Yeah, as a resident Valve hater I agree it’s a weird thing to get angry over.
If there was anything to get angry over is that I bought this game in a box (stand alone because I was too broke for Orange Box!) with an understanding that it’s an online multiplayer shooter. Meaning, there are servers you join manually from a list, shoot at other guys for a bit and return to that server or not based on how good time it was. This functionality has been ripped out of the game and replaced with some weird algorithm. Before that Valve broke their own design promises of clear silhouettes which made the game less accessible. The game has been dead, riddled with bots farming in-game items that can be traded for real money that Valve added to the game because they could. If it was any other game I wouldn’t care but TF2 started out as an amazing game that was mangled beyond recognition by Valve greed.
They should have released TF2 source code this way 10 years ago. They’re probably doing this now because income from TF2 related items on Marketplace is laughably small compared to their other titles.
2xsaiko@discuss.tchncs.de
on 22 Feb 23:03
nextcollapse
The server list is still there fwiw. But yeah the matchmaking update was awful.
Feathercrown@lemmy.world
on 22 Feb 23:42
nextcollapse
This functionality has been ripped out of the game
Yeah it was rough for a year or two there… but Valve did a massive banwave and now I’ve only seen a group of bots join my server twice in the last year, and we could kick them easily
I’m a Valve stan but it’s disgusting how they’ve abused and neglected TF2. It would unironically be significantly better if they just rolled back every change since 2016.
Jokes aside. It’s an interesting distinction to make. Even though the source code is freely available, it doesn’t mean developers have free reign to do anything they want like they could with open source software. Apart from special circumstances, everything made with the source code will still be mods.
Excrubulent@slrpnk.net
on 23 Feb 01:16
nextcollapse
You can’t do whatever you want with open source either. One big stipulation of copyleft licenses is the share-alike clause, which means you can’t make modifications and then decide your program is now closed-source, so it protects the code from being enclosed again.
I mean yes you can make whatever modifications you want, generally, but it’s not totally unrestricted.
Sort of, but those let you use the pre-existing codebase for each game as is. This lets you play with the inner workings. You could do something drastic like implant rollback netcode, add new classes, wild shit.
thermal_shock@lemmy.world
on 24 Feb 16:32
collapse
Gotcha
CaptainBasculin@lemmy.bascul.in
on 22 Feb 18:34
nextcollapse
Aside from TF Classic and Pre Fortress, Pass Time 4v4 community is also planning for a mod release.
Anegro_Montoya@sh.itjust.works
on 22 Feb 20:25
collapse
Goddamn, I miss those days! Got a real graphics card for TF2 (edit: I meant TF Classic) so I could see through water. Rocket jumping and cluster bombs, ahhhh. There was a mod with a grappling hook that was amazing.
I would say the marketplace is a form of enshittification. They’re not burrowing headfirst into the shit like some platforms, but it’s an inevitable trend regardless.
Plus who knows what happens when gabe isn’t around any more. Best case scenario is he leaves the company to the workers as a co-op and then it has a chance to be a lasting legacy, but maybe it goes to someone who puts it up to be publicly traded and that’s game over.
zalgotext@sh.itjust.works
on 23 Feb 03:10
collapse
Maybe I’m misunderstanding you, or what enshittification is, but how is the steam marketplace an example of it?
The steam marketplace is an attempt to monetise the user base by creating a bunch of microtransactions and taking a cut for the store. They have created a speculative market, which is essentially gambling, and made it available to minors. This market is designed to exploit people’s psychological weaknesses.
Yes, users and devs get a cut too, and that’s better than some sites will do to you, but creating a market also has a bunch of externalities - extra problems that are offloaded onto other people and not borne by valve.
So suddenly we’ve got a bunch of scammers creating accounts to make money, which obviously can scam users, plus it generats spam, and it creates a need for user-hostile security. Now I can’t friend my kid’s account without spending money on it for instance,
Also there’s the item spam. Now when I get a notification I don’t know if it’s a community forum reply, or just more worthless junk in my inventory. The inventory could have just been a way to store game gifts and other things of actual value, now I never look at it because it’s just full of trash.
Some of these are minor inconveniences, but that’s how enshittification happens. It’s little, creeping annoyances that get worse and worse until it starts to make people look for alternatives.
