Valve used to be a game developer, then, it became the owner of the largest online market
for PC games.
Now it focuses mostly on sketchy activities meant to increase its bottom line.
In today's gaming climate, there's just no escaping the dreaded microtransaction.
And loot boxes, arguably the most predatory type of microtransaction, are everywhere.
While they got their start in Chinese and Korean MMORPGs, the West got their real first
taste of them in Team Fortress 2 when it transitioned into a free-to-play game.
But… free!
Right?
Free is great!
We love free!
For players, the transition to F2P multiplied the user base by five, according to PC Gamer.
That's crucial for a multiplayer game, obviously.
For Valve, the transition to "free-to-play" ended up multiplying the game's monthly revenues
by 12.
Turns out freedom, as they say, is never free.
Where did they get all this extra revenue from?
You guessed it: microtransactions, crates, keys, and crappy hats galore.
Thanks for nothin', Valve.
When Valve says, "structure happens," emphasizing its project-specific, informal hierarchies,
what they're really saying is, "Structure doesn't exist until we say it does."
Valve's former employees have spoken out against what they allege to be a cliquish corporate
culture, made all the more frustrating by the company's claims of flat organization.
Former Valve employee and tinkerer extraordinaire Jeri Ellsworth, compared Valve to attending
high school, claiming:
"[It] felt a lot like high school.
There are popular kids that have acquired power in the company, then there's the trouble
makers, and everyone in between."
She also claimed that recruiting became an issue, stating:
"We would interview very talented people but they would be rejected by the old timers at
Valve as not fitting the culture … [Valve] promised me the world and then backstabbed
me."
No wonder she left in 2013.
You'd think that working somewhere as high-profile as Valve would be just the bee's knees, wouldn't
you?
It's a tech startup, and those are always amazing.
It's responsible for some of the greatest video games of all time.
What could go wrong?
Well… a lot of things, depending, of course, on how much trust you're willing to extend
to people who make claims on the internet.
According to PC Gamer, former Valve employee Rich Geldreich let loose in July 2018 with
a lot of info about an unnamed company he doesn't like.
It is worth noting that this unnamed company is most likely Valve.
First, he says the company's quirky employee handbook, which was leaked in 2012, was intentionally
done so as a sneaky PR move.
He also says a lot of employee's compensation was based on bonuses that encouraged backstabbing
and manipulation because the only way to get bonuses was through peer review committees.
Did we say "bee's knees" before?
We meant "bee's stinger," because that sounds like a real pain in the a--.
As of October 2018, Valve has an F rating from the Better Business Bureau.
Many older complaints stem from the years when Steam had no refund policy and account
theft was a regular occurrence.
With digital software distribution, refunds should've been simple.
But for years, Valve met requests for refunds with convenient silence.
It took an Australian court charging Valve $2.1 million to finally inspire the company
to craft a reasonable refund policy.
"It seems the Australian competition and consumer commission aren't all bowing at the altar
of Gaben like the rest of us.
They're suing Valve over Steam's refund policy, or distinct lack thereof."
Newer complaints, on the other hand, allege that Valve offers minimal assistance should
an account be hijacked, which makes sense, considering that Valve utilizes a forum-based,
mostly peer-to-peer customer service model.
Simply put, Valve's customer service is kind of a joke, except, of course, it's not very
funny.
Steam is pretty much everywhere, and it's really freaking easy to use, which is why
it more or less has a monopoly on PC game sales.
Not only that, it has no meaningful competition and can pretty much do whatever it wants.
This, argues Tim Colwill in an opinion piece for Polygon, is not great for anyone except
Valve.
Gamers even rebelled against other companies that tried to do the same thing.
Colwill notes that a mandatory installation of EA's Origin service to play Battlefield
3 was wildly unpopular in 2011.
It was okay for Steam to have the place of privilege on our machines, but no one else
should be trusted.
The sad, sad truth is: no matter how poorly you treat us, Valve, we will always be loyal
… for some reason.
"I wish I knew how to quit you."
While games like the Witcher series or the Mass Effect series all have plenty of naughty
bits in 'em, the naughty bits are not the main focus of the games, thus, Steam hasn't
had any problem making oodles of money off them.
The problem?
Valve had, and still has, no idea what they're doing about games that are all about naughty
bits getting unclothed and subsequently mashed together.
Here's a brief rundown.
First, they ordered the developers of some friskier games to censor their work or get
their content off the service.
The kicker?
According to PC Gamer, some had actually cleared their content with Steam before releasing,
and others just weren't that naughty.
After a backlash, Valve pulled a 180 and turned Steam into a free-for-all, removing only games
deemed "illegal" or "straight up trolling", in their words.
This was also not a popular decision.
By September 2018, Valve had debuted an adult filter to protect the kiddies from risque
content.
Only time will tell what their next move is, but, chances are, somebody somewhere will
take issue with it.