Valve seems different from a lot of AAA publishers and developers simply because they’re not publicly owned/traded. Been noticing a pattern with how companies sign a deal with the figurative devil as soon as they appear on the stock exchange. At that point, endless corner cutting to appeal to investors thinking that endless growth isn’t a myth.

free players aren't only possible future paying players, they are also part of the content, to have a healthy matchmaker, specially for novice players, you need a lot of players of varying levels of experience, if the game only has veteran players the new players will not stick to the game, either because they cant find a match or because the matches they find are unbalanced

Valve's been on a massive pro-consumer kick. From providing a teardown video on the Steam Deck (as well as purchaseable spare parts), to heavy Linux support, to updates like this.

Garbaj playing deathmatch with the UMP. What a legend

I like valve alot, because of their interest at efforts in linux :D

Humility can be a hard thing to come by in the internet. Garbaj, you give the impression through your videos that you are kind, humble, and fair. Quality content, thank you for being a role model to all these other UKpostsrs

We are looking at you, Activision.

I honestly just like valve for the games they have made especially portal 2and half life 2 but also for the steam deck it assisted my switching to linux and tbh I like it even if figuring out particular obscure or niche things is a bit difficult I still love the steam deck. Honestly I only use my windows laptop occasionally for charging any learning game making.

DotA first introduced the battle pass and now it puts it back in the ground when it got out of hand. I applaud their decision and the new update shows that it was the right one. (Because with the newest big update they already took some of the development power from the battle pass team and put it into balancing and creating new mechanics, a bigger map and much, much more)

Isnt this like the 100th time they did something good? Stop arguing in the comments goddamn

I remember the olden day when you had to buy wc3roc and wc3tft to play dota. Then HoN came, a spiritual succesor to dota, but which cost money. And LoL came, which actually was a very different game, balance and gameplay wise- and it relied on either a ton of games/ hours played to unlock other heroes for free, or you had to pay. But balancing was made so that you didnt really "need" all heroes, you would be fine even though you only had a dozen or so heroes from a 100+ pool. This was very different for dota, and the typical dota player would hate this restriction. Counterpicking was nowhere close to dota, it was overall a much more static and way less dynamic game than wc3 dota (or HoN). Then dota 2 came, completely for free, all heroes unlocked instantly, and you had access to matchmaking, ranked (came later) custom games, everything you needed to play. It 100% relied only on cosmetics. You didnt have to grind to get access to heroes or game mechanics, you had everything. There literally was no good reason to play HoN after that (I thought the same for LoL, as I just saw dota as superior in pretty much all aspects, except its more overwhelming for newcomers. But i eventually understood that LoL is quite a different game, and they have different appeals). I think its easy to forget how much is actually provided in a game like dota 2 completely for free. I never cared for cosmetics, i only cared about a fun competetive experience. I always found it a bit funny when people were complaining about "expensive" skins in games that are 100% multiplayer, 100% free to play. Never understood the appeal of "shiny gun", and why an expemnsive price tag made people pissed off. Im glad that Valve is focusing more on content accessible to f2p players, and im glad that you are glad about that. But honestly, even if Valve didnt decide to make this recent change to make more cosmetic stuff to f2p, and everything was exactly like it always was in Dota2, I still think that would be a better and more generous business model than HoN, LoL, and most multiplayer games overall ever was.

The way I understand what you presented, is that it's not that they want to nice nice to free player but that if all the content they produce is included in the yearly battle-pass they can only monetize each player once a year at most. So if they now sell content outside the battle-pass, they will be able to monetize the paying players several time (potentialy for more than the old battle pass in total) and maybe make the players who didn't purchase the battle pass now paid on occasion for smaller purchases.

Always seems like all game companies with live service models are more worried about there short term gain rather than their long term gain. I'm glad Valve is well aware of this and does the more consumer friendly thing.

Valve is actually the one who started battle pass thing and maybe they gonna make something new for everyone to copy

Finally, its about bringing a right plan for the job. Kudo to Valve and King Gaben. That should counter anti-player monetization tactics at least

Valve is the empath of the triple a world.

Garbaj posting, lets gooo🎉

every other gaming company: i'm gonna pretend i didn't see that

TF2 players : "Ah yes. DOTA DOTA CounterStrike, DOTA DOTA Counterstrike. Greatttt."

Valve has always been goated

they haven't done something good they just announced something good

meanwhile free-to-plays on tf2

The number 3

Been playing DotA Allstars for who knows how many years and when DotA 2 was announced, I've gained access between one of the first players in 2011. Since then I've never cared nor will I care about cosmetics. Well, that would be a lie for which I'm sorry, there's been some exceptions I really wanted from those battlepasses. One of them were the Gaben announcer pack, the skins for Dragon Knight and Mirana based on the animated series and some random skins that people mostly didn't care about, but I liked them. I've bought battlepasses just for the Gaben announcer pack and those skins mentioned before, not because I'm a cheap person, not because I hate this system nor because my little smooth brain goes apeshit when I unlock something... it's just because I don't need it to play better :^) The instances where I bought the Battlepass I sold some skins on steam market so I didn't actually spent any money on it. And I have that with every single game I play, if it is a multiplayer game I don't care about the cosmetics what so ever. For example Sea of Thieves, I've been playing since the release on and off and I've NEVER in my life bought a cosmetic there for real money nor did I bought a single "plunder pass" as they like to call them. To me it's just a waste of money to be honest... So what my character looks different? Doesn't make me play better in these games so ... why?

ok the way you said that at first made me worried that they were going to stop monetizing DotA. I would be concerned about that since when TF2 cosmetics enormously deflated in price, Valve just stopped updating the game and now it's infested with bots. Also if they stopped monetizing then TI prize pools would plummet.