And like I said, it’s not as bad as other places. Steam is still the best distribution platform out there, but it has enshittified a little bit. It has to, because the interests of the owners and the interests of the users are fundamentally at odds - more money spent means more money for the owners.
zalgotext@sh.itjust.works
on 23 Feb 04:25
nextcollapse
Some of these are minor inconveniences, but that’s how enshittification happens. It’s little, creeping annoyances that get worse and worse until it starts to make people look for alternatives.
Ok, maybe my definition of enshittification is off then. I thought it was when some company offers some product/service for a certain price (or free), then gradually removes features from that product/service while increasing the price. Am I off?
If that definition is right, I don’t understand how the steam marketplace, a completely optional (borderline tangential) part of the steam platform, qualifies as enshittification.
And I’m not trying to defend the steam marketplace, I think it’s stupid and terrible and at minimum needs age restrictions. But like, you can absolutely just not use it and your experience using the steam platform is totally unaffected.
That’s one way it happens, but in general the term appears to be about decline in quality for the purposes of profit-seeking, regardless of whether services were offered for free or not.
Enshittification, also known as crapification and platform decay, is the term used to describe the pattern in which online products and services decline in quality over time. Initially, vendors create high-quality offerings to attract users, then they degrade those offerings to better serve business customers, and finally degrade their services to users and business customers to maximize profits for shareholders.
Other articles I looked at seem to agree with this basic concept.
And like I said, spam from scammers and inbox spam are examples of shittiness that seep in regardless of if you engage or not. There is no “no marketplace plz” option, and even if there were scammers can still send you friend request spam.
zalgotext@sh.itjust.works
on 23 Feb 17:09
collapse
Eh, maybe I’m being pedantic, but I still don’t really see how the addition of the steam marketplace is an example of the steam platform declining in quality. It was a feature that they added a long time ago, and it doesn’t interfere with or worsen the experience of buying, organizing, or playing my video games. Sure it’s a needless addition (in our opinions), but one that I can easily ignore because it’s so isolated from the main product. Plenty of other products and services out there have features that some don’t like or don’t use, but that isn’t the same thing as enshittification. And I feel like the spam would happen regardless of if the marketplace was there or not. That feels more like a moderation problem, not an enshittification problem.
Sure, if you ignore the worst parts of it that I explicitly laid out and only focus on how it makes you feel personally, then I can see how you might feel that way.
zalgotext@sh.itjust.works
on 24 Feb 04:13
collapse
I’m not ignoring anything, I just don’t agree that the steam marketplace, and all the stuff you’re talking about related to the steam marketplace, fits either of our definitions of enshittification.
Okay, I don’t understand how and you haven’t explained it, you’ve just said that you don’t personally care about it, which isn’t an argument I can respond to. You’re free to have your opinion, but I don’t see how it’s relevant here.
zalgotext@sh.itjust.works
on 24 Feb 15:06
collapse
It was a feature that they added a long time ago, and it doesn’t interfere with or worsen the experience of buying, organizing, or playing my video games… Plenty of other products and services out there have features that some don’t like or don’t use, but that isn’t the same thing as enshittification.
Yes, you ignored the worst parts of it in favour of things you could dismiss for yourself, and then you ignored me pointing that out. I’m not going to keep explaining this to you any further.
zalgotext@sh.itjust.works
on 24 Feb 15:31
collapse
The only one ignoring things is you. You’re ignoring my whole point. Which is that your personal bar for enshittification is lower than any of the definitions we’ve given in this thread, because it’s basically “anything I think is bad is enshittification”
Yes, I’m so angry and salty that I checks notes wrote a detailed and even-handed analysis of the situation with appropriate caveats. How dare I state facts with sources and explanations of my reasoning.
I’m just absolutely raging. It’s embarrassing, frankly. I’m making a fool of myself. I can’t believe I lost control like that and said words that I believe to be true. Who does that? Unhinged behaviour. Just wild. I should be banned.
burgerpocalyse@lemmy.world
on 22 Feb 23:58
nextcollapse
it only took 18 years and also several years of radio silence after some mod authors asked them to clarify the legality of their work
captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works
on 23 Feb 00:23
nextcollapse
Valve has made an emasculatingly large amount of money this way. Following in the footsteps of Id Software, Valve has been very open with their development tools. I don’t know about the very earliest copies but the ZOMG GOTY edition of the original Half Life included its SDK on the disc. Counter Strike and Team Fortress started out as mods that Valve just…hired.
