valve – The Daily SPUF

#SaveTF2, A Tweet and a Bucket of Salt

June 8, 2022June 7, 2022 Medic 0 Comments #SaveTF2, community, Team Fortress 2, valve

On May 26th 2022, the Team Fortress 2 community came together and peacefully protested about how the developers at Valve had basically abandoned Team Fortress 2. After all, vanilla Team Fortress 2 servers have been flooded with bots and cheaters, while community servers are having an arms race between hackers and script-writers, constantly trying to stop the flood of cheating from taking over. On top of that, Team Fortress 2 hasn’t had a proper update in a long, long time, and the only new content is crates and keys, little else. A protest All of this actually followed a mini… [Continue Reading]

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Tea Talk: Valve’s flat company structure

October 26, 2017October 29, 2017 Medicinal Warlock 1 Comment developer, Tea Talk, valve

Valve’s flat company structure is rather well-known among gamers, devs and business people alike. It sounds like a game dev paradise: a salary model based on effort, no man being another man’s boss, ideas allowed to grow and flourish, and you get to pick what you want to work on. It sounds almost like Andrew Ryan’s vision of Rapture. And just like Rapture, things do go wrong. Valve’s customer support is legendarily bad. That isn’t surprising if you think about it. Who in the world will volunteer to do a thankless job answering the mob? For finance-related issues, potential lawsuits… [Continue Reading]

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Tea Talk: Developer hijinks

October 2, 2017October 23, 2017 Medicinal Warlock 0 Comments developer, Devolver Digital, Hi-Rez, paladins, Tea Talk, valve

In general, despite me really hating their business model at times and feeling really iffy about their new VIP system in Paladins, I like Hi-Rez. The devs actually put a lot of effort and love into developing the game. Paladins have been growing rather well, its community vibrant, its playerbase number is rather respectable (though we won’t know the actual player count since you can launch Paladins directly through Hi-Rez’s launcher instead of going through Steam), and its eSports scene is growing. This is in no small part due to Hi-Rez’s continuous efforts to develop and promote the game. But that… [Continue Reading]

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Trade Restrictions

December 12, 2015 Medic 0 Comments mobile, steam, steam guard, trading, valve, weird

I recently got a new debit card. This isn’t an uncommon occurrence, everyone’s debit and credit cards expire every two to three years, so they need to be replaced. Like Paypal, I’ll have to re-verify my card. Having online banking makes sorting out Paypal easy (although you couldn’t tell, considering some of my clients!) and that’s sorted out nice and fast. Steam is a bit slower. Since it doesn’t have a card verification system like Paypal, you have to wait a couple of days to be able to trade. I can somewhat understand this, it’s a new payment method, something… [Continue Reading]

Featured The Competitive Corner

So about that competitive matchmaking stuff…

May 3, 2015 Medic 0 Comments announcement, competitive, matchmaking, Ultiduo, valve

At the same time all that crap was going on with Skyrim and its workshop, it turns out that B4nny (a.k.a the most popular Demoman ever) and a bunch of buddies went to visit Valve to ask about Team Fortress 2. After a tough journey, much hard work and a vast amount of sweat, blood, tears and over-exaggeration, it turns out that some of the things this crew of popular mercs asked for are actually happening. The biggest part? Talks of competitive TF2 matchmaking. Now, of course, everyone was happy. The TF2 community, the older and wiser part of it,… [Continue Reading]

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How an FPS Should (and Shouldn’t) Reward Experience

April 18, 2015January 15, 2017 aabicus 0 Comments analysis, experience, non-tf2, On Shooters, Team Fortress 2, valve

While I’m not the Valve-only gamer I was a few years ago, I do seem to always find myself coming back to Valve’s pre-eminent titles. No matter how many times I grow tired of their old games and branch out in the hopes of finding similar but fresh content, I always eventually come crawling back for more Left 4 Dead, Team Fortress or Counter-Strike. Recently I took a bit of time to try and puzzle out just what exactly Valve had done to continually attract me so. And I think I’ve figured it out. The single best thing about Valve games in… [Continue Reading]