Valve far ahead of the curve once again

I had no idea Dota 2 had a battlepass.

Hope CS has a similar update. Especially events and more content would be great.

dota dota counterstrike

Valve just putting their foot in again to make an example. Love them.

Can they now focus on the Heavy Update???

No fucking way

Oh, is Dota 2 going the way of TF2? Dota 2 might be going the way of TF2... is TF2 comming back? TF2 isn't comming back. Wait, Neon Prime is real? Dota 2 is going the way of TF2 is going the way of TF2 and Neon Prime is real, they're going all hands on deck, Neon Prime is replacing Dota 2, the way Dota 2 replaced TF2, CS2 and Neon Prime will be the new Valve ESports duo, Dota 2 is joining TF2, Day of Defeat, Artifact and Underlords to the Valve MP games grave yard.

Oh, come on! Why the completely vague title?

Its valve, their the best

Finally

Like wtf man, they created that post saying that there will be no more battle pass and did not specify literally anything...

Wait what

you know what dota gave you for free for like 20 years? the ability to play ANY character without having to grind weeks to get ONE

I mean, it's not like people who do not spend money get nothing, they get to play the game for free indefinetely which is the main point of a videogame. Cosmetics and "content" is a plus and because nothing is free it means that your playtime is covered by someone else buying those things.

bruh i just deleted it. I aint gonna wait a year to redownload it again

at least we get "bare minimum" unlike TF2 players

They learned their lesson last year that making the battlepass free for everyone to access to, giving us free arcanas, and free dota plus to compensate for the mediocre 2021 battlepass right after arguably one of the best battlepasses ever the 2020 battlepass actually helped brought brought back old players and new players alike for the sake of missing out of what seems like 4 monts of battlepass content, for the first in idk 5 years DOTA had millions of players again for this exact reason. (Not to mention that the arcanas that releases every battlepass become unobtainable after the internationals, so i hope they make arcanas marketable after TI again just like the arcanas pre 2018 and stop capitalizing on FOMO on limited unobtainable cosmetics)

I don't think a happy customer is a future paying customer. It's just about value, if you provide more value that you think you pay for, more people will pay. I won't pay for shitty skins that adds nothing, but I can pay for a battle pass that enables me to earn more drops and earn money (for example)

I clicked my w key cause I had to bound to "clear decal" in csgo :))) cause the blood was annoying me

It was very limited but they should have produce content and let be not paywall by battlepass as most are normal player without much money spend useless that they do not want. They must have found in their research that battlepass is not working as they need money produce some good and keeping game upkeep. They should let player buy items. But required a lot of check and artist and brain storm some content which cost money to burn. It would need balance and team size as well.

companies should look up to drg smh make all pass free !!

I don't believe the title

and yet no tf2

W valve

I must say as an ex dota player that the battlepass at least was cheap and you originaly got one every year. Not like some other games that a battlepass cames out every 2-3 months and you have to pay your 10 bucks montly and maybe not have the time to get all the skins and such. At this point we are back to WOW with it's montly payment

omg im early today! luv ur vids man

They want free players to be more inclined to buy the BP which is not wrong. Also, like LoL, it's a free game and skins do nothing. So if they only had BP skins, it's ok too. But they don't wanna detour players from the game for not having the "sparkly thing" that they don't need.

hi :D

bbc

Content for the store is not content for the game. Nice to see Valve being aware of it and introducing actual game content for their games and not just the store content. CSGO is probably the hardest, because most people simultaneously don't like any gameplay changes to the ranked matchmaking, but they also want something new.

Meanwhile tf2: doesn't get content to either payiny or free players

My problem with dota 2 is that matches are too damn long, and 70% of that time is passive accumulation of resources. 30-50 minute matches are good, only in cases when both teams are equivalent to each other, which obviously happens with the same frequency as holidays. In most cases, one team mocks the other, and artificially stretch the time without finishing the game, savoring their own superiority growing like a snowball. 1 match in Dota 2 is equivalent in time to 3-4 matches in Quake, and I don't feel morally and psychologically squeezed out after the last one which is more intense by the number of events at a time. Also losing doesn't feel so painful there because of the wasted time. My whining about- add the GIVE UP BUTTON if you want me to come back. This is why I stopped playing, but the game is good.

Due to the fact that valve rips of developers for 30% of their games price, they can make all their games entirely free (including battle passes and cosmetic items) and still receive millions of dollars. So nope, they didn't do anything good yet.

If only valve had this mentality for tf2

Yeah, i dont agree. Look its been only 6 months but give it 6 more and you will see the results. Without the help of the TI Price Pool to PUSH the other tournaments to reach new heights everyone will leave. Sponsors leave, teams leave, then the company makes less money and they stop with the constant updates(that has already started to happen), and finally the players leave. I hope everything goes ok for the game, but no, its not a good thing

other than paid stuff, both free and paid players just hate when they are playing the exact same mind numbing patch for months. devs there need to check their ego because they only made patch for their own gameplays. its cringe. like people actually tired when a useless hero keep getting nerfed while broken hero keep getting buffed. it just funnel the whole creativity.

First

Battle passes are trash and dumb to smoke.

First!

I don't find this accurate sorry. The constantly evolving game balance and new characters/items has always been free which is more free content than almost any other game. I don't know how this announcement could possibly be unexpected, and the free players DEFINITELY have never been fed the bare minimum.