Is Valve the new Activision??

Well of course not, but I have had a very interesting argument this morning about Valve's role as a developer with my friend equating them more to a publisher with evil corporation like tendencies.

It could be argued that the only original IP ever actually created by Valve is the Half Life franchise. Everything else they have ever put out have pretty much been mod's on their source engine, or of the original Half Life (which as I recall was developed on Quake 3 technology but I really don't feel like doing the research this morning). Team Fortress, Day of Defeat, Left 4 Dead, my beloved Portal, all started as mod's or indy project's before getting "swallowed" up by the evil, rich, corporate entity that is Valve. One could (and has) argued that this is akin to a large corporation buying up a lot of small business to merge them into the corporate bureaucratic fold. Has Valve evolved into a publisher/distributor rather than a developer?

Well of course not. They are a beautiful and effective amalgamation of every entity in our little world.

Valve have an uncanny knack for spotting and snatching up epic level talent. They see really brilliant developers and give them jobs and resources based on their idea's more than a resume. Valve has about every luxury in the development world and isn't constrained by a third party publisher demanding results and immediate profitability; setting deadlines and awarding bonuses on Metacritic scores. What Valve seems to do is give smart people access to more talent, better technology, and lots of money to create the greatest experiences available. I don't see that as being evil at all; I see it as fantastic practices for both us, the consumers, as well as any investors for Valve as a developer of software.

Why isn't every company in the video games industry like this? Well it's not easy to pull of and maintain. It's not "standard" play (for all my like minded SC2 fans out there). The only other company who was sort of running on this business model was Stardock, and well they made some decisions that brought them away from the whole publisher/developer/middleware thing.

Long story short Valve is great for our industry, is always thinking forward, and has created a great counter-business model to the Activisions and EA's of the world.

Now is Portal 2 available early?! If it is working today is gonna suck!!