this post was submitted on 17 Nov 2024
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Valve really only releases things that shake the industry up. I've been playing through Alyx for the first time this weekend and oh my god is it good.
Valve buys up dev teams that are about to shake the industry up. Valve haven't actually been the ones to make something new in a long time. TFC, CS, Portal, DoD, L4D, Alien Swarm, Dota 2... were all made by outside dev teams that Valve absorbed and put their name on. The only things Valve have actually made, themselves, in the last 5 years are Alyx and CS2, neither of which brought anything new to the industry (although they are wonderfully-executed games) and are both sequels of existing franchises.
Personally, I'm not a fan of this practice, because I feel like Valve inadvertently stifles these studios after they bring them onboard. For instance, the team from DigiPen that Valve bought for their Portal tech? Imagine if they were still able to make games. Imagine if they were still able to stretch their creativity and create new tech and ideas. Instead, their intellectual properties are all tied up at Valve and they got to release two whole games in the last 20 years. Who knows what we could be missing out on from these guys if they were able to actually still make stuff.
A lot of studios develop with the intention of being absorbed and/or bought out. The plan is usually to develop some niche incredible tech that's only around PoC quality and then be acquired.
They didn't get crushed by the big man here. That's simply how the reality of the market goes.
It's like pharmaceuticals. No one starts a new pharma company expecting to compete with Pfizer or Merck, the whole game is to develop a promising drug and then get your company bought out by one of them so they can use their resources to get it to the market.
Plus, the actual creatives aren't gone just because their studio stopped making games, they usually keep working in some other role. It's hardly ideal, but it's wrong to frame this as a loss of their future contributions.
To equivocate a little, a great team is bottled lightning and having them disbanded because of market dynamics is a loss.