Releasing the tools to their customer base and then hiring the cream that rises to the top is a strategy I struggle to get mad at.
BeardedGingerWonder@feddit.uk
on 23 Feb 01:56
collapse
Thinking back, HL had a ridiculous quantity of high quality mods and TCs back in the day. Hell, Valve have even allowed HL to be remade and sold on steam.
captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works
on 23 Feb 02:15
nextcollapse
“We’d prefer you didn’t use the word “Source” in the game title. You wanna sell Black Mesa on Steam?”
Only a corporate officer that is fully enslaved by the lawyers of that corpo will not see how it’s good business when humans engage with your product. When gamers play and interact with your code. It’s pure folly to cite some trade war or corporate war with another corpo. No dude. Share with also other devs. Be a fucking human. You are not a corpo slave droid. I am so glad that valve is not publicly traded. Holy shit it must take a lot to be the leading company in this market and not bend to capitalist pressures
RageAgainstTheRich@lemmy.world
on 23 Feb 15:33
nextcollapse
I miss The Specialists and Vampire Slayer mods so so much…
UltraGiGaGigantic@lemmy.ml
on 23 Feb 15:47
nextcollapse
Science and industry.
There are some discords where people play HL1 mods once a week.
Low bars for entry with high community trustworthiness, you can make a .ca account really easily and most lemmy users have a positive opinion of .ca and its users.
CarbonBasedNPU@lemm.ee
on 23 Feb 06:54
nextcollapse
Nah you are right but they actually do, but valve has also always done that. Dunno why you are so hated but I think it has to do with epics exclusive deals
threaded - newest
A few takeaways from the move:
Ugh, greedy Valve making you spend $0 to buy the base game
[Edit] ok I read the article after making that joke and I see that it applies to several other valve games, not all of which are free to play
Yeah, as a resident Valve hater I agree it’s a weird thing to get angry over.
If there was anything to get angry over is that I bought this game in a box (stand alone because I was too broke for Orange Box!) with an understanding that it’s an online multiplayer shooter. Meaning, there are servers you join manually from a list, shoot at other guys for a bit and return to that server or not based on how good time it was. This functionality has been ripped out of the game and replaced with some weird algorithm. Before that Valve broke their own design promises of clear silhouettes which made the game less accessible. The game has been dead, riddled with bots farming in-game items that can be traded for real money that Valve added to the game because they could. If it was any other game I wouldn’t care but TF2 started out as an amazing game that was mangled beyond recognition by Valve greed.
They should have released TF2 source code this way 10 years ago. They’re probably doing this now because income from TF2 related items on Marketplace is laughably small compared to their other titles.
The server list is still there fwiw. But yeah the matchmaking update was awful.
Nope, see the server browser ingame
Not anymore!
Oh I gotta fire up TF2! These sorts of shenanigans are the main reason I drifted away years ago.
Yeah it was rough for a year or two there… but Valve did a massive banwave and now I’ve only seen a group of bots join my server twice in the last year, and we could kick them easily
Most players are using casual mode which is terrible. The community servers in TF2 are a pale shadow of what they once were.
Casual’s fine
Yeah you’d think that if you never played before it ruined the entire game.
I’ve played TF2 for years-- only, after Meet Your Match. (Wow this game is old…)
I’m a Valve stan but it’s disgusting how they’ve abused and neglected TF2. It would unironically be significantly better if they just rolled back every change since 2016.
Lol. It’s so greedy of them!
Jokes aside. It’s an interesting distinction to make. Even though the source code is freely available, it doesn’t mean developers have free reign to do anything they want like they could with open source software. Apart from special circumstances, everything made with the source code will still be mods.
You can’t do whatever you want with open source either. One big stipulation of copyleft licenses is the share-alike clause, which means you can’t make modifications and then decide your program is now closed-source, so it protects the code from being enclosed again.
