of copies regardless of the quality?

The same Valve who literally gave Proton to the Linux gaming community?

That valve?

I don’t know why this keeps having to be said, but companies need to defend their IP in court or they risk losing their trademarks. This does not mean companies are evil.

As for not listening to TF2 players, I’m pretty sure the game is still pretty popular so they must be doing something right.

I’m not a valve apologist. I hate that they’ve shifted their focus from developing games to developing their platform for many years. It’s frustrating. But they did just release Alyx. And they are objectively doing some great things for the PC gaming community with the steam deck.