I mean yes you can make whatever modifications you want, generally, but it’s not totally unrestricted.
Im honestly a really big fan of copyleft. I think that it seems more “fair” in a system that requires sacrifice to make progress.
It does harken back to the original HL mod scene though - some high quality stuff came out of that (and valve picked up the Devs too)
Isn’t this how they all are? L4d and l4d2 are the same unless you’re hosting a server with .smx plugins.
Sort of, but those let you use the pre-existing codebase for each game as is. This lets you play with the inner workings. You could do something drastic like implant rollback netcode, add new classes, wild shit.
Gotcha
Aside from TF Classic and Pre Fortress, Pass Time 4v4 community is also planning for a mod release.
Goddamn, I miss those days! Got a real graphics card for TF2 (edit: I meant TF Classic) so I could see through water. Rocket jumping and cluster bombs, ahhhh. There was a mod with a grappling hook that was amazing.
3dfx cards were cheating! I can’t see through water with my 1998 Packard Bell!
Sup, fellow old person. I had a Voodoo 2 with 12MB of VRAM on my 200MHz Packard Bell.
What’s the point in switching to TFC anyway when QWTF was still quite alive and well with tons of mods(particularly on mplayer)!
MPlayer. Your gaming cred checks out. How are your knees doing these days?
Wow, this is an awesome move! We are honestly so lucky that Valve hasn’t enshittified like so many other gaming companies out there.
That's because Valve isn't owned by investors
Exactly.
This!
(upvotes are to the left FYI)
I would say the marketplace is a form of enshittification. They’re not burrowing headfirst into the shit like some platforms, but it’s an inevitable trend regardless.
Plus who knows what happens when gabe isn’t around any more. Best case scenario is he leaves the company to the workers as a co-op and then it has a chance to be a lasting legacy, but maybe it goes to someone who puts it up to be publicly traded and that’s game over.
Maybe I’m misunderstanding you, or what enshittification is, but how is the steam marketplace an example of it?
The steam marketplace is an attempt to monetise the user base by creating a bunch of microtransactions and taking a cut for the store. They have created a speculative market, which is essentially gambling, and made it available to minors. This market is designed to exploit people’s psychological weaknesses.
Yes, users and devs get a cut too, and that’s better than some sites will do to you, but creating a market also has a bunch of externalities - extra problems that are offloaded onto other people and not borne by valve.
So suddenly we’ve got a bunch of scammers creating accounts to make money, which obviously can scam users, plus it generats spam, and it creates a need for user-hostile security. Now I can’t friend my kid’s account without spending money on it for instance,
Also there’s the item spam. Now when I get a notification I don’t know if it’s a community forum reply, or just more worthless junk in my inventory. The inventory could have just been a way to store game gifts and other things of actual value, now I never look at it because it’s just full of trash.
Some of these are minor inconveniences, but that’s how enshittification happens. It’s little, creeping annoyances that get worse and worse until it starts to make people look for alternatives.
And like I said, it’s not as bad as other places. Steam is still the best distribution platform out there, but it has enshittified a little bit. It has to, because the interests of the owners and the interests of the users are fundamentally at odds - more money spent means more money for the owners.
Ok, maybe my definition of enshittification is off then. I thought it was when some company offers some product/service for a certain price (or free), then gradually removes features from that product/service while increasing the price. Am I off?
If that definition is right, I don’t understand how the steam marketplace, a completely optional (borderline tangential) part of the steam platform, qualifies as enshittification.
And I’m not trying to defend the steam marketplace, I think it’s stupid and terrible and at minimum needs age restrictions. But like, you can absolutely just not use it and your experience using the steam platform is totally unaffected.
That’s one way it happens, but in general the term appears to be about decline in quality for the purposes of profit-seeking, regardless of whether services were offered for free or not.
The wiki article starts with this:
Other articles I looked at seem to agree with this basic concept.
And like I said, spam from scammers and inbox spam are examples of shittiness that seep in regardless of if you engage or not. There is no “no marketplace plz” option, and even if there were scammers can still send you friend request spam.
.
Eh, maybe I’m being pedantic, but I still don’t really see how the addition of the steam marketplace is an example of the steam platform declining in quality. It was a feature that they added a long time ago, and it doesn’t interfere with or worsen the experience of buying, organizing, or playing my video games. Sure it’s a needless addition (in our opinions), but one that I can easily ignore because it’s so isolated from the main product. Plenty of other products and services out there have features that some don’t like or don’t use, but that isn’t the same thing as enshittification. And I feel like the spam would happen regardless of if the marketplace was there or not. That feels more like a moderation problem, not an enshittification problem.
Sure, if you ignore the worst parts of it that I explicitly laid out and only focus on how it makes you feel personally, then I can see how you might feel that way.
I’m not ignoring anything, I just don’t agree that the steam marketplace, and all the stuff you’re talking about related to the steam marketplace, fits either of our definitions of enshittification.
Okay, I don’t understand how and you haven’t explained it, you’ve just said that you don’t personally care about it, which isn’t an argument I can respond to. You’re free to have your opinion, but I don’t see how it’s relevant here.
I have explained it though
Yes, you ignored the worst parts of it in favour of things you could dismiss for yourself, and then you ignored me pointing that out. I’m not going to keep explaining this to you any further.
The only one ignoring things is you. You’re ignoring my whole point. Which is that your personal bar for enshittification is lower than any of the definitions we’ve given in this thread, because it’s basically “anything I think is bad is enshittification”
Your point is that the issues don’t affect the core experience, and I’ve explained how that’s wrong, and you’ve ignored it.
You’re also now blatantly mischaracterising what I’ve said.
If you want me to keep talking to you, I need you to tell me that you are actually curious to understand what I have to say.
Nah I don’t really want you to keep talking to me
In future you can just say that rather than talking in circles and making no sense. Goodbye.
Imagine being this salty about steam cards and C’s skins
Yes, I’m so angry and salty that I checks notes wrote a detailed and even-handed analysis of the situation with appropriate caveats. How dare I state facts with sources and explanations of my reasoning.
I’m just absolutely raging. It’s embarrassing, frankly. I’m making a fool of myself. I can’t believe I lost control like that and said words that I believe to be true. Who does that? Unhinged behaviour. Just wild. I should be banned.
it only took 18 years and also several years of radio silence after some mod authors asked them to clarify the legality of their work
Valve has made an emasculatingly large amount of money this way. Following in the footsteps of Id Software, Valve has been very open with their development tools. I don’t know about the very earliest copies but the ZOMG GOTY edition of the original Half Life included its SDK on the disc. Counter Strike and Team Fortress started out as mods that Valve just…hired.
Releasing the tools to their customer base and then hiring the cream that rises to the top is a strategy I struggle to get mad at.
Thinking back, HL had a ridiculous quantity of high quality mods and TCs back in the day. Hell, Valve have even allowed HL to be remade and sold on steam.
“We’d prefer you didn’t use the word “Source” in the game title. You wanna sell Black Mesa on Steam?”
Only a corporate officer that is fully enslaved by the lawyers of that corpo will not see how it’s good business when humans engage with your product. When gamers play and interact with your code. It’s pure folly to cite some trade war or corporate war with another corpo. No dude. Share with also other devs. Be a fucking human. You are not a corpo slave droid. I am so glad that valve is not publicly traded. Holy shit it must take a lot to be the leading company in this market and not bend to capitalist pressures
I miss The Specialists and Vampire Slayer mods so so much…
Science and industry.
There are some discords where people play HL1 mods once a week.
Specialists mentioned
Natural Selection was a quality one.
You’re a good doctor!
Nice to see Epic isn’t the only company that cares about games. I might check this out just to learn
Bait so low quality it rotted away already
I swear I see most trolls from lemmy. ca and feddit. uk
Low bars for entry with high community trustworthiness, you can make a .ca account really easily and most lemmy users have a positive opinion of .ca and its users.
Lemmy trolling sucks.
Actually no trolling in general sucks.
Are you just unaware of Unreal Engine/Tournament (now Fortnite)?
They are the single biggest contributor to game development
Nah you are right but they actually do, but valve has also always done that. Dunno why you are so hated but I think it has to do with epics exclusive deals
Source mod tools not to be confused with Sourcemod tools.
What a boss move by Valve